Inspired by this article at Pharyngula:
Nothing reduces the level of discourse like guns, getting otherwise intelligent people to say absurd things. This one jumped out at me:
"People who rely on guns for home safety most often have their guns taken from them, because the criminal is more experienced in this."
This from the guy selling pepper spray, and its about as objective as you'd expect from someone describing a competing product. Burglars aren't looking for a fight, and the vast majority of them faced with a homeowner brandishing a gun are going to do the same thing the Miami burglar did when faced with a homeowner brandishing a sword - run like hell. Only a guy enjoying a PCP high is going to try to grab a gun out of someone's hand.
"Guns exist for one reason only: killing.
What political claptrap. Objectively, guns exist to propel a piece of metal at high velocity at an intended target. The most common target is...a target, a piece of paper with lines drawn on it.
Here is a breakdown of gun deaths in the U.S. Notice:
1) The total is around 30,000. 30,000 out of 300 million. That's 1 person in 10,000. Yes, every death is tragic, but as a national issue, it just doesn't warrant the attention it gets.
2) 57% of the deaths are suicides. So whatever overall risk we all have of dying by gun, if you don't plan on killing yourself, you just cut it in half.
3) The number of accidental deaths is microscopic. So tragic as it is when a child finds dad's gun and shoots her schoolmate, it's irrelevant to a discussion of public policy.
4) Notice how strong the correlation is between the age of the homicide victims and the ages traditionally associated with high crime. By the time you are 45, your risk of being murdered with a handgun is 1/5 what it is when you are 20. It is VERY hard to reconcile that relationship with the idea that its all about the guns.
And while anecdotes might be entertaining, they are illustrations, not evidence. As such, I offer one friend's experience. He was home and heard a noise, looked out the window, and saw a young man who had broken into his car rummaging around in it. My friend's car had been broken into before, so he was extra peeved. He went and got his gun, walked outside to within 30 or so feet of the car, pointed the gun at the kid and yelled "Son! You're about to DIE!". The kid looked up, saw my friend pointing the weapon at him, jumped out of the car and ran like hell down the alley he presumably came from. My friend went on about his day, and no, his car was never broken into again.
No one died, the gun performed a purpose without killing anyone, and it won't show up in any of the crime statistics. From my experiences with, and the story's I've heard from the many real gun owners I know, (as opposed to the TV caricatures that so many here think represent reality), I suspect my friend's incident was far more typical than was the subject of this article, or even your typical murder.
And no, I'm not a gun nut. I own one gun, it was given to me as a gift, and it sits now somewhere in my closet, having not been shot in years. I don't even like guns, and frankly, if they banned them tomorrow I really, personally, wouldn't give a rat's posterior. Here in Texas that practically makes me a commie. I just know a lot of gun owners, and I'm an actuary, and just too much of what is said about guns makes no sense to either sensibility. So a gun in the house is more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. So what? So is the family dog, your sword, or your bathtub. Hell, for that matter, given the really bad drug bust flubs that happen, so are the cops! It doesn't do any good to get good data if you're asking the wrong questions, or getting your information from movies.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Paris Hilton: The Creation Museum Mascot
Inspired here, Paris Hilton is the perfect symbol of the Hamster Creation Exhibit:
1) Fame purchased with a lot of money, sans achievement.
2) Ignorance flaunted.
3) All flash and no substance.
4) Laughable cries of persecution.
5) Far more interesting to the more childlike among us.
1) Fame purchased with a lot of money, sans achievement.
2) Ignorance flaunted.
3) All flash and no substance.
4) Laughable cries of persecution.
5) Far more interesting to the more childlike among us.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
What Real Scientists do with the Design Inference
Here is an excellent example of what real scientists, in this case archaeologists studying bone awls from Shields Pueblo do with a design inference. It's always screamed pseudoscience the loudest that IDers claim to be completely disinterested in discerning the nature of the designer and the purpose of the design. What's the point of the design inference in the first place if you aren't going to pursue those questions?
