Can We Make Real Knowledge as Appealing as Made Up Knowledge?

I came across this blog

The blog name is "Dispatches From the Culture Wars: Thoughts from the Interface of Science, Religion, Law and Culture" by Ed Brayton. The entry I first came across was "S.E. Cupp Hearts Glenn Beck", because I was looking up S.E. Cupp as a follow up to my previous blog about her. Ed starts off with this paragraph.

"Has there been a more annoying debut for a pundit than the emergence of S.E. Cupp over the last few months? All of a sudden she's on every show, from O'Reilly to Bill Maher. A self-proclaimed atheist who nonetheless rages at "the left" for daring to criticize religion, she comes off as someone who engages in relentless self-promotion far more than in actual thinking."

Oops! Ed caught a very important point I missed in my blog. Surprisingly, possibly irrationally, S.E. calls herself an atheist. To some, her "atheism" may make her more credible as she attacks atheists, to me it makes her doubly irritating. I'm getting tired of people claiming to be liberals attacking liberal values with conservative slogans and propaganda. I'm sure I will soon also get tired of people claiming to be atheists attacking atheists with "Born again Christian" talking points. I just assumed she was a Christian, if not a fundamentalist.

S.E. Cupp represents an escalation in the propaganda war, a combination of two ideas. The first is the "False Flag" liberal attacking other liberals. The second idea is the sexy young blond wearing spectacles, which is now very popular among conservatives. S.E. Cupp combines the sexiness and the false flag into a double barrelled attack on liberals.

I listened to a youtube video of S.E. Cupp, in a C-Span interview, giving her thoughts on politics and religion. She stated that she did not believe in a higher power, or a deity, which is why she calls herself an atheist. Then she stated that she preferred George W. Bush to Barack Obama because George was guided by a higher power. The C-Span interviewer: "If you don't believe in a higher power, when why do you admire George Bush for taking directions from it?". I don't remember S.E.'s answer, I guess because my memory works better for things that make sense. And her answer made no sense to me at all. The interviewer persisted, and came back again with a question about the President who takes us to war, making many life and death decisions, taking directions from this deity that you say does not exist. This line of questioning went nowhere, as you can imagine.

Anyway, the popularity of these false front "intellectuals" has rubbed off on me somewhat. I have begun to do the same thing in order to make points about religion. I refer to "my faith" when I probably should say "my lack of faith". I refer to things God said to me, as a rebuttal to things God said to Pat Robertson and others. In effect I have become a Jesus freak who defends Atheism, which is the exact opposite point of view as S.E. Cupp (Atheist who defends born again Christians). I cannot figure out any other way to debate a person who claims that God speaks directly to them.

The essential difference between me and S.E. Cupp (in our points of view) is that S.E. Cupp pretends to be a rational minded atheist defending irrational religion, while not exhibiting any logic or reason herself. On the other hand I take the point of view of a "believer" to question certain Fundamentalist Christian ideas, and obviously I fall short in the "unquestioning blind faith" department. Which must be frustrating to the true believers. Mary Ann picks up on it right away whenever I say "according to my faith..." and she blurts out "What faith? You wouldn't even make it in the door of a bible meeting with your irreverent attitude." She is probably right.

One comment I especially liked in response to Ed's blog was from Lytefoot Oct 22 2010: He is talking about the fact that Glen Beck poses as a teacher on Fox News, complete with old fashioned chalk board, and has convinced many viewers that they are learning stuff, secret stuff the liberals don't want them to know about.

"The question becomes, how can we counter the appeal? How can we make real knowledge as appealing as made-up bullshit?"

Picture: This is my Photoshop concept of a beautiful teacher in glasses posing as a Darwinian Evolutionist, carrying out a crude brainwashing attempt with Glen Beck's chalkboard set. Any resemblance to S.E. Cupp is coincidental. I added the Darwin brooch and coffee mug, and the writing on the board. I also made the teacher somewhat more modest than the original pic.

