OLD BILL'S Sense and Nonsense

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity | Video on TED.com

2011-09-22T23:15:00.000-05:00

Niall Ferguson tells TED the West's six killer apps of prosperity are these:

1. Competition

2. TheScientific Revolution

3. PropertyRights

4. ModernMedicine

5. TheConsumer Society

6. TheWork Ethic

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/niall_ferguson_the_6_killer_apps_of_prosperity.html

I began thinking and I couldn’t quit.

2011-04-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

"I began thinking and I couldn’t quit."

Ex-Scientology member, when asked why he became an atheist

quoted by Phill Plaitt

the Bad Astronomer

www.badastronomy.com

That's exactly what happened to me several decades ago, when I first left the Independent, Fundamentalist Baptist Church group I had grown up in. About a decade later, I realized and admitted to myself that I had become an atheist. Once a person starts thinking critically -- questioning, studying, and carefully considering the evidence -- there is often no turning back.

Tobacco

2010-07-21T15:00:00.002-05:00

1 billion: Approximate number of tobacco users worldwide

15: Average number of years of life that will be lost by each smoker

That's incredible! It's a total of 15,000,000,000 person-years of life that are being traded by people who are now alive just for the privilege of sucking smoke from little rolled-up papers filled with poison leaves and set on fire.

Who would ever believe it, if we didn't see people doing it all the time?

My Father was healthy, as far as anybody knew, until the Sunday morning he woke up "feeling bad" and was dead by noon.

Dad had worked full-time as a security guard for years, walking several miles every day while on duty. He had never been overweight and seldom sick. He was not a drinker. His only known risk factor was smoking since the age of 16. Like most American smokers, Dad had tried many times to stop the deadly habit; but his craving for the stuff was too strong.

I realize it's impossible to be certain Dad wouldn't have had his fatal heart attack at the age of 61 even without smoking. I'll never know for sure that tobacco did him in. But I do know that tobacco murders an average of about 5,000,000 people worldwide every year.

The average smoker dies 15 years sooner than he or she would without smoking. If Dad had been average in this regard, he could have lived to be 76 years old instead of dying at the young age of 61. It's a very substantial difference.

I hate death!

I don't fear death, but I love being alive. I love learning, writing, blogging, and thinking. I love visiting with friends and relatives and occasionally meeting somebody new. I love reading good books, magazines, and websites. I love watching good movies and good television shows. I love life and living too much to die before I have to. I never expect to welcome death.

Therefore, I also hate tobacco.

No, there's nothing evil or hateful or disgusting about the tobacco plant growing in the dirt, and I don't hate that. What I hate is the perverted use people make of it, shortening their lives by an average of 15 years each and causing many of them to suffer cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and other terrible, agonizing diseases even before their early deaths.

I hate suffering. I hate death. I hate the perverted use of tobacco that so often causes them both.

My Source for facts: Scientific American, October 2008, p. 34. (Original sources: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Health Organization)

Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey? Nah. It's Just Plain Ole Hocus Pocus

2010-05-02T16:11:00.007-05:00

I used to square dance a couple of hours several times a week when I was a little younger. Sometimes we went overtime and occasionally danced as long as seven hours with only a few short breaks! I loved it. It was undoubtedly the most fun I ever had with my clothes on. ;)

I kept up with the best and danced far better than most -- though I may be slightly biased about that ;) -- and I seldom even thought about the arthritis and neuropathy eating up my joints and nerves respectively. In the excitement of the music, the coordinated rhythmic movements, and the adrenalin rush, I simply stopped feeling the pain.

Unfortunately, it always came back.

Eventually, the effect stopped working very well. About the same time, my conditions made me so uncoordinated I became a danger to myself and others and had to stop dancing after I did a 'swing your partner,' lost my balance, and ran head-on into my corner lady. Fortunately, neither of us was injured.

I wonder how many of these healings stayed healed after a short time, when the emotion and false hope generated by this nonsense have worn off? If anybody has information, please leave a comment to let me know. Thanks.

Personally, I think they'd be better off square dancing.

Maybe There's Intelligent Life on Earth After All

2009-08-08T07:02:00.006-05:00

Non-human intelligence always seems to surprise most people. It shouldn't. After all, humans are part of nature, and we are intelligent.

Every other life form on earth is our distant cousin. Maybe we're the brainiest side of the family, but many other groups have brains, too. Especially other mammals and birds.

This rook at Cambridge University, has figured out that it can raise the water level in the glass tube by dropping pebbles into it. This brings the worm floating on the water's surface into reach. A rook is a European and Asian bird closely related to the crow. They have also been observed using sticks and wire, and some even figured out how to bend a wire into a hook to reach an item.

Aesop's fable "The crow and the pitcher" tells of a thirsty crow that drops stones into a pitcher of water to raise the level until it can drink. The study in which this rook was involved, published online Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 in the journal Current Biology, seems to demonstrate that rooks are as intelligent in real life as in stories.

Resources:
Yahoo! News, 8-8-09, http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Emailed-Photos/ss/1756/im:/090806/480/bc304f650cf948b5bb0cd4fcd281bc03
Wikipedia, Rook (Bird), 8-8-09, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_(bird)

1.6 Inches / 4.0 Centimeters

2009-08-05T17:26:00.024-05:00

1.6 inches

(4 centimeters)

Distance the moon recedes from earth every year. That's about 13 feet 4 inches (4.0 meters) every century.

Resource:
Scientific American, Ask the Experts, October 2008, p104, Neil F. Collins

A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia

2009-07-29T10:41:00.013-05:00

New York Times
by Noam Cohen
July 29, 2009

There are tests that have right answers, which are returned with a number on top in a red circle, and there are tests with open-ended questions, which provide insight into the test taker’s mind.
The Rorschach test, a series of 10 inkblot plates created by the Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach for his book "Psychodiagnostik," published in 1921, is clearly in the second category.
Yet in the last few months, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been engulfed in a furious debate involving psychologists who are angry that the 10 original Rorschach plates are reproduced online, along with common responses for each.
For them, the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year's SAT.
They are pitted against the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia's users, who share the site's "free culture" ethos, which opposes the suppression of information that it is legal to publish. (Because the Rorschach plates were created nearly 90 years ago, they have lost their copyright protection in the United States.)

As in many instances where there are two (or more) sides to a problem, I can see them both. It appears that no laws have been broken by publishing the "ink blots," and I'm usually very much in favor of republishing public domain information. But it seems a shame this test will lose so much of its value to psychologists.

On the up side, maybe this will force some enterprising psychologist to devise a better test. Surely somebody ought to be able to improve a test that's already 86 years old. Wouldn't you think?

Resources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/technology/internet/29inkblot.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

One small step for a man, ...

2009-07-21T11:15:00.009-05:00

It's hard to believe I missed it here, but I did. And I'm sorry. I must be the only science geek in the world who failed to post anything about what happened forty years ago yesterday.

I suppose I could write something now, but it's all over the web and everywhere else already. I think trying to add anything of value at this late date would seem pretty pathetic. Instead, I'm just going to provide a link to somebody else's story. Here's the Bad Astronomer. (Nah, he's not really thaaat bad. Read it. It's good.)

On July 20, 1969, at 20:17:40 GMT, human beings landed on an alien world.

That was the moment that the Eagle lander touched down on the surface of the Moon, 40 years ago today. Nearly five hours later, at 02:56:15 GMT on July 21, Neil Armstrong placed his boot in the lunar regolith, planting it firmly into history as well.

Click the link to read the rest. It's better than anything I could have said, anyway; even though I was working at an aerospace manufacturing company at the time. (Yup. I was 29 years old and struggling to support a wife and two kids when Neil Armstrong spoke those famous words from the surface of the moon: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.")

Resources:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/20/what-apollo-means-to-me/

A billion grains of pollen per plant? No wonder!

