Those of you who attended my Big Bang lecture last year know how difficult cosmology can be to explain, and how poorly a job I really did. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on me. Lawrence Krauss, a physics professor at Arizona State, discusses a wide range of topics in cosmology, including the expansion of the universe, dark energy and dark matter, the Big Bang, and how it may be possible that the universe actually did create itself from nothing. Most importantly, he discusses the evidence and reasoning for how we know what we do know.

“Plaintiffs challenge Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the judge wrote. “Each challenge is independently meritorious, as Proposition 8 both unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry and creates an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation.”Vaughn added: “Plaintiffs seek to have the state recognize their committed relationships, and plaintiffs’ relationships are consistent with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in the United States.“

Ultimately, the judge concluded that Proposition 8 “fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. … Because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

Judge Vaughn Walker’s full decision is available here.

Here’s a Twitter feed thingy about Utah’s reaction, and a reaction by the creator of 8: The Mormon Proposition.

This is incredibly good news. I’m especially pleased the Judge’s decision notes that marriage is a fundamental right. But it begins a (likely) long road to the 9th Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. Overall though, this is a wonderful moment for justice and equality, and is a big boost in confidence for other challenges and activism around the country.

This Friday, the College of Science is hosting Dr. Robert Lang, who
will be visiting USU to talk about the connections between
mathematics, science and art through origami folding.  Robert is a graduate of Caltech in engineering and applied physics, and  the recipient of their Distinguished Alumni Award.

While he is here on campus, we’ve arranged for some informal time for students and faculty to visit with Robert and talk about his career and current activities.  It  should be of interest to students and faculty alike.  Please join us:

—> Dr. Robert J. Lang
—> FRIDAY, 2 April 2010
—> 3:00 – 4:30pm
—> College of Science Conference Room, ESLC 245D

Additionally, Robert will be giving the Science Unwrapped Lecture that evening:

—> “Math’s Paper Trail: The Origins of Mathematics and Origami”
—> Dr. Robert J. Lang
—> FRIDAY, 2 April 2010
—> 7:00pm
—> ESLC 130
—> www.usu.edu/science/unwrapped/

You can see some of Robert’s origami creations (some of the most complex ever folded) on his website:  langorigami.com

You can also see a short 20 minute presentation on Math and Origami Robert gave at TED in 2008: www.ted.com/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html

Totally go to this, everybody. Make sure to check his site here, it’s amazing. Look out, an Allosaurus!

A UK parliamentary Science and Technology Committee investigated the whole East Anglia CRU thing, and their results have been released.

On the much cited phrases in the leaked e-mails—”trick” and “hiding the decline”—the Committee considers that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead.

Insofar as the Committee was able to consider accusations of dishonesty against CRU, the Committee considers that there is no case to answer.

The Committee found no reason in this inquiry to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, that “global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity”. But this was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.

(Bolding added)

The committee had one mild criticism and recommendation, which I think is a good idea.

The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’ refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.

Professor Jones’ refusal to share data is not grounds for complaint and is in line with common practice (as it is in fields other than climate science), but that practice should probably change.

That settles that, right? Everyone’s going to stop citing this as an example of When Science Goes Wrong™, aren’t they? Pleeease? Or is this another piece of evidence supporting the massive global conspiracy?

That link above contains further links to other common claims that have been found to be baseless, such as that the IPCC overstated the impact of climate change on the Amazon rain forest.

I’m all for sharing data, but I’m dead set against sharing code. Running the same code over the same data and getting the same answer is worthless. Independent verification using an independent analysis not only verifies the methodology, it many even improve upon it. Sharing code is a recipe for sharing bugs and slowing progress. Reimplement the algorithms if you’re trying to reproduce results.

On the other hand, re-implementing the same algorithm independently is a good way to check the correctness of a piece of research code. Interestingly, NASA GISS has made their GISSTEMP surface temperature analysis source code available for quite some time. Because the source is available, there is an effort to produce a ground-up rewrite of the code (in Python, no less), in the interest of both transparency and correctness. Results to date? Nothing of significance wrong with GISSTEMP. I’m sure that will satisfy the denialosphere.