I Missed Going for a Ride in December

Because of December, I missed my goal of getting at least one motorcycle ride in every month last year. Oh, I have excuses, though. In December southern Ontario had so much snow that the 402 was shut down for 30 hours. But in reality I probably could have got out at least once if I was really serious.

Now I am starting to get a bit desperate. I can tell because I am Googling accessories for the bike. A $700 Mustang seat with a backrest might be nice. But Mary Ann is already mad because she just added up the costs from 2010 and according to her figures I apparently spent about $3000 on going out to restaurants and cafes. It's no use arguing with her that she went with me most of the time. So now I have to choose between a Mustang seat and a King's All-U-Can_Eat Buffet. And I can't eat the seat, so the decision is now made. I don't even know why I was interested in changing the seat anyway, the stock seat is perfectly adequate for the type of riding I do. (Mostly to restaurants and cafe's)

Most of the snow melted a few days ago, so it's tempting to go out right now before it piles up again. But I am worried about running into wet roads and salt spray. Last year I started to find some serious pitting on the Vulcan's wheel rims. It does not matter all that much, as the wheels are rarely clean enough to see the metal. But my worrying abilities have x-ray vision. Just because it's out of sight, does not mean it's out of mind.

It might have been a good day for a ride, but my motorcycle Gang was having an important noon meeting, and I was late so I took the Toyota Matrix. I was making good time down Homer Watson Boulevard until I came up behind a firetruck with the lights, sirens and horn blaring. It was a bit frustrating for a while because I had to disengage my home made cruise control (the Toyota floormat on top of the gas pedal). After a few more minutes I noticed an unexpected advantage. The fire truck was tripping all the traffic lights to green. And also all the other cars were pulling over and stopping to let us by. Anyway soon we were at the end of Homer Watson down by the 401 exit, and the fire fighters shut off the flashing lights and went into the Tim Horton's. I wondered what the heck was wrong with the six other Tim Horton's we passed on the way down here? I guess maybe they weren't on fire. Anyway I got to the meeting on time.

Picture: So what are the clues that I photoshopped the picture? Well, there's no actual Tim Hortons, just the sign. And the firetruck does not have the usual Kitchener paint scheme. And the wiper blades are not the beam type blades I wrote about last month. I don't have a disco ball on my mirror, nor would I ever have one. Or that other unidentified object also blocking the view. And the cars on the road have not pulled over to the side.

Is Science History, or is it Toast?

I have a book called "Unscientific America: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future" by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Some of the public opinion changes are shocking over just the last ten years. In 1999, 47% of Americans thought scientific advances were among the nation's most important achievements. In 2009 that was down to 27%. I think even 47% is a disastrous number for a country like the United States of America. I would think 47% might be appropriate for Iceland or Vietnam, not for the country that sent men to the moon.

I have also noticed the decline in respect for science and scientists in the USA. I remember it being much higher back in 1969, when people the world over were amazed at TV broadcasts of men walking on the moon. But scientists have only themselves to blame for the decline. After all, here we are in 2011, and nobody is walking on Mars. Nobody is even walking on the moon any more. And there are more perceived failures. We have not cured the common cold, or cancer. We cannot predict earthquakes. Cars still can't fly, in fact they can't really go a whole lot faster than they could in 1969. We still don't have regular flights to the moon as promised in the 1969 movie falsely called "2001 a Space Odyssey". We can't predict the future, we don't have teleporters.

Even the things science did give us are suspect. Atomic weapons seem to be getting out of control. We have the internet, whose main claim to fame seems to be porn sites, and it's also a great place to go to learn how to build a dirty nuclear bomb in your garage. Even the greatest scientific invention of all time, the TV, has now become so complicated that my mother can't change her channel without me driving 300 km to reprogram the remote.