2009-07-14T10:39:00.002-05:00

I notice in the current Discover magazine that a single ragweed plant can produce as many as a billion (1,000,000,000) grains of pollen in a season. It doesn't mention how many ragweed plants there might be doing all that pollinating, though. Obviously a lot.

In late summer, the count can reach as high as several hundred grains per cubic meter of air, and ten grains per cubic meter is enough to trigger an allergic response in some people. About 75% of hay fever sufferers are allergic to it.

Resource: Discover, July/August 2009, p. 13, Allergies

Honest to Goodness Good Stuff

2009-06-29T22:16:00.010-05:00

Here's another one of the many reasons why Randy Cassingham has been one of my heroes for a long time.

Randy Cassingham's Blog: Honest to Goodness Good Stuff

While you're there, sign up for his free weekly email newsletter, This Is True. I promise you'll be glad you did.

He's been publishing it for fifteen years, and I've been receiving and enjoying it for almost that long. (Actually, I now pay a small amount to get twice as much enjoyment from the "Premium Edition." it's one of the best deals I know of. No, I don't get paid for this plug.)

So what does this have to do with our usual subject matter? Well, in addition to dedicated and trained men and women, a lot of science was required to develop their tools and techniques. Right? I guess if I really want to post something, I can probably find an excuse. ;-)

Kyoto Prize Goes to Peter and Rosemary Grant for Demonstrating Rapid Evolution in Darwin's Finches

2009-06-21T01:18:00.010-05:00

The script could not have got any better than this for the Grant’s who spent major part of their life studying Darwin finches evolutionary responses to environmental changes on islands of Galapagos. In this special year of evolution which celebrates 200th year of Darwin’s Birth and 150 years of publication of Darwin’s magnum opus “Origin of species”, Peter Raymond Grant and his wife Barbara Rosemary Grant won the prestigious Kyoto prize for their work “Demonstrating Rapid Evolution Caused by Natural Selection in Response to Environmental Changes”in basic sciences category. The Kyoto Prize is a Japanese award considered as equivalent to the Nobel Prize and the couple share $515,000 prize money.

Its indeed well deserved honor for two brilliant scientists , who have been traveling regularly since 1973 to the Galapagos to study their favorite finches.The Grants have spent six months of the year each year since 1973 capturing, tagging, taking blood samples, and releasing finches from the islands. Charles Darwin studied these birds for the first time during his famous Voyage of Beagle to the Galapagos Islands in 1835. Peter and Rosemary Grant provided some very valuable insights about origin and evolution of new species by studying Finches made famous by the great man - Charles Darwin.

Princeton University Press adds this:

Drawing upon their unique observations of finch evolution over a thirty-four-year period, the Grants trace the evolutionary history of fourteen different species from a shared ancestor three million years ago. They show how repeated cycles of speciation involved adaptive change through natural selection on beak size and shape, and divergence in songs. They explain other factors that drive finch evolution, including geographical isolation, which has kept the Galápagos relatively free of competitors and predators; climate change and an increase in the number of islands over the last three million years, which enhanced opportunities for speciation; and flexibility in the early learning of feeding skills, which helped species to exploit new food resources. Throughout, the Grants show how the laboratory tools of developmental biology and molecular genetics can be combined with observations and experiments on birds in the field to gain deeper insights into why the world is so biologically rich and diverse. -- Princeton University Press, 2009/06/24, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8486.html

This husband/wife team demonstrated -- among other things -- that evolution does not always require vast periods of time. They watched, studied, and reported as the finches of the Galapagos Islands evolved significantly in only 34 years.

Don't try to tell me that nobody has ever witnessed evolution in action. They did. And other scientists have.

The honor (and money) could hardly have gone to two more deserving scientists.

Resources:

http://www.hoxfulmonsters.com/2009/06/peter-and-rosemary-grant-bags-kyoto-prize-for-demonstrating-rapid-evolution-in-darwins-finches/
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8486.html

President Obama Proves He Can Handle a Crisis

2009-06-18T12:08:00.004-05:00

Yes, President Obama can swat flies, thanks to good inherited hand-eye coordination perfected by eating right and shooting hoops during off hours.

The Commander in Chief's skills were put to the test Tuesday during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood. As the two men were discussing the country's economic crisis, a fly that had been buzzing around the room throughout the interview began to zero in on Obama.

http://blogs.discovery.com/news_animal/2009/06/obama-fly-swat-reveals-presidents-impressive-reflexes.html

Prescription For Disaster

2009-06-09T22:29:00.008-05:00

"We've arranged a global civilisation in which most crucial elements . . . profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.

"This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces." Carl Sagan, in The Demon Haunted World

Sagan was a wise man, and the world needs more like him. His words are even truer today than when first published 13 years ago, and the world indeed appears almost ready to "blow up in our faces." What's more, few people even seem to realize the basic cause of the looming disaster: over-population. People the world over just keep on making more and more babies.

I'm all in favor of conservation and recycling and sequestering carbon dioxide, but almost nobody seems to realize that no amount of doing those things can make up for our huge and growing world population. Even if we were doing any of those things effectively, which we are not.

I fear for the generation of children growing up today. And for their future children and grand-children. I'm afraid that global climate change may be one of their lesser problems.

I've been wrong before, and I surely hope I'm wrong about this.

A Magnificent Reminder

2009-06-09T10:39:00.006-05:00

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. – Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her speech bowing out of the 2008 presidential campaign

I just accidentally (again) stumbled across this wonderful reminder that the only way to accomplish anything is "to work together for what still can be." We must work with what now is rather than dwelling on "what might have been."

As I near the end of my seventh decade of life, this is --and indeed must be -- my main goal. To the extent I find it possible, I intend to work together with anybody who shares compatible goals for human continuity, freedom, and prosperity.

Magnificent "Jellyfish Crop Circle"

2009-06-03T17:33:00.004-05:00

This magnificent "crop circle" on a farm near Oxfordshire, England, is said to be 250 meters (800 feet) long. No, I don't believe it was made by aliens. That's just plain silly. But it's a great piece of art. Or graffiti, depending on one's viewpoint. I can't help but admire it's precise curves and proportions. Check it out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8081771.stm

Heteropaternal Superfecundation

2009-05-19T16:06:00.014-05:00

Dallas Twins Have Different Dads

A Texas mother of twins got the shock of her life when doctors revealed that her 11-month-old boys do not have the same father.

Yup. It does appear to be possible. And I guess if it's possible, it'll happen here in Texas sooner or later. So it happened.

When this Texas woman noticed her 11-month-old twin boys were developing different features, she wondered why; and a DNA paternity test answered her question. The boys have different fathers.

I had heard before of this happening, but those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn I was a little bit skeptical. Actually, it makes sense that it could happen, if a woman has sex with more than one man within a day or two. And she says she did.

Obviously, a woman can occasionally produce two eggs at the same time, because that's where fraternal twins always come from. The only difference is, the eggs are usually fertilized by two sperm from the same man. A pair of twins with different fathers is thought to be extremely rare.

It's known as "heteropaternal superfecundation."

No, that won't be on the test.

Resources:
Fox News, 5-19-09, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520524,00.html?test=latestnews

Angels and Demons? Science?

2009-05-16T08:37:00.010-05:00

Not only will Angels & Demons likely jump start conversations about physics, as some scientists hope, but the summer blockbuster will also be a launching pad for audiences to drive home discussing the relationship between science and religion.

I would never have expected any movie named Angels and Demons to have a science angle, but maybe that's why we're exhorted not to judge a book by its cover. Matthew Nisbet, over at Framing Science, says physicists hope the movie will start a discussion about physics and about the relationship between science and religion. If they're right, that could be great.

I have not read the boook, and I had not intended to see the movie; but I think now I will. Soon. And I'll let you know what I think. If you've already seen it, please leave us a comment so we'll know what you think about it.

