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It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

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Accents

24 May 2008 / / 5 Comments

Currently on heavy YouTube rotation is aspiring actress Amy Walker, presenting 21 accents in two and a half minutes.

Accents are interesting. It’s easy to draw a lot of inferences about people from their accent, even when you’re trying not to. Even linguists aren’t immune to some strange attitudes. There I was, enjoying the clip. Then she got to Seattle, and just for a moment in spite of myself, I caught myself thinking, “Well, that one was easy. She was just talking like a normal person there.” Which I know is silly, because everyone has an accent.

So, at what point did her accent seem least marked for you?

Oh, and if you want to play with accents, try Sound Comparisons out of the University of Edinburgh and the Speech Accent Archive courtesy of GMU.

You’re set up to eat meat, but maybe best not.

23 May 2008 / / 1 Comment

A couple of articles on meat got my attention today.

I once read a book by the Hare Krishna people in which they claimed that people were naturally herbivores. Manifestly untrue. A look at our intestinal bacteria shows that humans have the kind of digestive colonies typical of omnivores.

Dr. Ley and Dr. Gordon scanned the gut microbes in the feces of people and 59 other species of mammal, including meat eaters, plant eaters and omnivores. Each of the three groups has a distinctive set of bacteria, they report Friday in Science, with the gut flora of people grouping with other omnivores.

Read the rest if you want to know more about the bacteria in your inner elbow.

So, since it seems we’re geared for meat and veg, is it time to dig in? Grab a horn and start chewing? Not so fast. Thanks in part to that meat-eating, evolution has given us brains with consciousness and cognition, so we’re now able to surmount raw evolutionary concerns. We can make predictions and plans about the future. And I see a whole heap of ethical and environmental issues around meat, with consequences I’d rather avoid. This article runs off a laundry list of environmental troubles for countries gearing up for greater meat production.

The consequences of China’s new carnivorism have been enormous. Thanks in part to the meatier diet, the number of people suffering physical stunting has fallen from three in 10 in 1980 to half as many today. But because meat is so calorie-dense, rising consumption is contributing to an obesity epidemic that afflicts 100 million Chinese. The production process has itself brought a slew of complications. Rivers of sewage from China’s new “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, overwhelm local treatment facilities. Public health experts are increasingly worried about avian flu, whose epicenter is Asian poultry. And because factory-raised livestock need so much feed—it takes 4.5 kilograms of feed to make a kilogram of poultry meat and 20 kilograms of feed to make a kilogram of beef—China’s yen for meat is jacking up grain prices globally. In fact, because Chinese farmland is already so scarce, and because decades of industrialized agricultural have unleashed huge ecological problems (from chemical runoff to groundwater depletion), China has turned increasingly to imported feed—effectively pushing the “external” costs of its meat revolution onto farms in the United States, Argentina, and elsewhere.

Not a pretty picture. So I like the idea of being one person who takes the pressure off the system. 

Tech thought for the day

22 May 2008 / / 2 Comments

It wasn’t always obvious, but there’s no hiding it in 3D: Fido Dido is a frighteningly misshapen and deformed character. Is that supposed to be hair, or head-mounted tentacles?

CGI isn’t always better.

Award for Excellence in Teaching

20 May 2008 / / 8 Comments

Many thanks to the students who nominated me for last year’s Excellence in Teaching Award. I was awarded a High Commendation for Teaching Excellence. The photo you see here is me with Vice Chancellor Alan Robson, getting the award at the ceremony last night.

It’s very nice to be recognised. I’m usually happy if students don’t fall asleep during lectures, so this award is a very special bonus.

Great Mayans think alike.

16 May 2008 / / 1 Comment

All over the net, people are worried about the end of the world because of TEH MAYANZ. The Mayans knew everything about the universe and the future, though it’s doubtful how much credit they should get, since alien technology might have been involved. They correctly predicted the Harmonic Convergence, which ushered in the current age of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, the Mayan calendar ‘ends’ on 12 December 2012, hence the current Net freakout.

People have been predicting the end of the world for a long time. For reference, here’s a long list of failed prophecies. (Notice how the author of this list seems to think the end is coming nonetheless.)

Let’s examine the claims of the prophets of 12-21-12 (or 21-12-12, thank you).

  • Via Satan’s Rapture: A massive ‘comet planet’ will hit the earth, as predicted by Nostradamus (clever fellow).
  • From Survive 2012: The earth’s magnetic polarity will reverse, causing ‘pure, unimaginable horror’ as food and transport disappear and compasses go awry.
  • On ViewZone: The earth will pass through the Galactic Equator as the major planets line up, causing gravity to go haywire.