Today science has an increasingly influential rival. Think of the advances being made by fundamentalist religions. While nuclear weapons stand idle, paralyzed by political correctness, religious extremists have invented easily deployed "suicide bombers". Fundamentalists also have made great strides in faith healing, and have been able to cure everything from ALS to infertility. They also have answers to questions that remain a puzzle to scientists, like "where does life come from?", "who died to save us from our sins?" and "How did all those animals ever fit on the ark?". Just last week, my sister informed me that Jesus had repaired both of my nieces' cars at minimal cost, just by prayer alone. And last year, he also cured an allergy.

In foreign affairs, while NGO's and government agencies seem to be wasting their time in Haiti, Christian Fundamentalist faith healers can cure up to 300 sick Haitian people a day. How is science ever going to compete with that?

I think one of the biggest blows to science came with the fall of the Soviet Union. There was a Godless society that placed all its faith in science and technology to try and match the United States. When it fell, it was a Godly man, Ronald Reagan who claimed responsibility. And furthermore, the Soviets were beaten in a war against religious extremists in Afghanistan. What more proof do we need that science is a thing of the past?

Picture Say goodbye to the moon. Apollo 17 the last moon walk December 1972.

Minivans May Never Become Cool

Back in 1984 I bought a minivan the first year they came out. It was a Plymouth Voyager, and it had a 2.2 litre engine. I ordered it with a manual transmission for fuel economy, and extra performance, but it was still not really fast or particularly fuel efficient. Its best features had to do with kids, and I had three of them. No door on the street side, so no danger of kids jumping out the wrong side. The sliding door also meant no danger of dinging the car beside us when they piled out of the van in a mall parking lot. And all three had their own window seats, with little opportunity for poking each other during the drive. Finally, it fit in my garage, and in our fairly short driveway. Chrysler called them "Magic Wagons" and they were indeed magic.

I was aware from the start that the minivan did not cut a dashing image out there on the streets. This was never going to be a classic car. James Bond agent 007 was never going to be seen outrunning Russian spies in a minivan, or even seducing the ladies after driving them at scary speeds on mountain roads in the French Riviera. But it was not important enough to give up the practical advantages for the fantasy. However, owning the minivan may have helped later to push me into the decision to buy a motorcycle with six cylinders, as a way of overcompensating.

This morning, I saw a CBC report on minivans in the morning news. "Will Minivans Ever Be Cool Again?" My first thought actually was that the CBC was cutting corners by running a canned piece from a Toyota ad agency. I noticed it was mainly about a new Toyota Sienna ad featuring a Mom and Dad and two kids, with the Mom and Dad doing a rap music video, and saying they called their minivan a "Swagger Wagon". Further mention was made in the video that another maker was calling their minivan a "people mover" and another was calling it a "Man Van".

No matter what they call the minivan, they are going to have a hard time shaking loose the image. These are vehicles that parents buy to drive their kids around in. Even if a young person (say up to 25) bought one of these, everyone who saw them would immediately assume that they were driving Mom's car because they still lived at home and went to school, and they didn't have a car of their own.

I thought it was also significant in the video that the family had two kids. Many years ago, 8 would have been the norm, then it gradually dropped. Two kids is a respectable number these days, and I expect one day the norm may even go down to one. Minivans make most sense for bigger families, (3 kids or more) while apparently families are getting smaller.

I think the cool car today is the SUV. Instead of your vehicle saying "I'm driving Mom's car because I live at home" it says "I live on a mountain top in the Rockies where I shoot moose and grizzly bears, and this is the only way I can get home."

The facts, of course are totally different from the image. Although granted, occasionally I see somebody driving an SUV who actually might fit the image. For example, one person I met had an SUV because he had to drive up a luge track to get to his house. Most people have paved driveways.

I don't know if this ad campaign is aimed at me, but if it is, it is a failure. I have seen many ad campaigns that turned me off over the years, and this campaign also has the effect of making me want to never buy another minivan. "Man Van" and "Swagger Wagon" are horribly embarrassing. Rap music is something I have never had the slightest feeling for except disgust that it ruins real music for everyone.