The 6 Commandments of Science
Part of me hates the idea of putting together a 10 Commandments of Science. After all, science doesn't have rigid rules handed down from on high - that is part of what makes it so effective. Having a list also will likely feed into the "science is just another religion" bullshit out there.
But my hope is that those will be minor compared to the impact of seeing a list of commandments that are both relevant to our current moral standards, and that are adhered to so uniformly by scientists, but not so much by their enemies. So with that, courtesy of a poster named Hoary Puccoon on this thread at Evolutionblog, I give you:
"The Six (and counting) Commandments of Science
1) Thou shalt not lie. Fudging data is a mortal sin, enough to terminate one's career.
2) Honor thy fathers. You must give credit to the previously-published work of other scientists.
3) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Misrepresenting another scientist's work merits public exposure and condemnation. (The creationists never understand just how immoral their quote-mining seems to scientists.)
4) Love thy neighbor. Ad hominem arguments are not acceptable in scientific discourse.
5) By their works ye shall know them. If Linus Pauling is a legend and Watson and Crick are complete unknowns, whose model of DNA is accepted? W&C's-- because theirs is right and Pauling's was wrong.
6) Let your yeas be yeas, and your nays, nays. Scientists must define their variables explicitly, and not fudge and say, 'oh, I really meant something else' if their hypothesis is disproven. (This is actually why theism versus atheism doesn't much matter in practicing science. God, whether he/she/it exists or not, is too fuzzy a variable to produce clear results.)
Fabuluous stuff. I'll add:
7) The facts will lead us out of the land of ignorance. We shall hold no fact above all others. In science, everything is fair game for inquiry and challenge.
More as I think of them.
But my hope is that those will be minor compared to the impact of seeing a list of commandments that are both relevant to our current moral standards, and that are adhered to so uniformly by scientists, but not so much by their enemies. So with that, courtesy of a poster named Hoary Puccoon on this thread at Evolutionblog, I give you:
"The Six (and counting) Commandments of Science
1) Thou shalt not lie. Fudging data is a mortal sin, enough to terminate one's career.
2) Honor thy fathers. You must give credit to the previously-published work of other scientists.
3) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Misrepresenting another scientist's work merits public exposure and condemnation. (The creationists never understand just how immoral their quote-mining seems to scientists.)
4) Love thy neighbor. Ad hominem arguments are not acceptable in scientific discourse.
5) By their works ye shall know them. If Linus Pauling is a legend and Watson and Crick are complete unknowns, whose model of DNA is accepted? W&C's-- because theirs is right and Pauling's was wrong.
6) Let your yeas be yeas, and your nays, nays. Scientists must define their variables explicitly, and not fudge and say, 'oh, I really meant something else' if their hypothesis is disproven. (This is actually why theism versus atheism doesn't much matter in practicing science. God, whether he/she/it exists or not, is too fuzzy a variable to produce clear results.)
Fabuluous stuff. I'll add:
7) The facts will lead us out of the land of ignorance. We shall hold no fact above all others. In science, everything is fair game for inquiry and challenge.
More as I think of them.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Iraq War Injury and Fatality Data. Not Good.
Over at Thoughts from Kansas, Josh has a great post with fabulous (from a statistical POV) charts of the fatalities and injuries from the Iraq war. I wish the news were better, but every regression line is up up up, even beyond rates at the time of the invasion:
"In the time before the 'Mission Accomplished' speech on the aircraft carrier, an average of 3.26 American soldiers per day were killed. An average of 3.71 American soldiers died each day during May."
And as if the data wasn't bad enough, he ends with this chilling thought:
"Whether or not that surge in violence corresponds to a change in weaponry, but surely does indicate growing technical ability of the insurgents. It's hard to look at these data and not remember a comment made by a Marine in Iraq, who complained that when his squad went on patrol after a day of marksmanship training with local police, insurgent snipers got a lot more accurate. The extent to which we are training and equipping our own enemies needs to be investigated. Ideally, before the line of fatalities (below the fold) climbs even higher)."
Somebody do something.
"In the time before the 'Mission Accomplished' speech on the aircraft carrier, an average of 3.26 American soldiers per day were killed. An average of 3.71 American soldiers died each day during May."