Bottom line: CRU had done nothing wrong and the committee’s openness recommendation is nice but unnecessary.

The Telegraph reports that OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) over-reported their reserves in the 80′s. This means that world oil reserves, previously thought to range from 1,150bn to 1,350bn (billion barrels) may actually be between 850 and 900 billion barrels. Supply could outstrip demand for oil as soon as 2014, especially considering Asia’s growing thirst for oil.

Also, many public statistics have started to incorporate unusual sources whose costs are uncertain, such as shale and tar sands. These sources may never be economically sound to develop.

Peak Oil is here! Don’t panic. We might get rad airships out of this:

Dr Oliver Inderwildi, who co-wrote the paper with Sir David and Nick Owen for Oxford University’s Smith School, believes radical measures such as switching freight transport to airships could become common in future.

“The belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is a pie in the sky. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving efficiency.”

In the short term, he’s right. Biofuels or anything like that will most likely not be viable in four to five years. What we can do, however, is increase efficiency, conserve what we have, and pursue an aggressive nuclear power strategy. There are a whole range of advanced plants we could begin building now. (Paradoxically, nuclear waste is much more manageable and more tolerable at this point than CO2 emissions). Basic research funding for alternative energy needs to be massively increased, for everything from wind, solar, biofuel, tidal generators, and even previously hare-brained near-scifi ideas. We’ll need this research for mid- to long-term solutions.

But one thing is clear: oil is running out.

Across the country, rocks or bricks are being thrown through the windows of Democratic Party offices. Congressmen are receiving threats to themselves and their children. Even Sarah Palin herself makes some unsavory implications.

It seems the “break the windows” idea is coming from this guy. As mentioned in my first link, the parallels to Kristallnacht are pretty obvious, but luckily the scale is much smaller.

What’s going on here?

David Cope, a UC Santa Cruz emeritus professor, wrote some software that could compose music in the style of the classical greats–Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninov. Emmy, from EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence), could actually write (generate, produce, whatever) scores so convincing–even moving–that scholars of classical music couldn’t tell that they were computer-created. In a sense, Emmy had passed a musical version of the Turing Test. Winning praise from fellow computer scientists and a few musicians, Emmy’s music was so good that it attracted far larger condemnation and criticism.

The reason is that Cope’s automated music raised some troubling questions: If a machine could write a Mozart sonata every bit as good as the originals, then what was so special about Mozart? And was there really any soul behind the great works, or were Beethoven and his ilk just clever mathematical manipulators of notes? Cope’s answers — not much, and yes — made some people very angry. His colleagues nicknamed him “The Tin Man”, because he didn’t have a heart. Eventually, he deleted Emmy’s databases (but keeping the original program).

In February, however, Cope unveiled a successor program that’s already generating the same hype and controversy. Named Emily Howell, this version 2.0 has an even loftier goal–create original music, instead of mimicking human composers. According to the small amount who’ve heard “her” music played live, it’s innovative, unique, and even superb.

His work has generated hostility primarily from those who believe creativity is something a machine could never have, arguing that only humans can compose music with “liveliness” and “soul”. There is a strong human tendency to belittle anything that removes the “magic” or “meaning” or “spirituality” from our lives, and Emily Howell challenges that. Here, have a listen.

At one Santa Cruz concert, the program notes neglected to mention that Emily Howell wasn’t a human being, and a chemistry professor and music aficionado in the audience described the performance of a Howell composition as one of the most moving experiences of his musical life. Six months later, when the same professor attended a lecture of Cope’s on Emily Howell and heard the same concert played from a recording, Cope remembers him saying, “You know, that’s pretty music, but I could tell absolutely, immediately that it was computer-composed. There’s no heart or soul or depth to the piece.”