Here are two examples of Mercedes car ads. The third one is the Toyota ad.
Banned Mercedes ad "Not in this weather" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi47UcyK4Ms
Crazy for a different reason, but at least its work safe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joC5MvzO1_w
The Swagger Wagon commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4

I have not had a minivan since I got rid of the Voyager back in 1996, I bought a Honda Civic with good gas mileage and sporty performance. That was after the kids had basically moved out, or at least I didn't have to transport the gang around with me. After the Honda Civic I bought a Toyota Matrix because the higher door and seating position makes it easier for my increasingly creaky bones to extract themselves from the car.

The last time vans were cool with kids was the seventies, when they were "Shaggin Wagons". If you drove one back then, everybody still assumed you lived at home, but at least you had your own vehicle, and a girlfriend or a shag rug.

Minivan sales are down from over a million in 2000, to under half a million today. The marketing people are going to have to try harder to come up with a winning concept. Let me throw this one out for them, since they are having such a hard time. Promote the idea that driving a minivan makes you lose weight. According to a recent health survey, Canadians apparently think driving the kids to a hockey game is a healthy activity. I know it's not true, but in marketing, you have to go with the flow. Work with the subliminal messages. For example show fat people walking to work and playing hockey, intercut with fit thin people driving minivans. Now there's a winning idea in sales campaign. Remember you sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Picture: I am surprised to see a 1984 Plymouth Voyager in a museum. Mine was the basic model with no wood grain panelling, without even a right side mirror. (each outside mirror was $70 extra) In those days the 401 had only two lanes, who needed a third mirror? But I did need a third row bench seat, and that was $800 extra. http://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/3039372888/

Robert Semrau Found Guilty of Killing Taliban

Robert Semrau was dismissed from the Canadian Forces for killing a wounded Taliban in Afghanistan.

If you support our troops, you may call this "A mercy killing", or "putting someone out of their misery". But if you are in the army, you are taught that this is "Shooting a wounded prisoner".

Why has Robert Semrau been dismissed from the Canadian Forces? Well, the military is really clear on the issue of shooting wounded prisoners. You don't ever do it. There are reasons why, I guess. I can think of two. The first is you don't want the enemy to do the same thing. In fact even if the enemy has done this (and I'm pretty sure it happens in all wars and on all sides), you still do not want to make it a policy to kill wounded and unarmed prisoners. It's also impossible to decide if a person is mortally wounded or not.

The Mark Semrau story smells of distraction to me. Why is the military making such a big deal about something that nobody else would really care about? They are taking an event that, without this trial, would be monumentally insignificant to the average Canadian, and turning it into a nationwide debate with a pretty intense spotlight.

Some of the comments I have seen left at the National Post and MacLean's, have been outright racist, and shameful to most Canadians. Often implying that the Taliban are no better than animals and that normal rules of combat that were OK for World War 2 are somehow inapplicable now. And that our only job in Afghanistan is to murder all the Taliban.

If the military was trying to whip up anti-liberal sentiments in Canada, they have certainly accomplished it. References to "libtards" can be found on web pages discussing this story. Also people are connecting this conviction of Semrau with the Pro-Choice movement. But this was not a case of stay-at-home liberals sitting in judgment of the nice conservative soldier hero. It was an entirely military thing, with no "liberals" or "pro-abortionists" or "anti-sealhunt" tree huggers involved.

The ultimate result of this trial is minimal. Semrau gets to leave Afghanistan, leave the military, and is reprimanded. But at the same time, he is kind of admired in the military and in Canada as a whole. He does not go to jail. I cannot know what is in Robert Semrau's mind, but the final result was not too bad for him, especially if he was getting sick of serving as an advisor to an Afghan Army unit. And I can think of a lot of reasons why he might be sick of what he was doing particularly if he does not like to see wounded Taliban laying there dying slowly.

As a result of this public trial, the Canadian military boosts its reputation as "fighting by the book" and maintaining strict battlefield discipline, which is something they had a lot of unwanted trouble with in Somalia.

The "support the troops" people in Canada get something to work them into a proper rage against Libtards and enviro-weenies, whether or not they were involved in this mess.