Resources:
Framing Science, Will Angels & Demons Viewers be Talking Science and Religion?, 2009/5/16, http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2009/05/will_angels_demons_viewers_be.php
Framing Science, The Science Behind Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, 2009/5/16, http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2009/05/the_science_behind_dan_browns.php
Truth About Angels and Demons, 2009/5/16, http://www.truthaboutangelsanddemons.com/

Nanoscale Origami: A Box—With Lock & Key—Made Entirely of DNA

2009-05-08T01:10:00.000-05:00

In a masterful work of “DNA origami,” researchers have created a nanoscale DNA “box” which can be opened with DNA “keys”. One day, such structures could be filled with drugs, injected into the blood, and then unlocked when and where the drugs are required [New Scientist].

This amazing box and lid ae made entirely from a single strand of DNA which the researchers designed to automatically fold itself into the apppropriate form. It is held together by tiny snips of DNA used as staples, that automatically insert themselves into the proper positions. And it is locked by two additional DNA snips that fit themselves into place.

The result is a "box that measured 42 by 36 by 36 nanometers, and had a cavity big enough to hold enzymes or virus particles." Amazingly, it would require about 300 of these tiny boxes lined up side by side to equal the width of an average human hair.

This is the same kind of DNA that produced you and me and keeps our bodies running -- or at least idling -- and it's amazing stuff.

Resources:
Discover Magazine Online, 5/7/09, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/05/07/nanoscale-origami-a-box%e2%80%94with-lock-key%e2%80%94made-entirely-of-dna/

Dogma? No. Not in Science.

2009-05-07T01:00:00.001-05:00

There Are No Dogmas in Science

In looking over last night's post, I notice the word "dogma" in the quoted text. This is wrong. I quoted The Scientist correctly, but the author I quoted was mistaken. There are no dogmas in science.

According to my dictionary, a dogma is "A religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof," or "A doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative." Science recognizes no such nonsense. Science is all about evidence and testing.

Individual scientists are as human and as prone to bias as the rest of us, of course; but the "scientific method" of testing and retesting and retesting again by different researchers is designed to eliminate both bias and dogma. Ideas are always accepted tentatively, pending further evidence. Further evidence may validate a belief, or it may not.

The belief that "genetic materials do not mix at grafting junctions" has never been a dogma. It was a tentative belief, like everything else in science. This is evidenced by the fact that scientists are now accepting the new evidence. Again, the acceptance must be tentative.

It must be said again, however, that many principles have been tested so thoroughly by so many researchers over such a long time and a wide geographical area including so many cultures that any serious discrepances would almost certainly have been found before now. This is why we can have such confidence that certain principles are not likely to ever change very much in the future.

These principles in which we can be excedingly confident include Newton's laws of motion, for example, which are still so accurate we use them to explore the Solar System even a century after Einstein modified them a little.

Evolution by means of natural selection is another. It has stood up to every objection for over 150 years. Scientists will probably be arguing over its details for that much longer, at least; but the basic principle is as certain as it can be.

Both Newton's laws of motion and the fact that biological evolution is real -- just for two examples -- are so nearly certain it is almost inconceivable they could ever be disproved now. For practical purposes, we can consider these things as "proved true."

Still, they are NOT dogmas. In the face of sufficient evidence, they would be discarded. So far, nobody has ever found sufficient evidence (or hardly any evidence at all, for that matter) and it becomes even less likely with every day that passes.

Grafted Plants Exchange Genes. Possible Newly Found Means of Speciation.

2009-05-06T16:20:00.015-05:00

When two plants are grafted together, they share much more than water and minerals: They also swap genetic material, according to a study published in tomorrow's (May 1) issue of Science. These findings muddy the distinction between naturally-occurring gene transfer in plants and the human-mediated mechanisms we generally refer to as genetic engineering.

Ever since Soviet and Western scientists in the 1960s denounced Trofim Lysenko -- the infamous Stalinist agronomist who rejected Mendelian genetics and maintained that heredity can be changed by grafting and other non-genetic techniques -- the prevailing dogma has been that genetic materials do not mix at grafting junctions. But Ralph Bock and Sandra Stegemann of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany, weren't convinced.

In 2003, they showed that genes are transferred at a high frequency from chloroplasts to the nucleus within tobacco plants, suggesting that genetic material might be "leaky" and flow between cellular components. So, they wondered, might DNA flow between the cells of grafted plants as well?

They were right. In grafted plants, they found genes from one in the nuclei of the other. So far, the gene transfer has been found only among cells actually touching each other at the point of the graft. Still, a sprout from that point would presumably have genes from both plants and could easily be a new species that never existed before. In other words, Bock and Stegemann may have found a new method whereby speciation can take place very rapidly, though it will require additional studies to be certain.

In nature, many plants can graft without human intervention when roots or stems come together. This might be a way that even unrelated species can mix and shuffle their genes and maybe even produce new species containig partial genomes of both.

It has been known for some tgime that genetic material occasionally passes between unrelated types oof organisms, but it has been considered a very rare phenomenum. It even happens among animals sometimes, though we don't yet know how. These studies seem to demonstrate that it could be much more common that previously thought.

Experiments are ongoing to answer the many remaining questions.

Resources:
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55672/

Dancing Birds Respond to Music - Human Music, That Is - Our Music

2009-05-02T13:15:00.026-05:00

Snowball acts like he really enjoys dancing to the music. Singing, too. He dances and sings for 4 minutes and 28 seconds and it's worth every instant of your time to watch. My time, anyway. I can promise that much.

He is described as "a Medium Sulphur Crested Eleanora Cockatoo that dances to the Back Street Boys and other songs that he rates as having a 'very good beat.' He ... continues to make us laugh with his fancy footwork." I have little doubt. I laughed, too.

There areseveral entertaining videos of dancing birds on Youtube. Here's a female, the text says. I admit I don't know how to tell. Maybe it's the male's crest. That definitely appears different. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7E55CbcsQg

Maybe she's not as into it as the guys are. ;-)

Here's a guy named Chewey who puts his whole body into it. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=skie126&annotation_id=annotation_379215&feature=iv

Besides the cockatoos, there are dancing parrots, macaws, parakeets, and other birds aplenty. OK, so they're entertaining. So what else? Well, they teach us once again that evolution and biology are even more complex and fascinating than we thought, and that many animals are more like humans than many people want to believe.

At least some of these birds are dancing to human music, keeping pretty good time, and appear to be enjoying it. (They're all potentially talking birds. Maybe some of them can tell us why they dance, if we ask them politely.)

According to New Scientist, "Dancing parrots could help explain evolution of rhythm." The article reports and the video demonstrates that "parrots kept their dancing synchronised to human music, even when the rhythm changed." It had been believed that only humans could do so. Belief has been shot down by evidence once more.

It's an exciting time to live, when we can learn something about ourselves and other critters nearly every day. Often, by just watching and noticing. I love it!

Resources:

http://www.newscientist.com/articlevideo/dn17065/21787366001-dancing-parrots-could-help-explain-evolution-of-rhythm.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7IZmRnAo6s

Funny? Personally, I Think It's Child Abuse.

2009-05-01T22:05:00.007-05:00

This picture is circulating on the Internet this week. I have no idea where it originated, but I've seen it two places already today with captions about how not to catch the swine flu.

Honestly, I do have a sense of humor, and I love a good joke. But I have no sympathy for whoever took this disgusting picture instead of protecting the toddler's health by getting him -- or her? I dunno -- away from the animals.

What exactly could a toddler get by swapping slobbers with a pig? I won't pretend to know. Probably not "swine flue," which is believed not to be transmissible from swine to humans. (For the present, I'm skeptical about that. Let's see if people can get it that way or not as time goes on. After all, we didn't even know this particular strain of flu existed until a week ago.)

