All posts by Mike

'Culture'

Kennedy

Goddammit, Wired. Can’t you even try to respond to the whackjob conspiracy theory nonsense about the Kennedy Assassination? How about pointing out that the so-called “Magic Bullet” only takes a wacky trajectory when you have Connally sitting in the wrong place? When he’s positioned correctly, the bullet follows a straight line.

For a magazine like Wired to give serious credence to Kennedy conspiracy garbage is insane. Everything the conspiracy theorists say is wrong. All the evidence is consistent with a single shooter from the Book Depository.

Jesus.

I used to buy conspiracy theories. But then I learned how to research issues and think critically. Then I learned how to reject unsubstantiated garbage. The I learned that the basic principle operating our government is not conspiracy but gross ineptitude.

The basic thought process behind conspiracy theories is this:

“I don’t understand some aspect of [insert event here] because I haven’t bothered to do any research into firearms, ballistics, chemistry, structural engineering or physiology. I can therefore cram in whatever unproven nonsense I want even if it contravenes all evidence, common sense and physical law.”

If only we could turn bullshit into energy — our global warming problems would be over.

Science and Edumacation

I’d Still Prefer Him to the Wolfman

Cool.

This was a bug you couldn’t swat and definitely couldn’t step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.

How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.

The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study’s three authors.

That’s almost as big as what we have here in Texas.

Sports

BCS Shenanigans

The BCS is considering lowering their standards to fill out the quota of big conference teams. We’re headed for a BCS slate of the six major conference winners, the loser of Kansas-Mizzou, Georgia or Florida and the #2 Pac 10 team (ASU, USC or Oregon). Since they can only put in two from each conference, that’s a problem because the ACC, Big 10 and Big East are unlikely to have a non-champion in the top 14.

My solution? Just grant a bid to the Boise State-Hawaii winner. I would much rather see Boise State or Hawaii in the BCS than Illinois or West Virginia (if they choke against UConn) or Virgina Tech (if they choke against UVa). Why lower the threshold to #18 to get a major conference team when you could lower it to #14 and get an exciting mid-major conference champ?

Because that would make too much sense. And the big conferences wouldn’t like it.

'Culture'

Some Humor

I’ve been a bit of a windy gasbag lately. So here is something funny; Star Trek’s cheesiest monsters:

REDJAC

Episode: “Wolf in the Fold”

Description: As it turns out, Jack the Ripper was actually a swirling pool of colorful clouds that traveled with humanity into space, killing ever more women and taking on ever more stupid names. It takes control of the Enterprise’s computers, and is defeated by a combination of Bones injecting everyone with happy juice and Spock telling the computer to calculate π to the last digit.

Powers: Serial murder, fear eating, starship control.

Weaknesses: Drugs, math.

Law and Order, Politics

No Prison, No Peace

Uh, yeah:

The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say.
There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says.

Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails.

The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences.

The Unlocking America report, which was published on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part of a major overhaul of the US justice system.

“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” said JFA president James Austin.

Here are the crime statistics. What they say is literally true but intellectually stupid.

The violent crime rate started rising in the mid-1960’s, the same time at which — in must certainly be an amazing coincidence — the welfare state began and prison began to wane. By 1980, the crime rate was up 266%, from the 160 per 100,000 to almost 600. It dropped after Reagan took office to the low 500’s. Then, bouyed by the crack explosion, it rose to the 750’s, 380% above the level of the 1960’s. I was in a rural college at the time, so I didn’t appreciate how dangerous things had gotten.

And then? Clinton became President and was the first Democrat in years to be tough on crime, supporting tough sentences and more cops. Gun control laws were loosened. Welfare reform hit in 1996, which I’m sure was just another strange coincidence. And by 2006, the violent crime rate had plunged by 1/3 down below 500. That’s not a coincidence. And every longitudinal study has confirmed that putting people in jail drops the violent crime rate.

(A lot of people are noting smugly that our murder rate is down to 1966 levels. This means nothing — it’s because our emergency and trauma care have improve drastically).

Interestingly, the trend have leveled off a bit under Bush and even risen slightly the last two years. Between 1992 and 2000, the violent crime rate dropped from 757.5 per 100,000 to 506.5. Since then, it has only dropped another 30 points. I’m not sure if you can blame this on Bush since the first steps of progress are always the easiest. But he certainly hasn’t made things noticeably better.

I do agree with these idiots on one thing. Throwing people in prison for stupid things like simple possession, throwing coffee at a car or downloading videos is ridiculous and counter-productive. Prison should be reserved for the violent. Putting non-violent people in prison only ruins lives and creates more criminals.

When our crime rate gets back down to 1960 levels (which would be 1/3 of where they are now), we can start talking about jailing people for playing online poker.