That sentiment — present in many recent articles, blog posts and comments about Emily Howell — frustrates Cope. “Most of what I’ve heard [and read] is the same old crap,” he complains. “It’s all about machines versus humans, and ‘aren’t you taking away the last little thing we have left that we can call unique to human beings — creativity?’ I just find this so laborious and uncreative.”

Emily Howell isn’t stealing creativity from people, he says. It’s just expressing itself. Cope claims it produced musical ideas he never would have thought about. He’s now convinced that, in many ways, machines can be more creative than people. They’re able to introduce random notions and reassemble old elements in new ways, without any of the hang-ups or preconceptions of humanity.

“We are so damned biased, even those of us who spend all our lives attempting not to be biased. Just the mere fact that when we like the taste of something, we tend to eat it more than we should. We have our physical body telling us things, and we can’t intellectually govern it the way we’d like to,” he says.

In other words, humans are more robotic than machines. “The question,” Cope says, “isn’t whether computers have a soul, but whether humans have a soul.”

Many of his critics have tried to portray this as machines-vs-humans, with machines encroaching on their creativity and livelihood. But the future, as always, is more complicated than that.

Here’s how this cyborg-esque composing technique works: Cope comes up with an idea. For instance, he’ll want to have five voices, each of which alternates singing groups of four notes. Or perhaps he’ll want to write a piece that moves quickly from the bottom of the piano keyboard to the top, and then back down. He’ll rapidly code a program to create a chunk of music that follows those directions.

After working with Emmy and Emily Howell for nearly 30 years and composing for about twice that many, Cope is fast enough to hear something in his head in the bathtub, dry off and get dressed, move to the computer and 10 minutes later have a whole movement of 100 measures ready. It may not be any good, but it’s the fastest way to translate his thoughts into a solid rough draft.

“I listen with creative ears, and I hear the music that I want to hear and say, ‘You know? That’s going to be fabulous,’ or ‘You know … ‘” — he makes a spitting noise — “‘in the toilet.’ And I haven’t lost much, even though I’ve got a whole piece that’s in notation immediately.”

He compares the process to a sculptor who chops raw shapes out of a block of marble before he teases out the details. Using quick-and-dirty programs as an extension of his brain has made him extraordinarily prolific. It’s a process close to what he was hoping for back when he first started working on software to save him from composer’s block.

As complex as Cope’s current method is, he believes it heralds the future of a new kind of musical creation: armies of computers composing (or helping people compose) original scores.

“I think it’s going to happen,” Cope says. “I don’t believe that composers are stupid people. Ultimately, they’re going to use any tool at their disposal to get what they’re after, which is, after all, good music they themselves like to listen to. There will be initial withdrawal, but eventually it’s going to happen — whether we want it to or not.”

Interestingly, Cope doesn’t think his 30-year project has been that successful:

Cope has sold tens of thousands of books, had his works performed in prestigious venues and taught many students who evangelize his ideas around the world. Yet he doesn’t think it adds up to much. All he ever wanted was to write something truly wonderful, and he doesn’t think that’s happened yet. As a composer, Cope laments, he remains a “frustrated loser,” confused by the fact that he burned so much time on a project that stole him away from composing. He still just wants to create that one piece that changes someone’s life — it doesn’t matter whether it’s composed by one of his programs, or in collaboration with a machine, or with pencil on a sheet of paper.

“I want that little boy or girl to have access to my music so they can play it and get the same thrill I got when I was a kid,” he says. “And if that isn’t gonna happen, then I’ve completely failed.”

Full (quite long) article here. Hat-tip to David Willis.

Vulcans have green blood, but they can still reproduce with humans and make Spock? 95% of the species follow a humanoid body plan? Captain Kirk seduces women from anywhere and everywhere? It’s not just biology, but culture as well. Voyager gets flung across the width of the galaxy and meets a guy who understands human jokes? Kirk visits a planet filled with the Italian Mafia? Yeah, I know it was because there aren’t any septapods in the Actor’s Guild, and the humanoid thing was established in the ’60s and became a calling card of the show (and a source of quite a few in-jokes). It’s too bad make-up and special effects budgets for film limit the creativity of the setting.