And as if the data wasn't bad enough, he ends with this chilling thought:
"Whether or not that surge in violence corresponds to a change in weaponry, but surely does indicate growing technical ability of the insurgents. It's hard to look at these data and not remember a comment made by a Marine in Iraq, who complained that when his squad went on patrol after a day of marksmanship training with local police, insurgent snipers got a lot more accurate. The extent to which we are training and equipping our own enemies needs to be investigated. Ideally, before the line of fatalities (below the fold) climbs even higher)."
Somebody do something.
Creationist Math: 1% = "Many"
One of the weasel phrases creationists like to toss out is "many", as in "many scientists doubt evolution", and "science has been wrong many times in the past". This is a very deceptive semantic trick. "Many", in such circumstances, should be a percentage, because that's what matters. If you hit the target on 100 shots, that's not "many" if you took a million shots, but it is "many" if you took 101. Same with the creationist statements. Sure, creationists might be able to scrounge up a few hundred scientists that doubt evolution, and at first glance that might seem like "many". But when one considers that there are millions of scientists around the world, a few hundred doubters isn't really "many". When you consider that there are over 800 who accept evolution that are named Steve, the creationist claim looks even sillier. It is good to remind IDers/creationists and whatever audience is listening to your debate that:
1) The vast majority of evolution-denying scientists have their credentials in areas of study OTHER THAN those directly relevant to evolution.
2) The vast majority of evolution-denying scientists are Fundamentalists.
Now it is of course true that reality does not hinge on majority opinion. On the other hand, majority opinion is very often a good indicator of reality. When that opinion is restricted to people knowledgeable in the subject, that value goes up further. When that opinion is also in an arena designed (he-he-he) to encourage dissent, where the biggest prizes are given, not to those who follow the group, but to those who strike out boldest, it becomes almost comical to claim that the reason all these people think creationism is a bunch of crap is because of some sort of conspiracy, and downright arrogant to think it is due to some basic error that those outside those areas of study were somehow more able to see than the experts were.
It is far more reasonable to accept that the reason science overwhelming rejects creationism is because it IS crap.
As to the simplistic view of "right" and "wrong" that leads people to say things like "well, science has been wrong before, so how do you know it is wrong now?", I offer this excellent article by Asimov. However wrong science has been in the past, pseudoscience like creationism has always been more wrong.
1) The vast majority of evolution-denying scientists have their credentials in areas of study OTHER THAN those directly relevant to evolution.
2) The vast majority of evolution-denying scientists are Fundamentalists.
Now it is of course true that reality does not hinge on majority opinion. On the other hand, majority opinion is very often a good indicator of reality. When that opinion is restricted to people knowledgeable in the subject, that value goes up further. When that opinion is also in an arena designed (he-he-he) to encourage dissent, where the biggest prizes are given, not to those who follow the group, but to those who strike out boldest, it becomes almost comical to claim that the reason all these people think creationism is a bunch of crap is because of some sort of conspiracy, and downright arrogant to think it is due to some basic error that those outside those areas of study were somehow more able to see than the experts were.
It is far more reasonable to accept that the reason science overwhelming rejects creationism is because it IS crap.
As to the simplistic view of "right" and "wrong" that leads people to say things like "well, science has been wrong before, so how do you know it is wrong now?", I offer this excellent article by Asimov. However wrong science has been in the past, pseudoscience like creationism has always been more wrong.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Brown Recluse
Via Pharyngula we get this great article written by a guy who found a brown recluse in his house, complete with close up pictures and detailed descriptions. Also note the comentary on gila monsters, and a claim that apparently daddy longlegs don't have the worst venom in the world as is often said.
Normally I don't kill spiders. They do me plenty of favors killing unwanted insects, and generally leave me alone. But for brown recluses I'll make an exception. Those that have been bitten by them don't soon forget the experience.
Normally I don't kill spiders. They do me plenty of favors killing unwanted insects, and generally leave me alone. But for brown recluses I'll make an exception. Those that have been bitten by them don't soon forget the experience.
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