Long Time, no post

Sorry for the lack of activity. I've been mired-down by a massive amount of end-of-the semester writing. For some strange reason, after writing for seven or eight hours for my classwork, I just can't muster up the enthusiasm to plug anything in here.

The Discovery Institute and publications

In responding to a recent New York Times article (already discussed in detail here and here), the Discovery Institute's John West once again points to the Discovery Institute's list of "peer-reviewed and peer-edited publications" as evidence that the Discovery Institute really does do science.

That document, like so much that the Discovery Institute puts out, does not paint an accurate picture of what is actually going on. The list has been available in one form or another for quite a while now, and individual entries on the list have been critiqued in a number of locations. I'm going to address the list as a whole here. I will briefly comment on some of the individual entries in the process, but I am not going to take the time to address all of them. For the most part, I will assume, FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT ONLY, that the articles are more or less what they claim to be.

The list contains, by my count, 34 entries. However, upon closer examination it turns out that some of the publications listed in the "Featured Articles" section at the top are duplicated in other places on the list, bringing the number of unique entries down to 31. An additional three books are listed in a section titled, "Books Supportive of Intelligent Design Published by Prominent Trade Presses." These three are neither peer-reviewed nor peer-edited, and therefore should not have been included in the list. This reduces the total to 28.

At this point, it is probably worth discussing the "peer-edited" component of the list. "Peer-edited" is not a term that is in common usage in the sciences. Nobody that I know of considers "peer-editing" to be a meaningful distinction, and it is certainly not viewed as equivalent to peer-review. The use of "peer-edited" serves only to give the Discovery Institute an excuse to increase the number of listed publications slightly.

We will ignore, for the moment, the distinction between peer-reviewed and "peer-edited." We will ignore the fact that the compilers of the list decided to further inflate their numbers by first listing Campbell and Meyer's book Darwinism, Design, and Public Education as a "peer-reviewed book" and then listing each of the book's five chapters as a separate listing. We will even ignore the fact that five of the articles are listed as appearing in "peer-reviewed philosophy journals," rather than in science journals, and that two of those actually appear in books, not journals.

If we do in fact ignore all of the major complaints with the list, and assume that the Discovery Institute folks can actually claim 28 legitimate publications, what does that say for their academic status?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is not much.

To put that figure into perspective, I took a look at the publication lists for two members of my department's graduate faculty: Rob Toonen and Brian Bowen. Both are relatively new faculty, and have been in the department for less than five years. Between the two of them, they have authored 26 peer-reviewed articles since 2000. That's just two fewer articles than the entire body of "peer-reviewed and peer-edited" work claimed as supporting Intelligent Design, and it is five more articles than the ID folks claim for that period of time.

That figure of 26 articles doesn't count book chapters or popular publications. It doesn't count "peer-edited" material. That's just what's appeared in peer-reviewed journals. I didn't pick these two professors because they have authored an unusually high number of articles, either. I picked them because I happened to still have their lab homepage up in a browser tab when I started writing this. In fact, these particular professors had to get their lab set up and running over the last couple of years, which probably reduced their output a bit.

To sum up, the Discovery Institute's list of articles supporting Intelligent Design can best be described as pitiful by any measure. The list includes things that don't belong there, lists some entries twice, inflates the number of publications, adds philosophical articles to the scientific ones, and still fails to match the output from two professors over a five year period. That's why nobody considers them to be serious scientists. If they want scientific respect, they need to set up labs, do research, and get serious about producing and publishing real results.

But at what price?

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice addressed European leaders today, and told them that they should keep in mind the fact that interrogations of terrorist suspects have produced information that has "saved European lives" before complaining about little things like the possibility that the US was running secret prisons in former Soviet Bloc nations.

I think that most people do understand that it is much, much easier to get information out of people who have been removed from the criminal justice system, cut off from access to lawyers, and given no contact at all with anyone other than their captors. Given enough time and effort, you can convince pretty much anyone that they, too, love Big Brother.

The question at hand is whether or not the price of safety is worth the cost. There is a cost involved here, and it is steep. I'm not talking about the financial, although the Administration is doing its damndest to bankrupt the government. I'm not talking about the cost in respect either, although Bush and his people have taken us as a nation to our lowest international approval ratings ever. What I'm talking about is the cost to our values.

