Truth and the Devil

It was Hubble’s 17th birthday on April 24th and Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a post over the insanely beautiful image of the Carina Nebula that was released today.

At the always wonderful ScienceBlogs a new blog has been added: denialism blog. It appears to cover what is a growing interest for me, deniers and conspiracy theorists. one of their first posts is about general conspiracy mongering and the sheer ridiculousness of their propositions.

Almost every denialist argument will eventually devolve into a conspiracy. This is because denialist theories that oppose well-established science eventually need to assert deception on the part of their opponents to explain things like why every reputable scientist, journal, and opponent seems to be able to operate from the same page. In the crank mind, it isn’t because their opponents are operating from the same set of facts, it’s that all their opponents are liars (or fools) who are using the same false set of information.

The news is in! An exciting discovery in the field of astronomy: a candidate for an Earth-like planet has been found! It’s exciting news for certain, though news that must be tempered. I’ll let Phil Plait explain:

The European Southern Observatory is reporting that they have found the most Earthlike planet yet orbiting another star. It has about 1.5 times the Earth’s diameter, and five times its mass. This makes it the smallest extrasolar planet yet found (two other planets have already been found orbiting that star, with 15 and 8 times Earth’s mass).

Unfortunately, it seems that one of the biggest debates facing atheists online recently has been between those who dislike religion and wish to speak out against it, and those who think those who speak out against it are meanies who need to shut up. Anyway, I just read a recent post in this ‘battle’ from Mixing Memory as well as many of the comments posted there. I certainly think he’s wrong about most of his post, but the one issue that I think deserves further consideration is his classification of the ‘New Atheists’ as white, middle-class ex-Protestants. This implies that atheists are already in priviledged positions, and therefore any comparison with any other social movement is undeserved.

“Are you kidding me?” Watching white, middle-class, mostly ex-Protestant males (the dominant new atheist demographic) compare themselves to feminists, labor movements, gay and civil rights activists, or the members of any other persecuted group fighting for their social, political, and economic lives is just plain surreal. Or worse, as Trinifar notes, it’s just plain manipulative. It does, however, reinforce my armchair psychoanalysis of the new atheists: members of a privileged class who decided to create an identity simply to justify their own persecution complexes.

I have no intention of participating in the rabid posting about the Virginia Tech massacre. I grieve for the families in Blacksburg and can only imagine the pain they’re feeling after losing a child, loved-one or friend. But it is the grief that strikes me most about the national reaction to this event.

Update: It appears that the article I cited was not entirely accurate. The educational report from the UK mentioned these types of problems, but this was not seen as a trend.

I’ve got several old links that I want to talk about, and I mean several, so I apologize for any deluge of posts coming forward in the recent days. My workspace (computer and real life) is far too cluttered, so I hope this’ll help a bit.

First bit, Non-Newtonian fluids. These are liquids, for the most part, but with solid particles suspended in them. When rapid pressure is exerted on them they solidify somewhat. I believe it’s the same principle applied in new liquid armor technologies being developed.

The key component of liquid armor is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties.

PZ links to this audiofile that was originally posted on YouTube.
A kid comes out to his mother, and she doesn’t take it too well. At first she doesn’t understand how someone who has been confirmed can stop believing in God, and then threatens to take him to church every week and not give him any presents for Christmas.
Kind of odd that the kid would record this, but here it is nonetheless.

For those of us who are skeptical of pseudoscientific claims, especially those of the supernatural variety, our skepticism can often be treated as though were limiting ourselves to our 5 senses. Implying that we have another sense that we’re not utilizing or simply ignoring. When asking for evidence of psychic phenomenon, a common dodge might be, “How do you prove photography to a blind man?”

The implied answer is that you can’t, even though we all know photography exists, blind people can’t see the contents of a photograph. They lack the visual sense required. Similarly, only psychics have the extra sense required to perceive psychic phenomenon. Attempting to provide evidence to those who don’t have the ‘psychic sense’ is like trying to prove photography to a blind person.

There was a recent story about new images from Cassini. It showed a hexagonal shape at the north pole of Saturn. Apparently this shape was first identified in 1980 during the Voyager mission, and scientists were excited to see that it has remained.

It’s interesting that when people see a regular shape that there is a sense of something unnatural about it. That maybe it’s unexplainable or even supernatural. Some of the comments on the Daily Mail site are instructive:

With each exciting discovery comes mystery. Which, in my estimation proves that the universe didn’t evolve. It was created by God.
- Frank, Charleston, SC USA