I’d like to add one more:

  • Mass amnesia, as the predictions fail to come true and people inexplicably forget they ever believed all that stuff, and go on to the next thing.

Isn’t it great to be rational? It saves you so much worry and trouble. Tell you what. If you’re going to believe in the Mayans, don’t be a wimp about it; do it properly. Perform human sacrifice. Starting with your own dumb self.

Too much credit for the religious metaphysicists

14 May 2008 / / 14 Comments

I must be the last person to read “Why Darwin Matters” by Michael Shermer. I like Shermer, and I enjoyed “Why People Believe Weird Things”. So this book is a general explanation of evolution and a takedown of creationist arguments. It also gets into recent legal actions where ID activists, having come up empty on the science, are attempting to wedge creationism into schools. It’s a fun and interesting read.

But I’ve run aground on this bit where Shermer argues that religious people can ‘believe’ in evolution. He mentions the three possibilities for how science and religion can interact:

  • the ‘Conflicting-Worlds’ model: science and religion is describing the same thing, and one must be wrong
  • the ‘Same-World’ model, where science and religion are both describing aspects of the same thing, and both do a good job of it
  • and the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model (which is basically the ‘Non-Overlapping Magisteria’ argument): that science describes the physical world, religion describes the spiritual, and this can work because the two don’t converge.

Inexplicably, Shermer plumps for the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model:

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. Thus, the most logically coherent argument for theists is that God is outside time and space; that is, God is beyond nature — super nature, or supernatural — and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. God is beyond the dominion of science, and science is outside the realm of God.

And there the chapter ends.

Shermer is careful here. He’s arguing that this is the only plausible road that theists can take, without saying he’s taking that road himself. And yet, by leaving it there, he’s making it sound approving.

You could take a Carnival cruise ship through the holes in the NOMA argument. Okay, if God is outside time and space, he’s outside time and space. What’s he doing creating planets, then? Or dictating books, or appearing to prophets, or healing the sick, or finding your car keys? As soon as he interacts in the physical world like believers claim he constantly is, then the two realms collide, and we can examine things to check for goddy effects. (None so far; keep you posted.)

Not surprisingly, I’m an unabashed ‘Conflicting-Worlds’-ist. But check out Shermer’s paragraph on it:

This “warfare” approach holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing, one being right and the other wrong. In this view, the findings of modern science are always a potential threat to one’s faith and thus they must be carefully vetted against religious truths before acceptance; likewise, the tenets of religion are always a potential threat to science and thus they must be viewed with skepticism and cynicism. The conflicting-worlds model is embraced by extremists on both sides of the divide. Young Earth creationists, who insist that all scientific findings must correlate perfectly with their own (often literal) reading of Genesis, retain a suspicious hostility of science, while militant atheists cannot imagine how religion could contribute anything positive to human knowledge or social interaction.

To read Shermer erecting the scarecrow of militant extremist atheism is particularly disappointing. 

Imagine that he’s talking about Gershon’s equation: 2 + 2 = 4. If this equation ran up against some religious tenet, you’d hear people saying, “Oh, two plus two could equal five in a spiritual way. To say that two plus two equals four and can only ever equal four is some kind of extremist point of view. You must be a militant fourist. Who’s to say that the fiveists can’t contribute something to our understanding? Maybe the answer isn’t five exactly, maybe it’s closer to four. But coming right out and saying it’s just four… well, that just seems a bit extreme.” And then Shermer says, “The only way to think the answer is five is if you believe that it’s five on a non-material plane that doesn’t interact with this one. Therefore, you can be a fiveist, and still accept that the answer is four.”

I’m sure Shermer knows this terrain, which makes his support for NOMA all the more baffling. Is he trying to trick the rubes into thinking that evolution’s okay? In that case, what you’ll get is people making a nominal committment to science being okay, while being ignorant of what science is, or any of its implications. Which seems kind of dishonest to me. 

The fact is, religions are trying to describe the physical world, and they’re getting it wrong, and science is getting it right. And if they’re trying to describe the spiritual world, they’re doing a pretty crap job at that too, since they can’t seem to agree with each other on any but the most obvious ethical points. Science, on the other hand, gives us better and better descriptions of the physical realm, with a way of disproving bad explanations.