"Freedom Is Not Free" is a slogan that I see on lots of bumper stickers. That's not much of a surprise, of course, since I live on an Army base. The risk and the sacrifice should not be restricted to those in uniform, however. There are radicals out there who do want to see Americans die, and they have proven that they are willing to strike at innocent civilians within the United States. These people do act without support from any one nation, and they are much harder to fight than a conventional enemy would be. If we do everything that we can as a nation to protect ourselves - if we seek to protect ourselves by using secret prisons and coercive interrogation techniques - we sacrifice our commitment to human rights. If we do not, innocent civilians may die.

The American people have been denied the opportunity to have any substantial national discussion about the way that Bush has chosen to fight. The Administration, aided by an inert congress, has managed to dodge any domestic debate on the issue. The European community apparently has not decided to let Bush, Chaney, Rumsfield, and Rice make those decisions on their behalf without putting up a fight.

More power to them.

A Letter to the Editor

Today's (1 December 2005) edition of USA Today included a column on Intelligent Design written by Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. The entire column is objectionable, but Thomas' conclusion was by far the worst part. The rest of this post, which also appears at The Panda's Thumb, has been submitted in response as a letter to the editor.

.............
Dear Sir:

On June 30, 1860 a famous (and perhaps fictional) encounter took place between the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. The occasion was a discussion of Darwin’s recently published book Origin of Species, and according to legend Wilberforce concluded his remarks by asking Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father’s side or his mother’s. This bit of ancient history popped into my mind when I read Cal Thomas’ remark at the end of the column that he and Bob Beckel wrote on Intelligent Design in yesterday’s paper.

Unlike our understanding of evolution itself, which has advanced tremendously in the last century and a half, Thomas’ idea of a clever response seems to be on a par with the good bishop. Thomas’ remark, “Maybe we can offer [scientists] some bananas as an incentive. As they eat them, they can contemplate their heritage,” does not have any more of a place in a reasonable discussion than did Wilberforce’s.

My reply to Thomas is more or less the same as Huxley’s reply to Wilberforce: if I had a choice between having a monkey as a grandfather or having as a grandfather someone who has great intellectual gifts and influence, but uses those gifts and that influence merely to inject ridicule into a serious debate, I would, without hesitation, choose the monkey.

Michael Dunford
Graduate Student,
Department of Zoology, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Wow. That's all I can say. Just, Wow.

This guy's morning definitely falls into the "truth stranger than fiction" category.

Carnie Barking

Arrrghh!!!! A new Tangled Bank and a new Circus of the Spineless are up. They are both fantastic, and I forgot to submit links for both of them again! Oh, well. Enjoy them anyway.

The "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," Quotes, and Scholarship

The president made a speech today outlining what the White House calls a "strategy for victory in Iraq." Personally, I call it "more of the same," but hey, you say potato and all that.

In this speech, the president urged Americans to read a new document posted on The White House website. The document is titled, "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," and was described by the president as, "an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing in Iraq." Since he urged Americans to read it, I did.

OK, actually, I skimmed it. I might read the thing in more detail later, but as it stands the document struck me as being basically just a stump speech with a pretty red, white, and blue cover and the National Security Council imprimatur. Most of the document seems to be essentially content-less. ("Our comprehensive strategy will help Iraqis overcome remaining challenges, but defeating the multiheaded enemy in Iraq – and ensuring that it cannot threaten Iraq’s democratic gains once we leave – requires persistent effort across many fronts.") Other statements appear to be questionable (I think the boat's probably sailed on, "Middle East reformers would never again fully trust American assurances of support for democracy and human rights in the region – a historic opportunity lost.")

One of the things that struck me about this document is the way that it is sprinkled with quotes, mostly from the president. The point to these quotes is not entirely clear, but they seem designed to leave the impression that we have been following the same, successful strategy in Iraq the whole time. (Most people would agree with that statement, I suspect, if I eliminated one word.)

Quotes like that tend to catch my interest. They get me to wondering about things like why they were selected, whether or not they have been taken out of context, and if they are accurate. The quotes aren't part of the document per se, of course, but I think that looking at things like that can give you an idea about the overall quality of the scholarship that went into the document.

I decided that it might be fun to take a look at those quotes in more detail. Here's what I found:
First, all of the quotes themselves are in fact accurate. That is, the actual words were used in the same order on a previous occasion, by the person listed as the source.

Second, the dates given for the quotes are not all accurate. Two of the thirteen quotes have incorrect dates. In one case, a quote from a 2005 speech by the president is attributed to 2003:

"Our mission in Iraq is clear. We're hunting down the terrorists. We're helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We're advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability, and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren."