In the end, I don't really know whose side I come down on, but it seems to me like almost everybody wins, even the dying Taliban freedom fighter/terrorist. The only ones who have lost anything in this are maybe the liberals who ironically didn't have anything to do with it, but have now got the right wing nut jobs in an even greater frenzy against them.

Understanding Mr. Hitler: a Cautionary Tale

I came across yet another bad image for motorcycling, as if the Hell's Angels were not enough. Apparently Hitler rode a motorcycle in the comic book "The New Adventures of Hitler". If Mr. Hitler likes motorcycles, what else might he like? I wanted to find out.

The following summary borrows from this Wikipedia article.


Hitler became such a hated figure that he can scarcely be mentioned without adding "May his soul be cursed." So now I have that out of the way, what kind of person was he. Well, he was the leader of Germany, and his philosophy was called Nazism. Nazism was based on creating a common purpose among the German people and leading the German people to their destiny. The Nazis were also famous for their determination and ruthlessness in achieving their goals.

So what were those goals? I decided to break Mr. Hitler's interests and hobbies down into three major groups. Good, Bad, and I Don't Know.

The Good (depending on your point of view)

• Motorcycling (not proven)
• economic security
• social welfare programs for workers
• a just wage (also eliminating excess compensation for banking CEOs)
• honour for workers' importance to the nation
• protection from capitalist exploitation (see "a just wage")
• strongly anti-communist
• full employment (from depression to full employment in less than four years. Public consumption increased 18.7 per cent, and private consumption increased 3.6 per cent annually.)
• Private property rights. In 1942, Hitler privately said: “I absolutely insist on protecting private property ... we must encourage private initiative”.
• Building freeways
• Producing affordable cars

The Bad (Nazis are generally considered bad, so this should be non-controversial)

• Militarism leading to expansion of empire and occupation of other territories
• Racial superiority and segregation (and ultimately genocide)
• Dictatorship
• Ruthless exercise of power to eliminate opposition and win wars
• Forced sterilization of poor genetic stock

Controversial

• Anti-capitalist
• Vegetarian in his personal life, but not enforced in the general population
• Strong central government
• No multiculturalism, no political power for ethnic minorities
• Opposed to gay marriage. Any hint of homosexuality at all, actually
• Patriotism (German exceptionalism)
• Both Pro and anti abortion, depending on if you were a Jew (pro) or an Aryan (anti).
• Gun control
• No free market: granting business monopoly rights to marketing boards, to control production and prices with a quota system
• Taxes and financial subsidies: Wikipedia - "also directed the economy; the underlying economic policy — terror — was incentive to agree and comply. Nazi language indicated death or concentration camp for any business owner who pursued his own self-interest, instead of the ends of the State."
• Elimination of Left wing liberal bias in the press.
• strongly enforced immigration policy (i.e. a balance between slave labour camps and death camps)

Religion (wikipedia)

"About religions that preached love, tolerance, and equality “in contravention to the facts”, Hitler said they were false, slave religions, and that the man who recognized said “truths” was a “natural leader”, whilst deniers were “natural slaves”; hence, slaves, especially the intelligent, continually hindered their masters with false religions. Martin Boorman  was an extremely anti-religious Nazi, this does not reflect Hitler's opinions.  Martin said "The task of the priest consists in keeping the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted." (the Nazis killed almost 16 per cent of the Polish Catholic clergy)  

Apparently Hitler had problems accepting the "Turn the other cheek" quote from Jesus.

So there you have it. Mr. Hitler's resume. Any resemblance to persons, religions or political parties, present and past, is strictly coincidental, and no offence is meant by it.

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Adventures_of_Hitler

Problems With the Peer Review System in Science

I have been reading a book by Mark Bowen, "Censoring Science", with the subtitle "Inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the truth of global warming." I have to confess I have not read much of it, and that is partly because what I see in there is simply too disturbing to an innocent person such as myself, to read in big chunks. But while I have been randomly trying to make headway in the book, several related stories have caught my eye.