High budget CG things like Avatar don’t have the same excuse. C’mon, the aliens were just tall blue Iroqois. Even if their wider ecosystem was pretty interesting, the Na’vi had a different body plan than everything around them, and clearly didn’t evolve from the animal stock of that world. James Cameron said he intentionally made them more human so the audience could relate to them, but with a budget like Avatar, he should be able to create truly alien aliens and let the writing create the emotional connection.

However! Look what I found. Creating what I can only describe as “truly bizarre crap”, Snaiad is a world-building project set on a colony world with an 8 billion year history of life, nearly twice Earth’s.  Basically, it’s speculative zoology, exploring how life could have evolved under similar conditions to Earth, and is meant to showcase how much the end results of evolution depend on chance. There are two headed psuedo-vertebrates with carbon composite bones–for starters. I’ll let you find some of the weirder (very very weirder) things they’ve come up with.

What’s your favorite alien alien from books, film, or anything else?

People often tell me “science can’t prove that God does not exist, because you can’t prove a negative”. How often?

Ok, it’s really not that often.

It’s said that you can’t prove a negative because you can’t exhaustively examine and eliminate every place in the universe, so you can’t be 100% certain that something does not exist. Interestingly enough, however, the claim that “you can’t prove a negative” is itself an unrestricted negative. It effectively says “there are no proofs of unrestricted negatives”. If so, then no one can prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative. And if no one can prove that no one can prove an unrestricted negative, then it must be logically possible to prove an unrestricted negative. The claim is self-refuting.

It should not only be possible to prove a negative, but I intend to show that a number of them have already been proven.

How would you go about proving a negative? 2,500 years ago, Parmenides realized a fundamental rule of logic–the law of non-contradiction. Anything that involves a logical contradiction cannot exist. We know for certain that there are no married bachelors, highest numbers, or triangles with other than 180 degrees (in Euclidian space, at least). These things are self-contradictory, because nothing can both have and lack some property at the same time. So, one way to prove a negative is to show that something contradicts itself.

God is traditionally defined as a supreme being–as St. Anselm put it, “a being than which none greater can be conceived”. As an analogy, however, imagine a supreme number. We know this can’t exist, because every number can have 1 added to it, creating a larger number. A supreme number would be able to have 1 added to it, and would not be able to have 1 added to it, and that’s impossible. The notion of a supreme being could be just as incoherent as a supreme number. (Sidenote: there’s also no such thing as a smallest number)

Other contradictions exist in the traditional definition of God. He is said to be all-good, making him both perfectly merciful and perfectly just. If he is perfectly just, he always makes sure everyone gets what’s coming to them, and that the punishment fits the crime. If he is perfectly merciful, he’s always lenient and forgiving. He can’t possibly be both.

These are just a few inconsistencies in the traditional conception of God. Here are others. Theists will invariably reply that, properly understood, the properties of God have no contradictions. They could be right, and it could be logically possible for God to exist (I don’t think the traditional definition can be rescued, though). Does this mean we cannot prove he doesn’t? No, actually. It’s not necessary to show that something cannot exist because it’s logically impossible. It’s sufficient to show that it is epistemically unnecessary–that it is not required to explain anything. Science has proven the non-existence of many things in this way, such as phlogiston, the luminiferous ether, and the planet Vulcan (not the Star Trek one–that one is still possible). Let me be very clear before we move on–scientific proofs do not establish perfect certainty, unlike logical or mathematical proofs. There is still the possibility of doubt. But they are proofs nonetheless, for they establish their conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt, and that is all that is needed to justify them.