Religion, Science and Edumacation

Why I Fight

I sometimes get asked why I post so often at Right-Thinking about creationism (although once every now and then doesn’t seem very often to me). Am I beating a dead horse?

Perhaps. But I’m passionate about science. I have always loved science, knew I was going to be some kind of scientist and have spent the last 15 years of my life doing science for far less money than I could make in industry. I love to teach science. Seeing the excitement that science creates in people; sharing that sense of wonder; seeing how excited they get when science works and makes sense; this is special.

To me, science is, if you like, the very voice of God. Our attempt to understand the universe in which we live is the great endeavor of our race.

I’m not interested in dissuading people from their religious beliefs. I’m sympathetic to religious views. I’ve repeatedly slammed Hitchens, Dawkins and other idiots on this blog for ignorantly criticizing religion and proclaiming ultimate enlightenment. I read the Bible, have a mezzuzah on my door and light candles on fridays.

Moreover, I understand that in a world gone mad, many people have a need to fall back on the familiar. And nothing is more familiar than the Bible.

I have no problem with people believing in whatever myths they want. What I object to is pretending this is science. What I object to is using the trappings of science to indoctrinate people to what is, at its base, a religious view.

Creationists are classic pseudo-scientists. They know the words, they wear white coats, they spin their fancy theories. But they are not scientists. They ignore evidence they don’t like. They make things up. They misread. And, most importantly, their theories are not falsifiable. Any theory that can not be disproven is, by definition, not scientific (note, this applies to pseudoscientific multiverse and string theories as well).

What really gets my boxers in a bunch, however, is the demonization of science that is illustrated in things like Ben Stein’s ignorant blog post and the Creation Museum. I think religious people are wrong, but I don’t think they are evil — that’s the difference between Hitchens and I. But, for creationists, it’s not not enough that science is wrong, it has to be evil. And not just evil in the ignorant way — but evil in a leftist, atheist, secular humanist cabal attempting to destroy society and make gays marry way.

So yes, I will respond to this poison. And yes, I will ridicule their pseudo-scientific garbage, the same way I ridicule Michael Bay’s pseudo-movie entertainment, Joe Morgan’s pseudo-sports-analysis and the LA Dodgers’ pseudo-managing of a baseball franchise. Ignorance and dogmatism annoy me.

Update: One last thing. The main reason creationism annoys me is that it illustrates the greatest cost in the human experience — opportunity cost. The time that kids spend learning religion-based pseudoscience is time they aren’t spending learning useful things like physics and chemistry.

The Creation Museum is very well done. But just think if all that money, passion and effort had been invested in a planetarium. Or a Museum of Paleontology, Archeology or Anthropology.

Science and Edumacation

IQ and Race

4 Comments

Via Sully, I find this fascinating article on race and IQ. Read both pages, as the second gets into why environment is important.

I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time. Here are some random thoughts.

  • First, the influence of environment looks very strong. To me, the most telling studies are those of adopted kids, which show the gap closing (although not to zero). I think of Michael Oher in The Blindside. Neglected all his life, especially by a dysfunctional school system, he had a measured IQ of 80. Adopted by a rich white family and relentlessly tutored, his IQ was slightly over 100.

    No matter how you twist the data, someone with a low IQ doesn’t necessarily have it because of genetics. There are a number of environmental factors that have proven connections to IQ and it seems most of them are negative (and far more prevalent among blacks). Malnutrition, illness, neglect, drugs and poor education can all drive IQ down. These are not factors passed on to children — well, at least not in their genes. The Flynn Effect, the sharp rise in western IQs over the last century, is clearly environmental (and larger than the present black-white IQ gap). Evolution doesn’t work that fast.

  • Black IQs have closed in on white IQs over the last century, but stalled somewhat in the last 30 years. That might seem to argue that the gap between white and black intelligence is real. But is it coincidence that the gap stopped closing almost precisely when blacks were hit with the double-whammy of the welfare state and federalized education? Could liberal government be stalling the rise in black IQs? It’s certainly possible.
  • IQ measures a certain kind of intelligence — abstract reasoning. This is useful for making money and having financial success. But anyone who has hung out with a bunch of high-IQ people knows they aren’t perfect. They often have social disabilities and lack practical knowledge (hence the embrace of “looks good on paper” ideas like liberalism). So what if blacks trails white in IQ? My experience is that they exceed them in social ability. Moreover, IQ may be biased in that it tests test-taking ability. The aforementioned Michael Oher wasn’t dumb, he had a learning disability. Tested appropriately, his IQ was normal.
  • IQ is not everything. A lot of science fiction stories have the Earth being doomed and humanity putting together a survival boat of its best and brightest. I’m convinced that such a colony would be doomed. Smart people often have dumb ideas (communism, for example) and can see the world in terms of abstractions and ideas, instead of reality.