The first is a study in a peer reviewed Journal, with the hypothesis that remote prayer can help infertile couples conceive. According to the study, fertility rates are boosted 100%.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/health/vital-signs-fertility-a-study-links-prayer-and-pregnancy.html
http://www.ebm-first.com/prayer/columbia-prayer-study-controversy.html

The second "The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method" by Jonah Lehrer, in the New Yorker Magazine, December 13, 2010. This article refers to something called "The Decline Effect". Which means that when a new scientific study is made it's effect decreases with time. To give a simple example (and this is made up, so don't look for it): If a scientific study on ESP finds that there is a person who can predict the next card off a deck 50% of the time, (compared to the average of 2%), then in future studies on the same subject, that figure of 50% will most likely decrease, and possibly drop down all the way down to 2%, thus eventually contradicting the results of the first study.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1

It has been proposed that despite the efforts to eliminate bias in peer reviewed science, the bias still exists. But it drops with time, and not only that, but the bias reverses itself with time.

Why is that so? I think the Decline Effect is fairly easy to understand. Scientific studies that produce no result are rarely submitted to peer reviewed journals. For example, take the remote prayer study. If, say 100 independent studies had been made, and only one showed a positive effect, the one with the positive effect would show up in a Journal of Medicine, the other 99 would not even be submitted. That is the first level of bias. Then, if the study is kind of uninteresting, very few other scientists will attempt further tests on it. The peer review system does not compel other scientists to immediately duplicate any experiment to confirm or deny its hypothesis. So basically we have another level of bias, based on how interesting the experiment is to other scientists. Then, if an experiment leads to a general consensus, the bias swings the other way. That is, if remote prayer was accepted by the scientific community as more or less proven, more scientists would be encouraged to submit experiments proving that it was not true.

Many of these Decline Effects have to do with built in biases in the peer reviewed system. But I would imagine that the more important a study, or the more it makes sense, then the more scientists are attracted to it. And statistically, the more scientists that are interested, the better the peer reviewed system works. That is, you would have more studies submitted. Then you can better eliminate statistical outliers and mistakes. And with more research and debate, the better the understanding of the subject becomes.

We have some noticeable random glitches in the scientific peer reviewed process, when it comes to studies of low interest. I guess we can expect a "Decline Effect" with scientifically repulsive or uninteresting topics such as remote prayer. But with topics of extreme high interest such as global warming and evolution, the mass of research, and related experiments being done should help eliminate statistical aberrations in the system. Especially when those aberrations are directly related to the interest level.

Considering the general assault on science being conducted by the anti-global warming people and by Bible Literalists, all shoddy peer reviewed science is liable to be taken as a weakness of the entire structure of science. Any system, no matter how good, has weaknesses. And as it is exposed to attacks, those weaknesses will become more critical.

Recently we have seen leaked documents from global warming scientists, who seem to be expressing their frustration that science is being gradually undermined by outside forces. We are also starting to see pseudo-scientists finding ways to state that their experiments have been peer reviewed, even though they have not. No, it's not outright lying, it's simply twisting words around, half-truths, and looking for weak links in a complicated system.

For example, a person self-publishes a scientific experiment, then sends their book to an eminent scientist (albeit in another field) and asks for that scientist's opinion, then getting the opinion that "it looks interesting", calls it "peer reviewed". That is not peer review. But is it a lie?

The Peer Review system will probably need to set up a legal defence department one day to protect their good name against infringements. And scientists need to rigorously eliminate statistical anomalies like ESP experiments and Remote Prayer studies.

Just like Disney Corporation protects their Mickey Mouse character, and the Hell's Angels protect their death head logo, I think scientists need to protect their "Peer Review" brand. The world is changing, and science needs to keep up.

Another article about what's wrong with the peer review process and wondering how it can be improved.
http://whitehead.mit.edu/news/paradigm/spring_2008/peer_review.html

Picture: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/p/peer_review.asp