But flu of any kind is not the issue here. To me, the issue is child abuse. Harsh? I don't think so. Somebody please explain why I'm wrong to think adults ought to try to keep small children reasonably clean and sanitary.

One other thing. If your first impulse was to laugh when you saw the picture, I have to admit that I did too. But now that I've confessed my first impulse to laugh, I honestly think my second impulse expressed above is a more appropriate one. Remember something called germs?

I Just Learned Maybe I'm Not So Old After All

2009-05-01T09:11:00.010-05:00

Hey, I'm watching the news and I see that Justice Souter is retiring from the US Supreme Court. No surprise in itself, since he said during the recent presidental campaign that he "would be the first to retire" if Obama were elected. The surprise is that the commentater "commentated" -- as commentaters are wont to do -- that Souter "is not so old. ... He is only 69."

Well, I'm also "only 69," so why do I feel so old?

And isn't wisdom supposed to come with age? Then how did I get to be such a wise guy at such a young age? Well, I probably always was. But I'll never admit it.

An explanation may be in order here. Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court by the first President Bush, but soon disappointed many conservatives by his liberalism.

Soon after being sworn, he said, "The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right." More often than not, I believe he did "get those rulings right."

As to his comment during the presidental race that he "would be the first to retire" if Obama were elected. This might sound at first like an expression of disapproval for our new President. It is actually the opposite.

Federal Judges and Supreme Court Justices in the US are appointed for life and cannot easily be replaced unless they voluntarily retire. (It is possible for one to be impeached by Congress for serious cause, of course; but this is fairly rare.) For this reason, a Justice will occasionally retire early in order to be sure a President he or she approves gets to appoint his or her successor. This appears to be one reason for Justice Souter's decision. He is actually creating the new president an opportunity to appoint his successor, who could possibly affect the Supreme Court and the nation for several decades.

Another apparent reason is that Justice Souter has been reported to dislike life in the Capital Area of the US.

Best wishes in your future life, Justice Souter.

Virtual Street Band

2009-04-29T14:25:00.003-05:00

http://gizmodo.com/5231112

"... recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley's base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz's added some metal percussion to it."

"The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones

About all I can think of to add is that I like it. Maybe you will, too.

Resources:
http://gizmodo.com/5231112

Now if We Could Only Make Self-Correcting Blogs

2009-04-28T12:52:00.002-05:00

I'm making several corrections and changes to this blog today. Most of them are minor, but not all. I'm deleting at least two posts, for example.

One was never supposed to have been posted at all. It should have been saved as "Draft" so I could consider reworking it and posting later. Guess I pressed the wrong button. Sorry. Must have been having another "senior moment."

Another post referred to a video on Youtube which has been removed. I probably won't always delete damaged posts like this, but I am deleting this one. Without the video it would be so meaningless I would feel like it should be completely re-written, and I am choosing not to do that this time.

Just so you'll know.

Self Correction in Science

2009-04-26T19:01:00.003-05:00

Following a final report from a prominent South Korean university, Science formally retracted a paper today (Apr. 23) from Korean researcher Kim Tae-kook purportedly reporting a new technology to identify drug targets called magnetism-based interaction capture (MAGIC).

In February 2008, Kim was suspended from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he was a faculty member, after a preliminary report from the university investigating two of his studies concluded that "the two papers do not contain any scientific truth."

The gist of the article is that the Korean scientist, Kim Tae-kook, falsified some experimental data and lied about his scientific results and got caught. So why am I so excited about that? Doesn't that kind of thing happen all the time?

Actually, no. It doesn't. Scientists know they'll get caught if their work isn't flawless. And most of them realize they're likely to get caught pretty quickly. Not long after their death, for example.

One of the major ideas undergirding science is replicability. The idea is that anything one scientist does, a different scientist should be able to replicate. If it works for you, it should work for me.

This is one of the main reasons we can depend on science. Science not only corrects its own mistakes; it even exposes its own cheaters and frauds, too as happened here. Notice the fraud was found and reported by other scientists. This is why we can speak of science as being self correcting.

When a group of scientists does their research and reports their results, that is not the end of the matter. There are nearly always others waiting and ready to check what they've done. If it's been done well, it is replicated and so verified. But if anything's wrong, the truth will come out. Usually very quickly, as in this case.

Scientists are as human as everybody else, and just as prone to fraud or cheating. Or mistake. Or bias. But this system strongly discourages all of those things. People who know they are going to get caught if they cheat or lie -- or even make an honest mistake -- have very powerful motivations to be scrupulously honest and accurate.

As many people point out scornfully sometimes, scientists don't know everything. Of course they don't. That's not their job. The purpose of science is to learn what we don't know and report it so we all can know. Science is doing this amazingly well, and we can depend on to be right -- usually the first time -- because it is self correcting.

We'll never know everything. But we know far more this year than last year, and we can be confident that we'll keep on generating new knowledge every day as long as scientists continue their work.

Resources:
http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/blog.jsp?type=blog&o_url=blog/display/55661&id=55661
http://nobull.ws/scientific-method.html

How Evolved Are You?

2009-04-22T23:30:00.011-05:00

If you've read a few of my posts, I'm sure you noticed right away that I can be pretty casual with the English language. Like using sentences with no subject, for example. Or starting one with a preposition. Things like that. I'm more concerned with good communication than with formally correct grammar.

But some things I refuse to do. Like using the word "unique" with a modifier, for example. Seems like nearly every day I hear the phrase "very unique" or "more unique" or something very similar. It's wrong. And I notice because unique means "one of a kind." Something is either unique or not unique. There are no degrees of uniqueness. If two things are alike, they are not unique. They are not even a little bit unique. But if there's only one, then it's unique.

When speaking of biological evolution, people often use the word "evolved" in a similar way. Even people who should know better. The tendency is to think humans are "more evolved" than other animals, for example. I just heard a televsion naturalist say one kind of snake is more evolved than other snakes. It's not true, and he should find a better way to express himself in the future.

All life on earth is believed to have descended from one single microscopic organism that lived almost four billion years ago. This implies we've all been evolving the same length of time. Almost four billion years.

Not only humans and other animals, but also plants, fungi, bacteria, and every form of life on earth. Nothing is "more evolved" than anything else. Each species is different from all others -- that is, each species is unique -- because we evolved differently. Not more or less.

"Awwwright," I can almost hear someone ask, "Who cares?" Well, I care. It bothers me to hear it. But more importantly, there's enough mis-communication and mis-understanding about evolution already. Let's don't create more by speaking carelessly.

The Galaxy Song

2009-04-21T14:37:00.006-05:00

I love it!

Click the title above and watch the performance. It's much better than just reading the text here.

THE GALAXY SONG

Eric Idle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the "Milky Way."

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

References:
http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

Damn Atheists

2009-04-17T11:39:00.002-05:00

Thank God for Atheists

2009-04-15T18:10:00.006-05:00

"The re-awakening of atheism in America is going to make for some very interesting times. Leaders of the Christian Right have spent years trying to cast themselves as the voiceless victims in a secular society, but the scapegoating is over. (Want to talk marginalized? How many atheists have there ever been in Congress or the White House?)" That was Linda Staten of Kansas City, in an opinion piece in The Kansas City Star on Friday, Feb. 22, 2008.

She adds that "Nonbelievers (including atheists) know a lot about Christianity and Judaism, most having been raised in religious families. Believers, however, are somewhat less clued-in about atheists." OK, I admit she's generalizing; but it certainly tends to be true.

She tells us that "Atheists are well-behaved. Atheists seem to play well with others overall. They’re not in the news for getting caught doing things they tell others not to do. Most co-exist peacefully with believing family and friends. They pay taxes." Yup. Sure sounds like the ones I know. Well ... a few of us older ones don't make enough money any longer to pay taxes. But that's a different story.