Republicans are on record against mothers

10 May 2008 / / 1 Comment

I was amused by this:

Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens

Congressional Republicans force a revote on a resolution for Mothers’ Day in order to snarl the workings of government, but inexplicably end up voting against the uncontroversial and symbolic resolution. I’d love for the Democrats to hang this around their necks in the fall, and ask them why they came out against moms.

But at least they’re not beholden to Big Parents.

Post 500

5 May 2008 / / 3 Comments

How about that? Somehow I’ve thought of 500 things to say. Or one thing, with 500 variations.

500 % 100 = 0, so by tradition, this is an open thread.

Plant rights

4 May 2008 / / 3 Comments

Wesley J. Smith at the Weekly Standard has written an article lambasting the Swiss for their supposed stand on “plant rights”.

Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, that gang of lying clowns who are attempting to take advantage of the uncertainty of science so they can wedge Intelligent Design into schools. I hope you’ll forgive me for spoiling that surprise, but it’ll make the author’s point of view so much clearer if you know that at first, instead of having to wait until the end of the article like I did, when they unveil the author’s identity and you realise you could have put the whole thing in the bin to start. Then again, it is the Weekly Standard.

As a vegetarian, I suppose I feel the same about plants’ rights as meat-eaters do about animal rights. I eat plants because I have to eat something, and I have no problem with doing so because they don’t have feelings, despite what you’ve heard about their psychic powers. Having feelings requires having a brain, and there’s nothing in a plant that corresponds to that kind of structure. On the other hand, I try not to waste plants or treat them mean because I used to read “The Lorax” like every other kid, and someone’s gotta speak for the trees, man. Plus I like to eat plants, and I want to make sure there’s enough of them around for later.

Smith’s discussion of the legally binding nature of ‘plant rights’ is (surprise) misleading. I’ve read the committee report that he mocks as ludicrous. It’s kind of interesting, less of a policy statement than a report on a group discussion. The committee differed widely on what constitutes a good reason to destroy or use plants, and the report explains this up front. It discusses the various views of panel members, but about the only solid conclusion they came to was that plants shouldn’t be arbitrarily destroyed for no rational reason. Which, you know, seems kind of hard to disagree with unless you’re an unreconstructed Dominionist, like Smith seems to be.

Here’s Smith’s take:

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Isn’t it weird that it’s okay to anthropomorphise nature into a god-being that cares for us, but it’s not okay to anthropomorphise a plant? And if you’ve never seen them anthropomorphise a fetus, well, you’re missing out.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

You knew it was going to be teh Athiests, didn’t you? Well, that’s pretty interesting. Let’s take a look at that Christianity and how it ‘upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings’ (courtesy of the Brick Testament):

Slavery: okley-dokley.

Women: keep ’em quiet.

Humans: debased sinners.

Well, I feel special now.

What Smith is saying is what all conservatives from Archie Bunker onward have been saying: everyone used to know their place. People were at the top of the ladder, we ate animals and cut down all the trees we wanted, everyone was happy, and no problems ever came up. Until the ’60s, when hippies created all those environmental problems out of sheer faith, because believing things makes them come true and ignoring things makes them disappear, by the grace of dog. And so Smith tries to contrast New Age woo against good ol’ Abrahamic religion, not realising that both are different manifestations of the same problem: the human tendency to embrace unreason. 

One rational perspective would be this: Even though plants do not show evidence of consciousness, it would still be morally (the report does not say legally) wrong to destroy them arbitrarily. Humans are one species among many, and we have a great capacity for help or harm. Plants have a certain right to exist, as do humans. The way we manage plants (indeed, how we manage everything) needs to be considered wisely and rationally, and with a view to minimising our impact on nature.

All of which is implied by the Swiss report, but you wouldn’t know it by the way Smith pulls the most controversial minority opinions out of the text. A creationist quote-mining? Now there’s a real surprise.

Tip for Nixon’s grave: dance first, then piss.

3 May 2008 / / Comments Off on Tip for Nixon’s grave: dance first, then piss.

Oh, crap. I missed Nixon’s death day celebrations. About fourteen years ago, the mean little man from Yorba Linda went to his infernal reward, and made the world a better place. But he never paid for his crimes, and so neither will any American president, ever again.

Better make up for lost time with a reading from Hunter Thompson, written just after the corpse turned cold.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

The tragic American postscript to this eulogy is that Bush the Younger makes Nixon look good. History may excuse viciousness, dishonesty, and lack of conscience when combined with competence. Bush has none, and throws in ignorance and arrogance besides.

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