Some quick science history–phlogiston, the luminiferous ether, and Vulcan were theoretical entities that were postulated to explain various observations and phenomena. Phlogiston attempted to explain heat, the ether was thought to be the medium of light propagation through vacuum, and Vulcan was hypothesized to explain perturbations in the orbit of Mercury. Science has since shown that these phenomena can be explained without them. Heat is caused by the movement of atoms, light is propagated by photons (weird-ass wave/particle things), and Einstein’s theory of relativity explains wobbles in Mercury’s orbit. By demonstrating that phlogiston, the ether, and Vulcan aren’t needed to explain anything, science has shown that they do not exist.

God is a theoretical entity postulated by theists to explain various phenomenon–the origin of the universe, the apparent design inherent in the universe, and the origin of life. Modern science can explain all of these things without resorting to God(1). In the words of Laplace, science has no need of that hypothesis (2). Phenomenon which remain currently unexplained, such as human consciousness, quantum entanglement or the exact steps of abiogenesis (see my last post) will very likely be illuminated with further work. By showing that God is not needed to explain anything, science has proven that there is no more reason to believe in the existence of God than to believe in the existence of phlogiston, the luminiferous ether, or Vulcan. This may help explain why more than 90% of the world’s top scientists disbelieve or doubt the existence of God.

Now, at this point, I’m reminded of another thing I often hear/read: “science is close-minded and arrogant, ignoring the possibility that there are things it doesn’t understand”, or the charge that science is “reductionistic”, as if that’s a weakness instead of a strength. This is because science, and scientists, prefers natural explanations over supernatural ones.

They do so not because of any metaphysical bias or closemindednes, but because of one simple reason. Natural explanations produce more understanding than supernatural ones. To say “God did it”, or an equivalent supernatural statement, is to simply offer an excuse for having no explanation.

How are explanations determined to be “good”? The quality of an explanation is determined by how much understanding it produces (how much ground the explanation covers), and how much it unifies and systematizes our existing knowledge. The extensiveness of this unity is measured by various criteria, including simplicity (the number of assumptions made), scope (the types of phenomena explained), conservatism (fit with existing theory), and fruitfulness (ability to make successful novel predictions and direct further questions).

Supernatural explanations are inherently inferior to natural ones because they do not fit this criteria well. They are usually less simple because they assume the existence of at least one additional type of entity (or an entire unseen realm of entities). They have less scope because they don’t offer mechanisms of how the phenomena in question are produced and thus they raise more questions than they answer. They are less conservative because they imply that certain natural laws have been violated or heavily contradict existing knowledge. And they are usually less fruitful because they don’t make any novel predictions. That is why scientists avoid them.

The realization that the traditional God of theism is not needed to explain anything–that there is nothing for him to do–has led a number of theologians to call for the rejection of this notion of god. In Why Believe in God? Michael Donald Goulder argues that the only intellectually respectable position on the god question is atheism.  In Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Reverend Spong, former Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, argues that the traditional theistic conception of God must be replaced by one grounded in human relationships and concerns.  Both agree that religion should not be in the business of trying to explain the world.

What if we don’t yet understand a certain phenomenon, and have no explanation? Does that immediately mean it has a supernatural explanation? No, of course not. It’s far more likely that it’s only our ignorance of the natural forces in play that currently prevent us from having an explanation. Many things–earthquakes, eclipses, disease–were once attributed to supernatural causes or beings but can now be explained in purely natural terms. Apparent miracles are not contrary to nature but contrary to our knowledge of nature.

Given the inferior explanatory power of supernatural claims and the incompleteness of our knowledge, theists are only justified in offering God as an explanation for anything if they can prove that not only do we not currently have a natural explanation, but that no natural explanation is possible. And I believe that that is an unrestricted negative that cannot be proven.

(2) When the French physicist Pierre Simon de Laplace explained his theory of the universe to Napoleon, Napoleon is said to have asked, “Where does God fit into your theory?” to which Laplace replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

None of you have posted yet.

Well, get cracking. Readers, expect to see some posts from Jacob, Erik, Neal, and Mike in the hopefully near future.