In another case, a quote attributed to a general in the new Iraqi forces is dated August 14, 2005:

“My aim is 100 percent clear: all the terrorists living here, they go now.
Saddam . . . it’s finished. He’s broken. Now is the new Iraq.”

This same quote, however, turns up in a news article dated March 21st.

Some may accuse me of being overly nit-picky with this - after all, they were able to successfully attribute 86% of their quotes, and a B is a very respectable grade - but I think there are a couple of things that make this worth noting. First, if you are drafting a document that the president is going to "urge all Americans to read," you should probably make sure it is entirely accurate. Second, if you can't figure out what year a quote about the war effort is from, it might be a sign that you aren't making dramatic progress.

The third thing that I noticed is that reading the full context for some of the earlier quotes can be quite interesting.

The leadoff quote for the document is from a speech that the president made on 26 February 2003, at the American Enterprise Institute. This was prior to the start of the conflict.

The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet, we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected. (Applause.)

Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more.

That was the quote that was used. The speech continued:

America has made and kept this kind of commitment before -- in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.

In this same speech, the president made a number of other statements that he's probably hoping wouldn't get too much attention right now:

And we are opposing the greatest danger in the war on terror: outlaw regimes arming with weapons of mass destruction.

In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world -- and we will not allow it. (Applause.) This same tyrant has close ties to terrorist organizations, and could supply them with the terrible means to strike this country -- and America will not permit it. The danger posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons cannot be ignored or wished away. The danger must be confronted. We hope that the Iraqi regime will meet the demands of the United Nations and disarm, fully and peacefully. If it does not, we are prepared to disarm Iraq by force. Either way, this danger will be removed. (Applause.)

The safety of the American people depends on ending this direct and growing threat. Acting against the danger will also contribute greatly to the long-term safety and stability of our world. The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East.

There are several quotes in the document taken from a speech the president made at Fort Bragg on June 28th of this year. Looking at the speech, the president says that we have a two part strategy for victory in Iraq:

So our strategy going forward has both a military track and a political track.

Yet the "National Strategy" document, which purports to articulate, "the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003," says that we are persuing a three-part strategy:

To achieve this end, we are pursuing an integrated strategy along three broad tracks, which together incorporate the efforts of the Iraqi government, the Coalition, cooperative countries in the region, the international community, and the United Nations.

Have we only just recently figured out that we need to have an economic plan for Iraq, or does the president think that he can say whatever he wants about our strategy in Iraq, whether or not it is actually accurate, when speaking to the American people? ("Both" is probably a valid answer here, too.)

A May 24, 2004 speech that the "National Strategy" quotes also explains what we are doing in Iraq: "There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom..." Let's see: five steps, two steps, three steps...yep. We've definitely been working from a single broad strategy since 2003. You know, it's not that I mind it when a politician lies to me. I just hate it when they do it so stupidly.

More from the May speech:

In the city of Fallujah there has been considerable violence by Saddam loyalists and foreign fighters, including the murder of four American contractors. American soldiers and Marines could have used overwhelming force.

Our commanders, however, consulted with Iraq's governing council and local officials and determined that massive strikes against the enemy would alienate the local population and increase support for the insurgency.

As I recall, we finally wound up using overwhelming force in Fallujah, which alienated the local population and increased support for the insurgency.

Anyway...

This document that the president wants us all to read doesn't appear to be worth the bandwith that it takes to send it. It is obvious and atrocious propaganda. It is another attempt to convince the public that the president has been in control of the situation the whole time, and that no serious mistakes have been made.

If the president wants to convince people that he has a clue, he is going to need to grow the f--k up and take some responsibility for his actions and inctions. Until that happens, he can expect support for his efforts to continue to wane.

It's been a few days

since I've posted. Sorry about that. I'm in the middle of the end-of-semester rush. I've discovered one of the true joys of being a graduate student. Not only do I get to go absolutely bonkers trying to write several papers for my own courses, I also find myself submerged under a mass of papers that I have to grade.

And then there's my own research, which has ground to a screeching halt while I finish the rest of the academic stuff.

I think, more than anything else in the whole world, I'd like a 25th hour in the day.

Holiday Traditions, old and new

It's been an interesting day. This morning, we went out and had Thanksgiving dinner at the Wheeler Army Air Field dining hall, along with quite a number of other people from my wife's unit. On Thanksgiving, the meal in the dining hall is served by the unit commanders and the senior NCOs, which is a nice tradition, even if it did feel a little strange to ask a full colonel wearing dress blues for a second helping of the cornbread dressing.