She says we atheists "have a thing for the American Constitution, particularly the First Amendment that separates church and state." Right again, Linda. "So when people like Mike Huckabee announce they want to 'take this nation back for Christ' and make the Constitution fit the word of God, atheists worry, and feel that everyone else would be wise to worry along with them." She definitely got that one right!

But here's the problem. Atheists are defined only by their lack of belief in any god, and a lack of belief is not something most people are likely to get passionate about. Yes, some can be very passionate. Even evangelistic. But most feel they have little reason to organize or promote anything. As a result, Staten says, "Atheists are lousy fundraisers. ... Televangelists raise almost $100 billion a year."

Linda Staten of Kansas City is a professional writer and former college instructor of ethics and comparative religion. To reach Midwest Voices columnists, write to the author c/o Editorial Page, The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO

Nuclear Arms Reduction

2009-04-13T09:54:00.003-05:00

What can I say, except that I'm for it? What else can any rational being say? If you want your children and grandchildren to keep on living (as I do) then you must be for it. President Obama pledged a few days ago -- as have others before him -- to work toward nuclear arms reduction. Personally, I think this man's serious about it.

Our President is not naive about this matter. He admitted the task will not be easy and that completing it might take longer than his own administration. He also promised that the United Sates is NOT going to do it unilaterally. But -- one way or another -- it must be done.

The United States and Russia each have enough nuclear weapons left over from the "Cold War" to wipe out human life several times over. And while they're wiping out human life, guess how many other species will get destroyed accidentally.

The huge number of nuclear weapons in the U.S., Russia, and a few other countries MUST be reduced and eventually eliminated. The world simply cannot afford the danger of all out nuclear war. Humanity would not survive it.

Personally, I want my descendants and yours to "live long and prosper" far into the future. This means -- among other things -- drastically reducing the number of nuclear weapons on earth and eventually eliminating them altogether.

Fingerprints of Time

2009-04-07T11:45:00.001-05:00

Isaac Asimov thought of himself a "professional explainer;" and, even without Youtube and the Internet, I always thought he undoubtedly must be the world's greatest. Since Asimov's death in 1992, it seems clear that his mantle has fallen on Richard Dawkins.

I can only wish I had that kind of talent, knowledge, and ability to explain simply and interestingly. And I do.

It's a big, Big, BIG Universe We Live In

2008-01-01T12:25:00.001-06:00

78,000,000,000 light years across the known universe. That's almost 600 billion trillion miles. Way to many for us to imagine without some help. And it's just the part we know of. How much more is out there, too far away for our instruments to even detect?

Some things are just funny

2007-12-27T07:19:00.000-06:00

I couldn't help myself. I had to post it.

Black and White

2007-12-11T20:20:00.000-06:00

"...belief became an Us vs. Them, Saved vs. Unsaved, God vs. Satan, No sin vs. Sin, Repentance vs. Unrepentance, Righteousness vs. Evil, Heaven vs. Hell story."

That's from my friend, Rebecca Shannon, over at Gray Matter. Notice that she's talking about the "black and white" things with no gray areas, and placing special emphasis on religion These are the things that divide people into groups of "Us" and "Them". She makes this even clearer by adding, "Until my born-again days, the above Us vs. Them scenario really never raised its ugly head, at least, in my way of remembering."

Click on over to Gray Matter and read her essay, posted Tuesday, December 04, 2007. Then come back and read the rest of this one. You'll be glad you did. Rebecca tends to be less dogmatic than I am. I sincerely try not to be dogmatic. Sometimes it just seems to ooze out of my fingers. ;-). But she's as passionate and certainly more focused than I.Don't forget to bookmark her blog so you can go there often.

OK. Now that you're back from Gray Matter, get a glass of water, have a seat, and let's think a little bit together.

On Rebecca's other blog, she writes, in a post titled Can Religion and Peace Co-exist?, "I don’t think removing religion is the answer. It won’t bring a secular utopia, in my opinion. I don’t think there is any way peace, without or with religion, can co-exist until we understand why it is, that no matter what we believe, we for the most part classify ourselves as us vs. them human beings. The moment I was “saved” I was aware, I was going to heaven, the unsaved were not. Immediately, I became an “us” and my world changed. But, let’s say, that I never became a Christian, or for that matter, ever gravitated towards any kind of religion and or belief in God(s) or other supernatural entities or possibilities. Would that mean I’d not be inclined to be part of the us vs. them mentality?"

Rebecca refers to herself now as an "agnostic atheist;" I am definitely an atheist. So neither of us any longer believes in any god or gods. Still, I agree with her conclusion that "removing religion is [not] the answer." At least, not the whole answer. Obviously, there is no possible way that anybody could remove all religion immediately and turn everybody into instant atheists. But would we want to, even if it were possible?

It seems clear to me that "Us v Them" is in our genes.All down through human history -- and undoubtedly prehistory -- this was a survival factor for individuals. In some areas, it still is. It keeps people from wandering into the territory of a rival tribe where they are likely to get killed.Even into the middle of the 20th century, natives in parts of New Guinea who went into a neighboring tribe's territory were unlikely to return home alive. The same is probably still true in parts of Africa and South America. Maybe some other places. Even in modern European and North American cities, it's true for members of some of the gangs.

On a larger scale, of course, this tendency gets a lot of people killed. But at the individual level, where we store our genes before passing some of them on to the next generation, a person with Us v Them genes would seem to be more likely to stay at home and live. A person without them (especially in our past) is/was comparatively more likely to be killed before passing their genes to the next generation. So most of us, if not all, now have Us v Them genes. (Just to be very clear, I am speculating here. I don't know of any experimental evidence.)

A wise man once noted that "With or without religion, good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do really bad things requires religion." I think theres a lot of truth in that. September 11, 2001 would have been an ordinary day, if a group of men didn't believe they had a ticket to heaven and a contract for more free super-sex there than they could possibly handle. The Crusades would never have happened if the Pope hadn't lied in a similar way to European men. Just for two examples.

Neither would Rebecca and I and many other people have had to suffer such terrible trauma by realizing our religion was nothing but a cruel fairy tale. (I cried for a big part of ten years.)

On another forum one time, somebody once asked a similar question: "Would the world be better off or worse off if every religious person suddenly became an atheist tomorrow?" After considerable discussion, the consensus was that it would lead to a huge crime wave, loss of many jobs, suicides, and terrible chaos worldwide; because a change that massive requires time for adjustment.

However, if everybody on earth slowly became atheists over the next 50 to 100 years, we agreed the world should be a much better place.I don't think it would bring complete world peace. We'd still divide into Us v Them in many ways. I just think it would be a lot easier to teach most people to think rationally. In addition, most things that divide us don't do it as severely as religion does.

Do you know there is an organization for people who have a gap between their upper front teeth? I used to know a member. The rest of Us are the Them. But they're not killing or shunning us, as sometimes happens with religion. In fact, she was really friendly. ;-)

The Bumbling Huckabee Bumblebee

2007-12-05T21:57:00.000-06:00

Republican Presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recently
likened his campaign to "the fat bumblebee whose ability to fly has baffled generations of scientists."

"The bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, goes ahead and flies anyway and makes honey and pollinates the other plants," Huckabee said. "In many ways our campaign is somewhat like this. Conventional wisdom says that you cannot run a campaign with the amount of money that we've had up to date. You can't do it without the staff, the consultants, the budget — all those things that are considered absolutely critical. But we were unaware of those things so we continued to go on and have seen ourselves grow."

Huckabee's campaign has raised only $2.3 million total and has only $650,000 cash on hand. Mitt Romney has raised $62.8 million and has $9.2 million cash on hand. Other Republican candidates for President have raised from about $2 million dollars to as much as $47 million, making Romney by far the highest so far and Huckabee the seventh of the eight candidates for which CNN shows figures at http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/candidates/.