For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes – ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes – that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.

What’s more, these simple nucleic acids can act as catalysts and continue the process indefinitely.

To test a hypothesis known as ‘The RNA World’, Gerald Joyce at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego began with naturally occurring RNA-like enzymes known as ribozymes, and allowed them to self-replicate on a limited chemical substrate. They then took a random subset of the resulting ribozymes and moved them to different substrates. The effect was to create a non-biological chemical system that underwent Darwinian evolution. This may represent a possible form of pre-cellular chemical life before the evolution of DNA, cell walls, and all these other ‘modern’ developments.

Many scientists believe that early life was based on RNA and predated the arrival of life based on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and proteins. RNA, which can both store information like DNA as well as act as an enzyme like proteins, [may] have supported pre-cellular life.

A [leading] proponent of the so-called ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, Joyce believes that RNA-based catalysis and information storage may have been the first step in the evolution of cellular life.

This kind of stuff is just so cool.

Kleiner–I’m going to leave your existing comments in place on their current threads, but any future comments that topically belong here will be moved here, along with their responses.

When asked by journalists, the exorcists admitted that possession by the devil may look just like it is portrayed in scary movies. But the rites that the exorcists use to expel evil spirits are much less spectacular.

“Our role is mainly to say prayers and psalms,” Father Andrzej Grefkowicz told the press conference. Another priest, Aleksander Posacki, said that too many myths surround exorcisms, which in fact are based on fundamental church rules.

You read that right. They think it’ll look just like The Exorcist. I imagine that the Emily Rose movie was also entirely real.

During the conference, they also discussed demonology, saying it should be taken more seriously by both the general public and those in seminary. I wonder if there’s room in the Religious Studies budget for some classes–or would that be the Biology Department? Maybe it’s exobiology.

Here’s my favorite quote from the press release:

Another priest, Aleksander Posacki, said that too many myths surround exorcisms . . .

Well . . . yeah, dude.

Homeopathy was first proposed in 1796 by German physician Samuel Hahnemann. His idea was to treat patients with diluted solutions of chemicals thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms–for example, a substance thought to cause rashes would be diluted in order to treat hives. “Like with like” is the term homeopathic practitioners use. (See also Sympathetic Magic)

A typical homeopathic treatment is called “30C”. This means that whatever substance has been chosen for the treatment is diluted one drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their “What is homeopathy?” section, they say that “30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance.” This is a giant understatement. In more precise terms, the ratio is 1 part “stuff” to 100^30 parts water, or 1^60. This is a 1 followed by 60 zeros, so the dilution is 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Anyone who’s taken any chemistry should be scratching their head at this point (Avogadro’s Number). It gets worse: remedies of 100C are also routinely sold, and are claimed to be even more powerful than 30C. Again, this is 1 drop diluted in 100, this time 100 times over. 1 in 100^100. That means that the substance is diluted by more atoms than there are in the universe. Homeopathic “remedies” are statistically no different than distilled water. Homeopathy was invented before we knew about atoms, how big they are, or how many there are, and has not updated its belief system to reflect this “new” information.

Normally, I would be like “haha, dummies, take a chem class” and think no more of it. But just like the anti-vaccination nutters (not unrelated, as we’ll see below), homeopathy has real health consequences for real people in the real world. It’s a routine marketing practice for these guys to denigrate mainstream (evidence-based) medicine. One study found that more than half of all homeopaths approached in Great Britian advised their patients to forego the MMR vaccine for their kids. A BBC Newsnight investigation found that almost all the homeopaths approached recommended ineffective homeopathic pills to protect against malaria, and advised against medical malaria prophylactics, while not even giving basic advice on bite prevention.