    Moreover, the drive to reproduce and create a new generation is, in my mind, a far more important characteristic than intelligence. What good is having a high IQ if you can’t pass it on? People complain about the fertility-intelligence anti-correlation. I complain about it all the time when I go to social functions and find I am the only scientist who has spawned. But in a way, this is nature telling us something important — high intelligence (as opposed to slightly above average) isn’t a survival characteristic. If it were, high IQ people would have more kids.

    Update: RPL points out, quite correctly, that the opportunity cost of having children is higher for high-IQ people. Agreed. But that opportunity cost is lower than it has ever been. And the reason for not having kids that I hear most often has nothing to do with career, but lifestyle.

    It would be interesting to compare the career achievement of high-IQ people with kids to those of high-IQ people without. My personal experience is that my work ethic improved after having a kid. Others’ mileage my vary.

  • Doesn’t the fertility-IQ correlation doom us to a devolution like in Idiocracy? I don’t think so. The trend shows that most powerful force in the universe — regression to the mean. People with IQs of 160 aren’t having kids, but people with IQs of 40 aren’t either. Smart people tend to have kids dumber than them; dumb people tend to have kids smarter. We all move back to the average.

    • Update: One thing I thought I’d ad: IQ can only get you so far. I work in a high-IQ profession and it’s my experience that smartness helps, but had work and perseverance are the deciding factors. Progress in science, especially, is driven more toil than flashes of inspiration. What was it Edison said about invention?

    Always remember, Charles Darwin didn’t have a high IQ. And he glimpsed the inner workings of the world — through years and years of hard work.

    Culture War, Politics

    No Nonsense

    Thank goodness:

    New York is rejecting millions of dollars in federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced yesterday. The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.

    There is abundant evidence that this garbage is, at best, ineffective. No all we have to do is stop the federal government paying for religion-based anti-sex-education.

    Sports

    Dead Duck

    I missed it last night as I was in post-grant recovery mode. But yet *another* #2 team went down in flames. What kind of a year is this for college ball? We’ve got one major conference undefeated team left (Kansas). But we are also down to *six* 1-loss teams (excluding Boise State). Ohio State isn’t dead yet. At least two of the seven teams with less than two losses will lose in the next few weeks. If LSU, Ohio State, West Virginia or Arizona State — all of whom have tough games — stumble, we may be in a situation where a 2-loss team gets into the BCS.

    Here’s the thing that pisses me off the most. There are five teams (LSU, OSU, WV, ASU and whoever wins the Big 12) that have a shot at the BCS right now, assuming we don’t go to the 2-loss tier. Three of them — Arizona State, West Virginia and Ohio State — don’t play a conference title game. That path that SEC winner and the Big 12 winner will take to the BCS is much more difficult because of this. But if LSU honks the SEC championship, then someone from a weaker conference is going to be rewarded for it.

    Tell me again why we don’t need a playoff?

    Sports

    Chemical McCarthyism Watch

    From the usually brilliant Fire Joe Morgan, I find this turd:

    I often have to remind myself that good Christian soldier Paul Byrd took HGH and guys like Matt Lawton and Alex Sanchez took steroids. Basically, literally everyone in the game is a possible user, no matter what their body shape, position, or ostensible character. No one likes this. But the people who have been found guilty so far represent such a random assortment of guys, it’s hard to exonerate anyone before we’ve seen the proof.

    So, every baseball player is guilty until proven innocent? Since they can never prove that they’ve never used steroids — or any drugs that evade testing, that means everyone is a perpetual suspect. Whatever player we decide is suspicious or don’t like can be branded a steroid user. No burden of proof is required and no testing can exonerate him. Just ruin a man’s reputation.

    My favorite in this realm is Sammy Sosa. Sosa was always a power hitter and still is. In 1998, he stopped swinging at everything and became a great player. But now everyone “knows” he used steroids even though there is precisely zero evidence of this. None. Nichts. Nada. Niente. Nothing except a bunch of igornant asshole fucks sitting around saying, “Hey! I think that Sosa used steroids. I mean, he never hit no 60 homeruns before!”

    Yes, my friends, that’s why it’s called a *peak*. He’d hit 40 in 120 games before. He’d shown 50-, 60-homer potential. But that’s not relevant. Because we need to slime somebody.

    Sports

    Bonds Again

    Barry Bonds has gotten Martha Stewarted. I’m sure many in the sports media are going to wet their pants over this. I’ve never hated Barry Bonds so I’m not going to jump and down with glee. I’d just like to point out that many of those who are tsk-tsking about Bonds right now arduously supported Pete Rose when he went to prison.

    We’ll see what happens.