Yet Huckabee's popularity is increasing rapidly, while most of the front runners are either losing popularity slowly or barely holding their ground. So I understand his comments about the bumblebee. They made a valid and understandable point. But I have to wonder if he or any other candidate realizes they were not literally true.

I will not often get into politics here, and I'm not suggesting that you should or should not vote for Mr. Huckabee. This is a relatively small point; but I don't think I'm being too picky, either. I'm only suggesting that our national leaders should have better science educations in this age of science. So should we all, for that matter.

Sometime during the early twentieth century, somebody came up with this piece of fiction. Nobody seems to know for sure where it originated, but the claim was that "according to the laws of physics, a bumblee cannot fly." It was said the bee's wings were too small and did not beat fast enough to provide the necessary lift. However, the bee didn't know this; so it kept flying anyway.

It seems obvious this must have originated at least partly as a joke, but people have been telling it as fact ever since. I must have heard it a million billion times already. (Bill, I've told you at least a trillion times not to exaggerate.)

Well, anyway, lets get the obvious point out of the way first. If bumblebee flight actually violated the laws of nature, then a bumblebee would never get off the ground. It would never be able to fly, no matter what it knew or didn't know.

Equally to the point, when this myth got started, insect flight in general was not well understood. Not only the bumblebee, but also many other insects seemed to have wings too small and too slow to fly. But scientists are not so dumb as to watch something happening over and over again and still say it violates the laws of physics. All it ever violated was their understanding.

Science is about finding things we don't understand and learning how they work. With wind tunnels and high-speed videos, they learned several decades ago exactly how a bumblebee can fly.

Any early calculations were probably based on up-and-down movement only, but insect wings seldom if ever move just up and down. They turn and twist and flex and move forward and backward as well as up and down. This complex movement causes something called a dynamic stall, which creates a vortex above each wing, producing several times as much lift.

It's really too bad we don't have any scientists running for president. They can make mistakes, too; nobody's perfect; but they're trained to check their facts carefully and skeptically and verify everything they can. The vast majority of people just can't seem to understand the need for that, and it's more important than ever today, when a wrong decision by a President can wipe out humanity.

My Disastrous Thanksgiving Recipe

2007-11-30T16:22:00.000-06:00

No, it's not really my recipe. It's Randy Cassingham's. He wrote the story, including the headline. You'll have to click the link to see what it's all about, but it's worth the tiny effort.

Randy is one of the real, long-time Internet entrepreneurs who didn't go out of business with the "dot com crash" a few years ago. He's been publishing good stuff on the Internet for over ten years now, and I've been reading it almost as long.

Get a free subscription to his weekly email newsletter This Is True. I promise, you'll be watching your inbox for it every week at least three days before it's due. It's that good.

I've never met Randy; and I won't make any money for this. I'm just doing you a favor by telling you.

Where's the evidence?

2007-11-28T14:45:00.001-06:00

She has it all figured out. A reader from the UK sent this tongue-in-cheek letter to New Scientist, which published it recently:

I can't understand all those naive professors havering over whether the universe has a purpose when it is all so obvious. The sole goal and culmination of the big bang, inflation, stellar formation and everything else is the creation of a life-support system for me -- the apogee and final purpose of creation and evolution. When I die it will all cease to exist.

It can be no coincidence that wherever I stand is astride the centre of the surface of the world. Nor can it be mere happenstance that the whole of the visible universe is centred exactly between my eyeballs.

It reminds me of being a small child and noticing that the sun disappears and it gets dark every time I closed my eyes. Even the electric lights in the house went dark. I don't remember exactly when I began to wonder why I had this remarkable power.

It's OK to joke about things like this, and it's understandable that a small child might not understand the truth. What's scary is for adult human beings to really believe in weird stuff. And it's obvious that most do.

There are different versions, of course; but most people seriously claim to believe in an invisible, all-powerful, all-wise, loving, being who created the entire universe by the power of his word. (Yeah, it's usually considered male.) He just said something like "Universe, Be." And it was.

This invisible being is considered to be "everywhere," which means it's at least as large as the universe. It has no parents and no creator, no beginning and no end, because it always existed and will never die. It is infinitely old and will become infinitely older.

And it gets even weirder.

This being wanted some companionship, so it put people on earth. But it doesn't let us see it or hear it talk.

It will occasionally save one or two people alive from an airplane crash or car wreck or other catastrophe where everybody else dies. Or, at least, it usually gets the credit for saving them. More likely, it's some random fluke of chance that does it. Or sometimes maybe even preparation, thinking, and taking action.

There's lots more really strange stuff many people believe about this magic guy in the sky, but I don't want to get tedious about it. Just never fail to question your own beliefs and ask yourself if they really make sense. Is it reasonable to think this being really exists? Where's the evidence?

Don't Tell Me We Don't Have Any Heroes!

2007-11-22T22:27:00.000-06:00

"Tom Foust saw the train lights in the distance and knew it was time to stop arguing with the elderly driver, whose white 2006 Lexus was stuck on railroad tracks ... His two friends were pounding on the car windows, yelling for her to get out, when Foust, 17, unclipped the 83-year-old woman's seat belt, grabbed her under each arm, dragged her 10 feet away and then shielded her body with his own as he waited for the impact."

From the Chicago Tribune Web Edition, September 10, 2007

By Lisa Black | Tribune staff reporter

Teen yanks driver from car just before train hits

This report is a couple of months late. Should have been posted in September. But, unfortunately, I wasn't blogging here then. I intended to provide the Chicago Tribune link to the original story, but it's been taken down. The saying is that there's nothing staler than day old news, but news of heroic men or women never gets old for me.

There were reports in a lot of papers at the time, of course.

Despite the question I hear from time to time -- "Where have all the heroes gone?" -- we have many heroes in our midst. Unfortunately, neither we nor they know who they are until something happens to demonstrate their heroism. Until then, they usually tend to be ordinary people much like the rest of us. Even more unfortunately, they often wind up dead. Here's a story of three who lived and should be remembered. They are friends, Tom Foust, 17, Tyler Brown, 16, and Zach Demertzis, 15.

High School senior Tom Foust works part time as a lifeguard and swim instructor; but this time he saved a life on a set of railroad tracks, with trains barreling toward him from both directions. He opened an elderly woman's car door, unbuckled her seat belt, and carried her to safety just seconds before the first locomotive demolished her car.

The woman had become confused, and turned onto a railroad track, thinking it was a street. "She just started driving on the tracks," Foust said. "The wheels were spinning and throwing up gravel." The three young friends all saw it happen and took action, as others sat in the safety and comfort of their own cars and blew their horns to confuse the poor woman even more. (Note: A lot of horns blowing at the same time don't help a confused person think more clearly. Sometimes real action is needed.)

The three young men realized trains were coming from both directions on parallel tracks, and risked their own lives to save the woman.

As the other two friends pounded on the rolled-up window of the locked passenger door, urging her to get out of her car, she was apparently unaware of the danger. She asked them, "Can you help me move my car?" When she refused to get out, Foust grabbed the woman through the open driver's door and pulled her from the car, mere seconds before the first train hit. He said the driver "wouldn't move, so I just reached over, unclipped her seat belt, and pulled her out."

He looked back and saw the crash from just 10 feet away, while shielding her body with his own to protect her from the flying glass and other debris. Later, he said it was "like a scene in a movie."

The southbound train hit the car at about 80 mph (128 kph), smashing it onto the adjacent tracks, where it was hit again by the northbound train. Debris and glass flew to litter the nearby streets; but nobody was hurt, other than a small cut suffered by one of the young men.

I like it when everybody gets out alive, including the heroes. Especially the heroes, in fact.

Foust is a senior at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, Il., a few miles north of Chicago. "The image that keeps replaying in my mind is the train hitting the car with such force," he said. "It went through my mind this could be it. I could be about to die."

Demertzis said, "It seemed like slow-motion to me. The only time you would see this is like in a driver's-ed video."

