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These are my daily “Good to Know” links for 04/22/08 … please enjoy:

World’s Greatest Cunning Stunt | Google Sightseeing

We?ve all been there – the camera is on us, and we suddenly feel a burning desire to impress it. Sadly, not everything turns out how we plan. Check out this awesome stunt, captured by the GoogleMobile!

A chart showing public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries. | LiveScience

A chart showing public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries. The United States is ranked near the bottom, only above Turkey and just below Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria.

The Most Annoying Song Ever, Scientifically Speaking | Gizmodo

Russian-American artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid conducted a poll a few years back of the music people hated the most, and they’ve compiled all of it into a single 23-minute long song odyssey of suck.

Laser Pointers Classed as Weapons in Australia | Slashdot

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald which says that New South Wales will prohibit the possession of certain types of laser pointers, defining them as weapons. Wow.

VitalJacket: Heart Monitor And T-Shirt in One | Gizmodo

Some of the same kind of health telemetry that the French army may be using could be yours in the new VitalJacket product: it’s a smart T-shirt with a built-in electrocardiogram monitor!

Come back for more links tomorrow!!

As some of you may know, Ben Stein has a movie coming out that deals with Evolution. Now, settle down, if you haven’t heard about it, it’s actually about Creationism, and why he is for it. Truly. Check out the Website here, but the big issue is not that he’s spreading false truth, it’s that there are certain things about the movie they’d rather you not know. Scientific American went into them in depth, but I figure I’ll run through them here for those that would like to know.

1. Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.

   What Expelled Says:

   With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

   What Darwin Actually Says:

   With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

   Just a bit of a difference there. Nice editing, guys!

2. Ben Stein’s speech to a crowded auditorium in the film was a setup.

   From the article:

   “Viewers of Expelled might think that Ben Stein has been giving speeches on college campuses and at other public venues in support of ID and against “big science.” But if he has, the producers did not include one. The speech shown at the beginning and end was staged solely for the sake of the movie. Michael Shermer learned as much by speaking to officials at Pepperdine University, where those scenes were filmed. Only a few of the audience members were students; most were extras brought in by the producers. Judge the ovation Ben Stein receives accordingly.

3. Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie.

   From the article:

   As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on “the intersection of science and religion.” They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which “exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy,” to quote from the film’s press kit.

   When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film’s title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL “expelledthemovie.com” on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL “crossroadsthemovie.com”. Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed.

4. The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there.
   
   This one is pretty cut and dry… the guy never worked for the Smithsonian. The relevant part of the article:

   This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie’s case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg’s decision to “peer-review” and approve Meyer’s paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal’s editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last.

5. Science does not reject religious or “design-based” explanations because of dogmatic atheism.
   
   Sorry guys, but it really doesn’t. As the article explains:

   Expelled frequently repeats that design-based explanations (not to mention religious ones) are “forbidden” by “big science.” It never explains why, however. Evolution and the rest of “big science” are just described as having an atheistic preference.

   Actually, science avoids design explanations for natural phenomena out of logical necessity. The scientific method involves rigorously observing and experimenting on the material world. It accepts as evidence only what can be measured or otherwise empirically validated (a requirement called methodological naturalism). That requirement prevents scientific theories from becoming untestable and overcomplicated.

   By those standards, design-based explanations rapidly lose their rigor without independent scientific proof that validates and defines the nature of the designer. Without it, design-based explanations rapidly become unhelpful and tautological: “This looks like it was designed, so there must be a designer; we know there is a designer because this looks designed.”

6. Many evolutionary biologists are religious and many religious people accept evolution.

   Again, anyone involved in a Scientific field can tell you that there are plenty of religious people. From the article:

   Expelled includes many clips of scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, William Provine and PZ Myers who are also well known as atheists. They talk about how their knowledge of science confirms their convictions and how in some cases science led them to atheism. And indeed, surveys do indicate that atheism is more common among scientists than in the general population.

   Nevertheless, the film is wrong to imply that understanding of evolution inevitably or necessarily leads to a rejection of religious belief. Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine, a leading neuroscientist who used to be a Dominican priest, continues to be a devout Catholic, as does the evolutionary biologist Ken Miller of Brown University. Thousands of other biologists across the U.S. who all know evolution to be true are also still religious. Moreover, billions of other people around the world simultaneously accept evolution and keep faith with their religion. The late Pope John Paul II said that evolution was compatible with Roman Catholicism as an explanation for mankind’s physical origins.

So what does this all tell us? It tells us that no matter how much we respect someone (and I have tons of respect for Ben Stein), we should always be skeptical and do research, no matter how convincing the argument seems to be. One more last note on Expelled, you can check out the website, Expelled Exposed here. So, while we’re on the subject of Evolution, the Philadelphia Enquirer had a pretty awesome article about Evolution today, and why our bodies work the way they work (and why there are some quite large design flaws). Here is some of the good stuff they go into:

One argument scientists often make against so-called intelligent design – the idea that evolution cannot by itself explain life – is that on closer inspection, we look like we’ve been put together by someone who didn’t read the manual, or at least did a somewhat sloppy job of things.

Viewed as products of evolution, however, our anatomical quirks start to make sense, says University of Chicago fossil hunter and anatomy professor Neil Shubin, author of the recent book Your Inner Fish (Pantheon Books). And by focusing on our less lofty traits, evolutionary biology can help dispel one of the most egregious and even tragic fallacies surrounding Darwinian evolution – that it moves toward perfection, with man at the apex of some towering ladder.

The theme of his book is that we owe much of our anatomy to our animal ancestors. “Parts that evolved in one setting are now jury-rigged to work in another,” he says. “When you look at the human body, you see layer after layer of history inside of us.” The first layer is what we share with chimpanzees and gorillas. The next goes back to mice and cows, while further down, you get to the relatively underappreciated layers we share with fish – which include the backbone and basic layout of the body.

As for design, intelligent or otherwise, Shubin says the body only makes sense if viewed as a product of evolution. If it was designed, the designer could have done away with some of our relics of the past.

“This designer, if there was one, liked history, and he really liked fish.”

I suggest you read the whole article, and if you’re like me, you’ll be going to look for that book the next time you’re near a book store. I’d say, all and all, science is grand, and I really hate to see people attacking it. I say it’s fine to believe anything you want, I do. Go to church and believe what your holy books tell you, but please don’t make it your mission to invade Science and try to make it match. Remember, it’s called a “belief” for a reason… if you make it your goal to have other things match, I would say your faith is a bit shakier than you’d like to believe, no?

After about 11 hours of server down-time, we’ve back up.  They’re still looking into the cause, it looks like the server was completely down (unpingable and all).  When I know the issue I’ll update this post.

Okay, now I gots me some shopping to do!!

From TransWorldNews:

A massive magnitude 5.2 earthquake has hit the Midwest along the New Madrid Fault Lines, also known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone or the Reelfoot Rift. The fault line is a major seismic zone located in the Southern and Midwestern United States, spanning from the southwest to New Madrid, Missouri.

It is estimated that the fault line has the potential to produce destructive earthquakes every 300 to 500 years. Since the 1812 New Madrid Earthquake (7.9 magnitude) in New Madrid, Missouri, several smaller intraplate earthquakes (earthquakes with tectonic plates) have been recorded from the zone.

The seismic zone runs across Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Here’s a nice picture showing that last time there was a big quake, the place where I’m living (and blogging this from) was affected by it:

Wonderful. Let’s hope we have a little longer before a big one hits!!