At the extreme, when they’re not undermining public-health campaigns and leaving their patients exposed to fatal diseases, homeopaths who are not medically qualified can miss fatal diagnoses, or actively disregard them, arrogantly telling their patients to stop their inhalers, and throw away their heart pills. The Society of Homeopaths has held a symposium on the treatment of AIDS, featuring the work of Peter Chappell, a man who claims to have found a homeopathic solution to the epidemic.

Many homeopaths bizzarely claim they can transmit homeopathic remedies over the internet, in CDs, down the telephone, through a computer, or in special music. Peter Chappell is one of them. He makes dramatic claims about his ability to solve the AIDS epidemic using his own homeopathic pills called “PC AIDS”, and his specially encoded music. “Right now,” he says, “AIDS in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio.”

This sums up my thoughts perfectly.

Husibi, who has an unlisted telephone number, said he received about 30 calls Saturday from people who were cursing him, calling him a traitor and threatening him. Most were foreign-born, Tulsa-area Muslims whom he knows, he said. He also received angry calls from friends and relatives in Syria.

One caller, whom Husibi would not identify, said that if he spoke at the meeting and said anything against Shariah (Islamic law), he would be killed. Another caller offered Husibi’s young Muslim wife $10,000 to leave him and return to her native Syria, he said.

“Someone from Tulsa called my 76-year-old mother in Syria and said, ‘You’re not going to see your son anymore,’ ” he said.

Sabri Husibi was studying to be an imam in Damascus, but learning more about the Quran did not strengthen his faith. Instead, as often happens, he found many glaring problems with his religious text.

“The more I learned, the more paradoxes I saw,” he said.

Husibi said his rejection of Islam was cemented during mandatory military service in the Lebanon civil war in which more than a million people died, a war he says was religiously motivated. He said al-Qaida, which is respected by many Muslims, has been responsible for 2 million deaths. He also rejected other religions at that time and became an atheist.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam share 80 percent of their beliefs, he said.

After becoming an atheist, Husibi felt a sense of relief “that these silly stories cannot control me anymore,” he said.

After becoming an atheist, his clothing business went under in Syria. He moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma and now buys and sells cars.

He said he loves the freedom of American society and the respect and understanding of the people.

“I came here for freedom,” he said. “I love this country more than anyplace else. I love Tulsa. Of all the people I’ve met, Americans are the best people. They’re really nice people.”

He spoke at a gathering of Tulsa Atheists a week ago yesterday. The original article came out on Saturday, in anticipation for the Sunday talk. The organizer of the Tulsa Coalition of Reason offered to cancel the talk in the wake of threats. Husibi refused:

Husibi said he takes the threats seriously. Before Sunday’s talk, Dusenberry notified Tulsa police, who said they would be alert to any possible trouble.

On Tuesday, a clearly shaken Husibi asked that any future articles emphasize that he is not attacking Islam alone but all religions, including “fundamentalist Christians like Timothy McVeigh and fundamentalist Jews who kill Muslim children in the Gaza Strip.”

He said Tulsa Muslims are awaiting an apology from him. “I won’t apologize,” he said. “I’m not going to be a chicken. This is my right, to give my point of view.”

He has also said that his brothers are denying that they know him, either out of shame or for their own protection. He is still receiving threats, but is now in contact with the Tulsa police. Hopefully nothing horrible happens to this courageous man.

(Hat tip to the Friendly Atheist)

I always get really excited about new dinosaur fossils, and this one is particularly special. Raptorex is probably also the best scientific name ever given out. It has the same general proportions as the full-sized Trex–large menacing head and jaws, tiny hilarious arms–but at a much smaller (although still human-sized!) scale. This demonstrates that the Tyrannosaur body plan was successful at sizes other than Enormous.

Walking around with one of these on a leash would seriously impress the ladies.

This is from the copyright footer:

An Official Web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
© 2008 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.

Followed by an official logo.

Why can’t the IRS ever be this lazy when it comes to the personal income tax?

How about that bishop at the end, huh? What a tool. I mean, I know dissenting opinions are not really allowed in the Mormon church (or pretty much any other), but I’m always kinda dumbfounded when I see this sort of censorship in action.