The woman's name was not reported. Foust said she seemed to be dazed. After the double crash, she asked, "Can I drive my car home now?"

Thomas S. Foust, the young hero's father said, "I'm just counting our blessings. He did the right thing, and it had a good ending." Yes, he did and it did, Mr. Foust. Your son is a very brave young man.

Glenview Village President Kerry Cummings praised the boys. "It was just a tremendously heroic act to save this woman's life," she said. The three were to be honored at the next meeting of their school board.

Over and over, I hear people lament that we have no more heroes. Where have all the heroes gone? Well, they're all around us. We just need to open our eyes and watch for them. I hope to point out more of them here from time to time.

Foust returned to the site later to salvage a piece of muffler as a souvenir.

Don't they Just Make You Proud You're an Infidel?

2007-11-22T02:56:00.000-06:00

Here's a crazy old lady preacher who ought to stop and get her breath before she passes out.

Wait! She really doesn't look that old. It's hard to be sure with the blurry video, but I'll retract that word. Just in case. So! Let's start over.

Here's a crazy lady preacher of undetermined age, who really looks too young to be that old. I think she ought to stop and get her breath before she passes out.

I saw her identified by name on another site, but I'm not sure; so I won't mention it here. But ... ... Did she really recommend a Holy Ghost enema? And call her followers butt cancers? Surely sounded like that to me.

This is an obviously talented kid who's going to make it big some day.

He's a better actor than most of the big money makers in Hollywood. I have no idea who this boy is, but his style reminds me of a very specific preacher we called Brother Doyle when I was growing up.

More thoughts I just now remembered

Sis. Doyle was in the hospital once to have another kid. I think they had about eight or ten already, but it was so long ago I don't remember exactly. What I do remember is Bro. Doyle talking about it later.

Sis. Doyle's doctor wanted to remove her uterus. Bro. Doyle wanted to know why. The doctor said he needed to do it to stop her from having any more kids. (Remember, this was a long time ago.) Bro. Doyle said he told the doctor he could remove Sis. Doyle's uterus any time there was any other reason to do so. But never to stop her from having kids. He said, "I told that doctor that she'll stop having kids when God wants her to stop having kids."

I sure hope my friend, Rebecca Shannon, over at Eve Garden God doesn't read this and bust an artery. I'd never forgive myself. Please don't read it, Rebecca.

Once upon a time

2007-11-21T20:41:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, ... In America, this is a clue that you are about to hear a fairy tale or story. I don't know if this applies everywhere or not, so I'm just alerting you. OK?

All right, then ...

Once upon a time, there was a handsome young man (because young men in fairy tales are always handsome).

This particular handsome young man, who happened to be named John, was given a parrot named Paul, as a gift. Unfortunately, Paul had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Ohhh, his speech was terrible! Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious, and laced with profanity.

John tried desperately to change the bird's attitude by consistently being extra kind to him, saying only polite words in his presence, playing soft music, and doing anything else he could think of to try to "clean up" Paul's vocabulary. Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. Paul yelled back. John grabbed the bird and shook him. Paul just got angrier and even ruder. In desperation, John threw the bird into the freezer.

For a few minutes Paul squawked and kicked and screamed. He flapped his wings and cursed and yelled. He insulted and threatened John. Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he'd hurt his parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

Paul calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said "I believe I may have offended you with my rude language. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior, beginning right now."

John was stunned at the change in the bird's attitude. As he was about to ask Paul what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, "May I ask what the turkey did?"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYBODY!

OK. Yes, I realize it's not Thanksgiving everywhere. Actually, this is a uniquely American holiday.

But have some roast turkey, dressing with lots of giblet gravy, cranberry sauce on the side, and ice tea to drink, if you have the opportunity. Then you'll understand why we Americans love the day so much.

Lakshmi Makes First Post-Op Appearance

2007-11-16T12:31:00.001-06:00

Posted Nov 13, 07 2:58 PM CST (newser) –

"Nearly a week after the marathon surgery to remove her two extra arms and (two extra) legs, 2-year-old Lakshmi Tatma made her first public appearance today, the AP reports."

The report goes on to say "the girl appeared healthy and alert" and that she "is coping very well" and "eating solid food again."

Yes, this is the same little girl I reported on last Saturday, November 10, who had just had her "parasitic twin" removed. Remember? She had almost another whole body attached to her pelvic area, but the extra body had no head or brain. Her doctors said there was a 25% chance she would die during the operation, but that she would probably not live past adolescence without it. She survived the 27-hour ordeal and is doing well six days later when this report was posted. Now she has an opportunity to live an almost normal life.

I apologize for not being able to find a more current news report. This one is three days old, but there weren't many newer ones to be found. Mainstream news seems to have an even shorter attention span than the public it serves.

Looking at the "before" picture (top) and the "after" picture (bottom), even with the blankets, it appears to me that modern medicine and surgery did a better job than whatever god supposedly designed and made her.

What do you think? Tell me. Please.

Santas warned 'ho ho ho' offensive to women

2007-11-16T12:06:00.000-06:00

"SYDNEY (AFP) - Santas in Australia's largest city have been told not to use Father Christmas's traditional "ho ho ho" greeting because it may be offensive to women, it was reported Thursday.

"Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say "ha ha ha" instead, the Daily Telegraph reported."

How silly can "political correctness" get? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

I Thought I Knew It All

2007-11-15T17:48:00.000-06:00

I have to admit this. There was a time when I thought I knew it all. Everything there was to know. Really!

But I got over it.

Sometime in first grade, I came home from school and told Mom I wasn't going back any more, "because I know everything already." Unfortunately, she disagreed. So I went back the next day and learned something else.

Since then, I've been discovering more all the time that I didn't know before. And realizing more and more how incredibly much there still is to learn. What's equally important, I've learned what a wonderful joy it is to keep learning.

I don't expect to ever learn it all, but I'm trying. And I expect to keep trying as long as I live.

It's also a joy to teach, and that's one of the things that makes learning so much fun. Sharing your new information and understanding with others.

I sincerely hope you can learn a little bit occasionally from these posts, and enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them for you. Please let me have your comments to tell me what you think.

An Arm and a Leg, God? Verily That Doth Seem Like an Awfully High Price.

2007-11-12T21:44:00.000-06:00

The Lost Verses of Genesis: Adam's Bad Deal

[This passage should be inserted between Genesis 2:20 and Genesis 2:21]

And Adam sat beneath a tall tree in the garden one day and mourned, but he knew not for what he was mourning; and he would neither eat nor drink; for he was lonely and felt sorry for himself. So, when God saw him that he was in a terrible depression, God asked him, "What troubleth thee, Adam?" And Adam replied, "Thou hast given me the gifts of speech and understanding of speech, so that I may talk to Thee and understand thy speech. But when thou hast gone to thine own abode, I have nobody with whom to discuss the matters of the day. For the beasts which thou hast created, to them thou hast given no power of speech."

And God had a brilliant idea, for He knew that He had created the beasts of the field in pairs, the male and the female. And He had seen that it was good. But for Adam, He had created no female. "Oh, well," The Lord said, "I'll take care of this little detail now that I've thought of it."

So God said to Adam, "I will make thee a companion who will be suitable for thee in ways thou canst not even yet imagine. She will also talk to thee, for she shall be a woman; and I will make her for thee from thine own flesh and bone."

And God said, "This woman will be beautiful to thine eyes and exciting to thy touch. Her smile will delight thy heart, her voice will be as music to thine ears. Thou shalt love her exceedingly, and she will love thee as much, and thou shalt be as God to her. She will also gather food for thee and cook it for thee and serve it to thee whenever thou art hungry. When thou discoverest clothing, she will wash it for thee to keep it clean.