Right now we're sitting on the sofa watching a great old holiday show - Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving. I've seen it so many times that I can almost recite the script, and I'm finding my mind wandering onto topics that it never used to - like the cannibalistic implications in Woodstock tucking in to a big old turkey dinner - but the kids love the corny old show almost as much as I used to. And, truth be told, still do.

There's a lot to be said for Thanksgiving and for family traditions.

I hope all of you have enjoyed yours.

Biden on Iraq

Joe Biden is not my favorite senator, Democrat or Republican. He tends to strike me as being a bit too focused on public opinion, and not quite focused enough on his own opinions. Today, however, I think he got it right.

Biden's summary of the dilemma we face in Iraq is on the money: whether or not we like it, we do have vital national interests to protect in Iraq. To quote Biden, "We must ensure Iraq does not become what it wasn’t before the war: a haven for terrorists. And we must do what we can to prevent a full-blown civil war that turns into a regional war."

It is worth pointing out something here that Biden did not emphasize as much as he might have: we are in real danger of losing on both those fronts.

The recent suicide bombings in hotels in Jordan were mastermined by al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and carried out by Iraqis who were dispatched from Iraq to Jordan to carry out the attack. Iraq has in fact become a training ground for terrorists, and Iraq has become an exporter of terrorism.

It was neither before the invasion, administration claims notwithstanding. Saddam was a domestic terrorist of the worst kind, and may have given financial support to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Both of those acts are reprehensible, but neither is an automatic trigger for US intervention. Saddam, bad as he was, was mostly a problem for the Iraqis, not the world as a whole.

The recent discovery of a Shiite-run secret prison in Baghdad, where Sunni prisoners were allegedly tortured, does not bode well for the long-term domestic tranquility of Iraq. This, again, is a situation that did not exist prior to the US invasion.

Biden sums up what this means for the US presence in Iraq nicely: "The hard truth is that our large military presence in Iraq is both necessary… and increasingly counter-productive." He is clearly right on both counts. At the moment, it appears that our troops may well be the only thing that stands in the way of a full-out, three-way civil war. Our troops are also the main barrier (semi-porous though it may be) keeping the terrorists within Iraq from spreading out beyond the borders on a more regular basis.

The situation that has been described looks increasingly similar to a classic no-win scenario - one that is almost entirely of the administration's making.

A nice Op-Ed on evolution.

There are very few conservative commentators that I can stand to read regularly. Charles Krauthammer is one of them. I usually don't agree with him when it comes to the issues (his recent article on gas prices was an exeception), but his presentation is usually reasonable in tone and his arguments well-presented. That is much, much more than I can say for the bulk of the right-wing echo chamber.

His most recent column addressed the topic of Intelligent Design. The conclusion of the article is an absolutely beautiful description of why evolution is compatible with a theistic worldview:

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

The laws of peer review:

Law Number One: For any manuscript or proposal subjected to peer-review, the minimum number of comments (C) can be determined using the following equation:

C = N^R+1

where N is equal to the number of paragraphs in your manuscript, and R is equal to the number of reviewers.

Law Number Two: The only point of agreement shared by all of the reviewers will be that you are somehow wrong.

Plan B, the FDA, and "controversial"

As many of you probably know, the Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday outlining their conclusions following an investigation into the FDA's initial decision to deny Over-The-Counter (OTC) status to the emergency contraceptive "Plan B". The GAO concluded that the decision to deny approval for OTC sales of the drug was unusual for several different reasons. The involvement of high-level FDA officials was unusual, as were reports that the decision to deny approval was made prior to the conclusion of the review process. The decision to overrule lower-level FDA offices was unusual, and the justification that was used in denying approval was "novel and did not follow FDA's traditional practices" (GAO report, page 1).

All of those things are troubling, all of them indicate a level of political involvement in a medical decision that is totally unacceptable, and all of them demand further investigation, particularly in light of the foot dragging that is still going on at the FDA.

Here's the part of the GAO report that I find most troubling:

In its comments on a draft of this report, FDA disagreed with three of our findings. First, FDA disagreed with our finding that the involvement of high-level management in the Plan B decision was unusual because their involvement is likely in high-profile and controversial regulatory decisions. (p.6)

The Plan B OTC request was controversial - politically controversial. It was not scientifically controversial. The joint advisory committee and lower ranking FDA officials from three offices that normally would have had the final say on approving the application were all in agreement that the application should be approved. In such cases, it is the job of the FDA management to insulate the approval process from political pressure. It is not their job to bow to it.

