Here's a shout out to my friend and local St. Louis artist, Amy Van Donsel, who painted the cover illustration for the current issue of Molecular Cell.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Sci-art
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Sticks and stones...
Bah humbug.
I thought Jerry Coyne's contest to pick the best name for we fuzzy-wuzzy fence-sitters yielded up some good entries. I thought "Jesuits" was a clever swipe, but it was disqualified for not being legitimately original. As for "faitheists"... meh.
"Placatheists" was better.
Of course, it's slightly embarrassing that it's come to this. It all started with the highly unwise adoption of the term "New Atheists" by we Placatheists. Unwise for two reasons:
1) There is nothing remotely "New" about the opinions of Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and company. They are in good historical company in terms of their muscular criticism of faith and superstition.
2) I believe* the modifier "New" was originally adopted by anti-evolution proponents, with the intent of insinuating that the current batch of atheist activists were some kind of brand new and potentially cultural anomaly. A childish if potentially dangerous fad to be reponded to with a fatherly wave of the finger and a cautionary lecture.
3) (Three! there are three reasons, read on...) Given that the label "New Atheists" is one that most prominent "New Atheists" have objected to, it also bears a resemblance to the term "Puritan" applied maliciously to Protestants. Alright, that's a stretch...
Anyway, "What's in a name?" eh? A little too much brouhaha and not a lot of sweetness these days. In fact, frankly, I think it's better just to take it all the way and rename the accommodationists as the People's Front of Judea, and the New Atheists as the Judean People's Front. Or maybe it would be more appropriate vice versa?
Trouble is, although Coyne is clearly sending up this nonsense, irony tends to have a short half-life on the internet, where it quickly and inevitably decomposes back to its stable and very literal progenitor. It won't be long before "New Atheists" and "Faitheists" are the registered factions in a conflict that is arguably equal to, if not greater in absurdity than most religious fisticuffs of the past.
So it goes.
"With our humble apologies, passengers please be informed that the scheduled arrival of The Age of Reason has been further delayed due to the blustery and turbulent gusts of hot air attributable to the intransigent nature of the Human Condition. Please come to customer services for your free food and accommodation vouchers. Once again, we apologise for the inconvenience."
* wrongly, it turns out. It was The People's Front of Judea what done it, afterall. Apparently "New Atheist" was, according to the Hitchhiker's Guide, originally coined by one of our woolly-brained brethren, Gary Wolf, writing in Wired magazine.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Master of angels and algebra...
All things are linkified...
I've enjoyed reading the posts over at The Renaissance Mathematicus lately. The most recent being a brief article on the more conventional side of the notorious magician, John Dee.
[image commandeered from http://sigilhouse.net/]
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
You got no proof, mate!
News from Linkin' Park...
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has previously posted this excellent response to the creationist request for a mere slice of solid proof of evolution.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Comment: Ask Podblack: What Does Supernatural Mean?
Comment on Ask Podblack: What Does Supernatural Mean? over on the Podblack Cat blog. (edited for posting, here)
“Supernatural” is really a redundant term, because anything that manifests itself in our perceived reality is, by virtue of being experienced, a part of the natural order. If we discovered a genuine and fully bona fide vampire somewhere in the future, its existence would simply lead to a reassessment of the natural order, and that vampire would be realised as being a natural element within that order. It would not be “supernatural” but merely a piece of tangible evidence suggesting that we need to rethink certain conclusions that we’ve drawn about our reality.
A common error by non-scientific skeptics is to assume that something is only “real” or “natural” if it can be subjected to empirical investigation. Although this is hypothetically correct, it is often nonsense in practice. The actual extent of the natural world that is currently amenable to our current empirical methods is limited and only a portion is ever likely to be revealed, regardless of how sophisticated we become.
This caveat is compounded by the fact that the manner of “supernatural” hypotheses tend to render them almost impossible to falsify. How do you determine the non-existence of a hypothetically conscious agent like a God or a ghost? i.e. and agent that can ostensibly choose not to be observed? How does one test for the existence or non-existence of Descarte’s Demon or Edwin A. Abbott's "Sphere"? We simply can't without a fairly profound paradigm shift in how we do science.
The correct response towards such claims, then, is to simply say there is insufficient evidence to warrant our accommodation of them, and that there currently seems to be little practical benefit in pursuing them further. Anything else overstates the skeptics case and leaves materialism vulnerable to attack as being dogmatic and prone to similarly unsubstantiated claims, when it is neither.
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