I really wonder what the congregation thought. Most were probably relieved that someone shut up the mean guy who was making their brains hurt, but I have to wonder he didn’t spark more than a few thoughts.

Todd himself seems to have left the church, according to the video description.

What I wrote is, of course, not actually an argument that the Pope is wrong. I will respond to that now. For full context, here are the Pope’s (translated) remarks.

The earth is a precious gift of the Creator, who has designed its intrinsic order, thus giving us guidelines to which we must hold ourselves as stewards of his creation. From this awareness, the Church considers questions linked to the environment and its safeguarding as profoundly linked with the topic of integral human development. I referred to these questions several times in my last encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” reminding of the pressing moral need for renewed solidarity” (49) not only in relations between countries, but also between individuals, as the natural environment is given by God to everyone, and its use entails a personal responsibility towards the whole of humanity, in particular, towards the poor and future generations (Cf. 48).

I actually agree with a few of these sentences. Environmental questions are profoundly linked to human progress, and responsibility at a personal, national and international level will be required. And it’s very true that the poor (people and nations) will be impacted the most by environmental change. But he seems to be saying that the only good reason to take care of the natural world is because it belongs to God, who be very upset if we break it. There are much better, less culturally relative motivations for this.

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is[sic] existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this one. No, that is not true. Just look at the environmental debate in the United States. The “Drill Baby Drill” mantra is coming from people who could hardly be described as having marginalized their religion, for the simple fact that they don’t think we will be having future generations to protect! Jesus could come back any day you know. Why plan ahead? And yes, this tends not to include (many) American Catholics, but that’s exactly why I said these remarks are culturally relative.

Let’s look at the other end. According to Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index, these are the world’s top ten sustainable countries. Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Costa Rica, Austria, New Zealand, Latvia, Colombia, and France. It follows that these are clearly the most religious countries in the world.

It’s really this simple: there are large numbers of people who think a) the Earth and in fact all creation was designed just for them, b) God will always be there for us and would never let our Earth become unlivable, that optionally, c) Jesus could come back and bring about the Rapture any day now, and most of all, d) that believing something regardless of, or contrary to, the evidence makes you a good person. The consequences are predictable. The Earth is an endless resource, global warming is a myth, it was all put here just for us, and we’ll all be divided into the Saved and the Damned within the next few decades so it really doesn’t matter how hard we screw this planet up. This is what happens when you take Christianity to its logical conclusion, and since being environmentally responsible takes real effort, it’s not difficult to take the idea this far.

Together we can build an integral human development beneficial to present and future peoples, a development inspired by the values of charity in truth. For this to happen it is indispensable that the present model of global development be transformed through a greater and shared responsibility for creation: This is demanded not only by environmental emergencies, but also by the scandal of hunger and poverty.

These remarks make the pontiff a hypocrite. I am glad the Pope considers hunger and poverty to be a scandal, and acknowledges the environmental importance of addressing them. Of course, overpopulation is one of the biggest causes of hunger and poverty, as well as unsustainably large population growth. But what is the Pope’s position on how to slow down population growth? Well, here’s what he said about condoms while in Africa several months ago:

Speaking to reporters on his way to Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, the Pope said HIV/Aids was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem”.

The solution lies in a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer”, the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.

Condom use is associated with reduction of 80% in the transmission of AIDS. In no way does it increase the risk. If the Pope is willing to spread such disinformation about using condoms to prevent exposure to AIDS, you can probably guess his position on using condoms to reduce population growth.

All in all, the Pope’s remarks are wrong and useless. He fails to understand the true nature of the problem, does not address the actual underlying causes, offers no concrete solutions whatsoever, and approaches the whole discussion from a position of dogma and not science. He doesn’t even say “try to bike to work more often.” This is all from a guy who thinks that secularism will lead to a conquest of nature, but believes in the book that says this:

Genesis 1:26 (KJV)
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.