Another couple of weeks, another Tangled Bank...

...and I forgot to submit something again. Damn. That's the downside to this whole grad school thing. You can goof off for a while, and you can try to evade doing real work, but sooner or later something is going to catch your interest, and you'll find yourself actually working. Worse yet, you'll find yourself actually forgetting about your favorite ways to goof off.

Anyway, the latest Tangled Bank is up over at Flags and Lollipops. Enjoy.

A quick note on Katrina

A professor in my department, Bob Kinzie, just forwarded me an interesting quote from Simon Winchester's book on the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The contrast between this and what happened in New Orleans after Katrina is really quite pitiful:

"Just after 5 in the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive tremor picked up San Francisco and shook it like a rug. Within 90 minutes, solders had surrounded the Hall of Justice. By midnight, aid had arrived from Los Angeles. And by 4 AM the next morning, Washington had authorized every possible assistance, dispatching solders, rations and the longest hospital train ever assembled. All this had been done be telegraph and Morse code."

Is it really too much to expect for the Federal Government to be no worse at responding to disasters now than they were 99 years ago?

Applications of Evolution 1a - Hopelessly Watching Extinction

A few months ago, I wrote an article on this blog about the plight of a genus of trees out here in paradise that are being decimated by an accidentally introduced wasp. The trees targeted by the wasps include several species of trees from the genus Erythrina, which includes a species that is unique to Hawaii - the Wiliwili (Erythrina sanwichensis). This tree has a great deal of cultural significance to native Hawaiians, who have traditionally made use of the wood in many areas of their culture.

Just to review, the parasitoid wasp attacking the trees was first spotted back in April in Manoa valley, but has since spread to all of the main Hawaiian Islands. It attacks the trees by laying eggs in the leaf tissues, creating a bump in the leaf called a "gall," which looks like this:

Here's a close-up: The holes that can be seen on the leaf to the right are emergence holes, where adult wasps have emerged from the leaf after maturing.

Too many galls on the same leaf can kill the leaf, and too many dead leaves can kill the tree. These gall wasps can also invade the leaves just as they are starting to open. When this happens, the leaves do not develop normally, but instead form twisted, malformed masses of tissue, like this:

If the wasps are still around once all of the leaves are dead, they can apparently continue this process as long as the tree is able to continue to attempt to put out new leaves:

At the beginning of October, I took pictures of trees from a number of Erythrina species that are found around campus, and on a couple of other places on Oahu. The pictures are not pretty. I've waited this long to post them because I was holding out hope that the leaves might still come back - the trees of this genus are deciduous, and some drop their leaves during the summer. They have not. All of them look worse now than they did when I took the pictures.

There are "before" pictures available for a couple of the same trees that I photographed, via Dr. Gerry Carr's website at UH. As you can see, the differences are drastic:


The two pictures above are of a "Column Tree" (Erythrina sp.). Both pictures are of the same tree, one of three planted in front of Webster Hall on the UH Manoa campus. All three of those trees have been decimated, and I have seen other trees of this species in the same shape at Hickam Air Force Base.

The three trees in this picture are all Wiliwili trees (Erythrina sandwichensis). As you can see, they have been hammered as hard as the column trees. I've seen Wiliwili in this condition as far as the Leeward Coast. The area on the leeward coast is a good 20 miles away from Manoa, as the wasp flies, and the insects have only been known to be on the island for about six months. That's a terrifying rate of spread. If it continues, the extinction of the Wiliwili is all but inevitable.

The Washington Post misses the point

An editorial in today's Washington Post discusses the school board election in Dover, Pennsylvania. The editorial makes a number of excellent points about the nature of the Intelligent Design controversy. They point out that getting thrown out of office is one of the risks you take when you play politics, and that the Intelligent Design movement relies entirely on politics to get their material into schools. They also point out that while the Discovery Institute claims to lack religious motivation, many of the people pushing Intelligent Design at the local level are clearly religiously motivated.

Those are all very good points, and it is definitely nice to see a newspaper like the Washington Post take an editorial position that favors teaching real science. Unfortunately, this editorial also makes a fundamental mistake when it discusses an issue related to the history of Intelligent Design, and this mistake leads to a conclusion that ends up just a bit wide of the mark.