"She will agree with virtually everything thou sayest, and she will not nag thee. But on rare occasions when thou and thy woman disagree about something, she will always be the first to admit she was wrong and apologize to thee and offer thee the pleasures that she alone canst provide for thee. And she will praise thee to thy face and behind thy back, and before me and before all the beasts of the earth! Later, she will praise thee before thine offspring also.

"Thy woman which I will make for thee will bear thy children for thee and never ask thee to get up in the middle of the night to take care of them. She will NEVER have a headache and will freely give thee love and passion whenever thou desirest it.

"And, since thou hast never yet experienced such love and passion, I can only tell thee that it will be pleasure for thee beyond thy wildest dreams. Pleasure thou canst not even yet consider, for it will be too great for thy mind to imagine until thou hast experienced it. And she will make thee exceeding happy; and thou wilt make her happy in turn. And thy pleasure with thy woman and her pleasure with thee will be great in the Garden."

Adam asked God, "What will a woman like this cost me?"

God replied, "An arm and a leg."

Then Adam replied, "Verily, That is a high price to pay. What can I get for a rib?"

Yes, this joke is a lot older than the Internet; but I love it! I hope you do, too. I did promise you some humor. Remember? There'll be more from time to time, and I promise it won't all be about women. I'm an equal opportunity insulter.

Global Warming: It's Already Here and It's Gonna Get a Lot Worse. Unless We Stop It!

2007-11-11T20:22:00.000-06:00

Well over half a century ago, one of my school teachers discussed how we were going to warm up the earth a little by burning things and putting smoke in the air. She wasn't sure whether the warming had actually started or not; but she said it was coming. She also didn't seem to realize it might be a bad thing; it was just something we ought to know.

I didn't understand it at that time, either; but I'm a moderately well informed adult now; and I have information that wasn't available then. I can see the pictures of glaciers melting nearly all over the globe, after having survived for tens and hundreds of thousands of years. And even longer. I read the reports of certain kinds of birds flying south later than before and flying north earlier than before (in the northern hemisphere), because of longer periods of warm weather. And some of them are in trouble because their prey species don't live on the new schedule.

I understand that it must mean something when a variety of wild plants and animals are gradually moving north from the lands they've lived in for very long periods of time. I understand that it must also mean something unusual when the arctic ice pack is disappearing rapidly and a chunk of Antarctic ice as big as a medium-sized state literally breaks off and floats on the ocean.

When 2,000 scientists from 154 countries agree on essentially these things and add that worldwide temperatures in 11 out of the past 12 years were the hottest ever recorded, it seems like it might be time to see if we can do something to prevent the changes from becoming catastrophic.

These same scientists also agreed there is at least a 90 percent probability that these changing conditions are man-made, but I don't see that as the point. The results for our children and grandchildren (and even for many people reading this) will be the same whether we caused the warming or whether some unknown natural process did it. Either way, it will not be good.

Detailed results are difficult to predict with any certainty, but general principles are fairly sure. Here are just a few:

Warming will not be uniform, and some places may even become cooler rather than warmer.
Polar areas will warm faster than places nearer the equator, so the ice floating near the north pole and in the Greenland ice cap will be gone within another fifty years at most. Maybe half that time. (This is already happening!)
As Greenlandic ice melts, it will raise sea level by about 20 feet (6-7 meters). This will result in the loss of coastal areas of Florida, New York City, San Francisco, and the gulf states, as well as many other low-lying areas all around the earth.
Many millions of people will be displaced from the flooded coastal areas. After all, the world's most populous areas are generally near the oceans.
Loss of the arctic floating ice will not affect sea level, but it will almost certainly result in the extinction of polar bears and other species. (This may already be happening!)
Tropical diseases and parasites will spread over a much larger part of the world. This will not only affect humans directly, but will also result in loss of wild animals and plants, and probably trees, livestock, and agricultural crops. (To some extent, this may already be happening!)
Ocean currents will be disturbed, resulting in many unexpected and largely unpredictable climate changes both on water and on land. (This may already be happening!)
Changing climate will mean that some places will get more rain than ever before with probable flooding, while other parts of the world will become desert for the first time in history. (This may already be happening!)
People will starve, as agriculture is disrupted by the climate changes.
Undoubtedly, there'll be wars over fresh water, land, and other resources. (It's not too late for us to wipe ourselves out, by any means. There are almost as many nuclear and thermonuclear weapons in the world now as there ever were during the Cold War, and some of the governments controlling them are a lot less stable.)

There are probably thousands of additional predictions that can be (and have been) made, but these are just a few to think about. We'll discuss this and similar matters further before long.

By the way, don't forget the Antarctic ice I mentioned earlier. If a significant amount of that melts, it'll raise sea level by another 20 feet or so (6-7 meters). That'll be a total of 40 feet (13 meters), and it'll displace around a billion people from New York to Bangladesh and scores of smaller island countries. And it's already begun.

This is NOT guesses and wild ideas. Much of it is happening right now and getting very rapidly worse. We'll talk more about it soon, and discuss what must happen to stop it in its tracks. There are many things we can do that will help some, but only one thing can prevent worldwide devastation. And it's going to be a lot more difficult than driving our cars less and turning the thermostat down. We will discuss it here very soon.

Don't go away. We'll have some humor and human interest from time to time, too. ;-)

Listen to the Scientists Themselves Talk About Evolution

2007-11-10T15:21:00.000-06:00

Evolution: Is it only a theory? What does that even mean? What does the word "theory" mean to a scientist?

People keep telling me there's a huge controversy among biologists about whether evolution is real or not. Is this true? Do scientists really spend their time arguing about whether evolution really happens or not? Is creationism just as likely as evolution?

Don't take my word for it. Don't take your pastor's word for it. Don't believe anybody who tells you that scientists don't believe in evolution any more. Listen to the scientists themselves and hear how they answer these questions and more.

Now point your browser over here and find 23 more videos by these and other scientists. (Maybe more by the time you read this.)

Does this honestly look like intelligent design to you? No? Me neither.

2007-11-10T14:31:00.000-06:00

Before I even start, please understand that it's not my intention to insult or make fun of the beautiful little girl with four arms and four legs. Lakshmi Tatma was born two years ago in the northern state of Bihar, India; and I have the deepest compassion for her and her family. My only purpose here is to question how well the human body and our reproductive processes were "designed."

She's been in the world news for a few days already, so this story comes from many sources. Now she's had the surgery to repair her defective body.

In her mother's womb, she was one member of a pair of conjoined twins (sometimes known as Siamese twins). They were joined at the pelvis, but her twin stopped developing before birth. So Lakshmi was born with a useless, partial body attached to her own. A partially developed conjoined twin like this is referred to as a "parasitic twin." Lakshmi retained the arms, legs, kidneys, stomach, chest cavity, and some nerves from her undeveloped twin, but no head or brain from her.

(This full body CT scan from before her surgery was provided by the Sparsh Hospital.)

36 doctors in a range of specialties from pediatrics to plastic surgery were involved in the 27-hour operation Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. They removed her extra limbs and other body parts, transplanted a kidney from the twin, and reconstructed her pelvic area. On Friday, 48 hours after the massive surgery, she regained consciousness, wiggled her toes, and smiled at her parents.

At last word, she was still in intensive care; but it looks as if she's going to be OK. Dr. Mamatha Patil, spokeswoman for the Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore, said she was "doing well."

She is not expected to require any more surgery, except possibly for clubbed feet, to help her to walk.

Lakshmi has been revered by some in her village, who believe she is a reincarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess for whom she was named. Such a belief is apparently not unusual in the area where she lives. But her parents feared for her safety and had to keep her in hiding after a circus tried to buy her to be an act in their show. Her father told reporters he was looking forward to seeing her with "a normal body."

The Sparsh Hospital Foundation paid $625,000 for the surgery.

In case there's any doubt, it's my very considered opinion that a tragedy like a seriously deformed human being is definitely NOT an indication of an intelligent designer; and anybody who claims otherwise is spouting total nonsense.