The Post's mistake in relating the facts of the ID movement comes in the second paragraph of the editorial, when they say:

"Because advocates of intelligent design have never been able to convince scientists that their theory has scientific merit, they've relied on political methods to get it into school curriculums."

Both clauses of this sentence are pretty much accurate. Intelligent Design proponents have not convinced scientists that their theory has any merit (scientific or otherwise), and they have in fact relied entirely on political methods to wedge their "theory" into public school science classrooms. The problem with the statement rests with the choice of conjunction. Had the Post joined the clauses with "and," they would be entirely correct. Unfortunately, they chose "because" instead.

The Intelligent Design proponents were using politics to push their material long before they ever even attempted to convince scientists of anything. In fact, they have put virtually no effort whatsoever into arguing for Intelligent Design within the scientific community. In science, you convince other scientists that your ideas have merit by devising experiments to test them, carrying out those experiments, and publishing the results in the peer-reviewed literature.

The Intelligent Design advocates did not shift to using political methods to advance their agenda because they tried and failed to convince scientists that they were correct. They used political methods to advance their agenda instead of trying to use scientific methods to convince scientists that their ideas have merit. This is still the route that they are taking. There are individual graduate students who have managed to exceed the peer-reviewed journal output of the entire Intelligent Design movement this year.

The editorial concludes:

"[Elections are] a strange way to resolve a scientific controversy, but once that controversy has been politicized, it's hard to see how it can be resolved any other way."

I absolutely agree that elections are a strange way to resolve a scientific controversy, but that is not what is happening here. Intelligent Design is not a scientific controversy. For Intelligent Design to be a scientific controversy, they would have had to actually make an effort to do science, and they would have had to actually try to convince scientists that their ideas have some merit. They have done neither.

What they have done is to make a strong effort to use political tactics to push their platform into the schools, and to use public relations tactics to convince people that their ideas represent a scientific controversy. Fortunately, the voters of Dover rejected their political tactics. Unfortunately, their public relations strategy appears to have worked on the editors of the Washington Post.

An update on Robertson

Earlier today, I posted some comments about Pat Robertson's statements regarding the school board election in Dover, PA. Later in the day, Robertson issued a clarification. In the interests of fairness, balance, and full disclosure, I thought it best to make sure I give the clarification as much attention as I did the original statement. The clarification reads as follows:

"I was simply stating that our spiritual actions have consequences and it's high time we started recognizing it. God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in His eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin…maybe he can help them."

I hope that clears up any confusion that you might have had about his statements earlier today.

Two views on war

This Veterans' Day, we find ourselves, yet again, a nation divided over whether or not the war we are fighting is just. These divisions stand out the most clearly when you look at the differing views held by families who have lost loved ones in the conflict. Some feel that we are not fighting for a cause that is worth even one more life. Others believe that abandoning the fight would be the same as abandoning those who lost their lives in it.

Veterans' Day is observed on the anniversary of the armistace that ended World War I, the War To End All Wars. That was eighty-five years, too many wars, too many deaths, and too many dashed hopes ago. Even then, the same differences about the worth of war were present.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae
(1872-1918)

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-Wilfred Owen
(1893-1918)

No matter what our opinion of the war may be, I think we all hope that we will be at peace next Veterans Day.

Some new Dover follow-up

As I'm sure you'll recall, the (outgoing) Dover School Board swore up and down that they wanted to add a mention Intelligent Design to their science classes in the interests of science. The fact that someone died on a cross really had nothing to do with that decision. Religion had nothing to do with it. The fact that the people who wanted it were creationists was purely a coincidence.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the voters disagreed with that decision, and tossed every member of the board who was up for reelection out of office. Apparently, their decision to do this wasn't based on an opinion of bad science, but on a rejection of God. That's the view of Pat Robertson, anyway. The right wing "Christian" wingnut, whose most recent brush with notoriety came when he suggested that the US should assassinate the president of Venezuela, had this message of Christian love and tolerance for the voters of Dover:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

A videoclip of Robertson's statement can be found via People for the American Way. PZ Myers, as usual, also has a take on this one. Frankly, I think his comparison of Robertson's twisted brand of Christianity with a Mafia extortion racket is a bit over the top. He really owes the mob an apology.

Once agan, Pat Robertson proves to be an embarassment to Christianity. I really don't know whether to laugh about this, or get mad. It's so over the top, it's just impossible to really believe.