Monday, April 30, 2007
Ernestine is alive and well
When I was a kid, I used to like Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine. She knew how to treat a customer with style.
“We’re the phone company. We don’t care. We don’t have to.”
I’m sure that whoever designed the new telephone system for our local provider used her as a model.
How do I know? For some reason, one of our long distance calls ended up on the bill from our local provider. $1.93 for a 9 minute call.
So, I phoned their customer service line, and after pressing a gazillion buttons and saying “yes” and “bill” and “other” a few times, I hear the sound of a ‘phone ringing’. Then no sound. Then the sound of the phone ringing again. Then no sound. Then an automated voice saying something like “Our system seems to be having problems. Good-bye.”
Click to read more...
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Mental paralysis.
I’ve got a momentary lull in the frenzied pace that is my normal life, and I can’t do a damned thing with it.
After weeks (okay, months) of working overtime, one medical crisis after another, and a road trip with the kids, I’ve got a couple of days off before I go back to work (and head off to a conference). After juggling so many issues that my brain was going nonstop, my desk was covered with post-it notes, and I resorted to emailing notes to myself from home, I suddenly can’t hold a thought in my head at all. Any noise breaks what little concentration I can summon up; most of the time, no matter where I am, I end up just listening to whatever’s going on (which right now is a Weird Al Yankovic video that the 7-year-old is watching downstairs). It’s as if my head has shut down, and I find myself nodding off several times a day.
I’ve got tons of things to take care of with this free time. I know I do. I just can’t ... move.
Mmmm. Trees.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
so what about that Gliese 581, eh
New ‘super-Earth’ found in space
Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.
The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.
Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.
They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this ‘super-Earth’ lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result.
“Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans.”
The long and short of this and other recent discoveries is that Earth-like planets aren’t all that special. It might be fun to hop over to some religious forums and see if they’re having another round of “are aliens saved?” debates 
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
they did what?
German scientists “manufacture” human sperm
A team of scientists in Germany have “manufactured” human sperm from bone marrow, raising the prospect of mass-producing sperm that can be used in IVF treatment or to restore fertility to men made sterile by cancer therapy.
Such applications are still many years away. But scientists hope to grow fully formed sperm cells in as little as three years.
The research, conducted in Germany, has been published in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology.
The team led by Professor Karim Nayernia, from the University of Goettingen, first took bone marrow from male volunteers. From the samples, they isolated mesenchymal stem cells, which have previously been shown to grow into body tissues such as muscle.
Stem cells are immature cells that can be made to follow different functional pathways.
Stem cells, eh.
a short trip down memory lane
Looks like my home town is serious about showcasing their reinventing themselves into a high-tech place. They’re building a very detailed 3-D model suitable for virtual tours of the town’s center. More on that here, sadly there doesn’t seem to be an English version of it. However, they have a few pages of sightseeing photos.
something you don’t find in many legal filings
I have a certain interest in following Groklaw and this motion is today’s topic:
IBM’S SUR-REPLY MEMORANDUM IN FURTHER OPPOSITION TO SCO’S OBJECTIONS TO THE MAGISTRATE JUDGE’S ORDER ON IBM’S MOTION TO CONFINE AND SCO’S MOTION TO AMEND ITS DECEMBER 2005 SUBMISSION
At the bottom of page iii, you’ll find this:
Other Authorities
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass Ch. IV (Millennium Fulcrum Ed. 1991)
militant atheists are harmless…
As opposed to what happened in Turkey:
Three Killed at Bible Publishing Firm
Christian Converts Live In Fear in Intolerant Turkey
This is old news by now, although the second article linked to has more background information. The first one concisely summarizes it, though:
The country is 99 percent Muslim, though officially secular. Some Turkish nationalists see Christian missionaries as enemies working to undermine Turkey’s political and religious institutions.
This just goes to show that nationalism mixed with religion is a deadly cocktail. It’s not that nationalism by itself isn’t ugly enough, but with religion as a convenient whitewash to salve the nationalist’s conscience, are there really any limits?
My dislike of Christianity (and all the other religions) is not a secret, but physical violence isn’t something that comes to my mind.
“In Germany, Turks residing there have opened up more than 3,000 mosques. If in our country we cannot abide even by a few churches, or a handful of missionaries, where is our civilization?” wrote Ertugrul Özkök, editor-in-chief of leading secular Turkish daily Hürriyet, in a hard-hitting editorial on the murders. “Where is our humanity, our freedom of belief, our beautiful religion?” he asks.
I have never perceived Islam as a beautiful religion. I might have thought differently a couple hundred years ago, when Europeans were quite literally unwashed barbarians compared to the people living in the Middle East. However, this event underscores that while the Europeans eventually reaped the benefits of the Enlightenment, many Islamic countries appear to be stuck in their own version of the Dark Middle Ages.
And yet, all nationalist sentiment aside, Turks were shocked by the brutal murders, which the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quick to condemn. Erdogan wants to bring Turkey into the European fold. But to do so, says Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European parliament for the GreenLeft party who is himself married to a Turkish woman, it must “actively appeal to its citizens to accept people of other religions and ethnic origins.”
In some cases state institutions even help to promote the hostile mood. As far back as 2001, the country’s National Security Council, under then Prime Minister Ecevit, classified “missionary activities” as a threat to national security.
The good news, if there is such a thing in this context, is that while there is widespread hostility towards Christians in Turkey, outright murder is still condemned. With some probability, these murders were intended as a provocation, although it may have backfired. It gets interesting when missionary activity brings the national security card into play. I can see why the reverse is true in Germany, say. There is a large Muslim population that supports a credible terrorist threat to some degree or other and I’m inclined to agree that particularly the more conservative interpretations of Islamic teachings are at odds with German constitutional values. In Turkey, on the other hand, the number of immigrant Christians is vanishingly small, Christian converts are reported to number only about 10.000 out of a population of 73 million, and even assuming that these Christians take positions that conflict with the Turkish constitution or that are at least unpalatable to the powers that be, I need somebody to explain to me how they pose a threat to national security.
I don’t recall a comparable attack against Muslims in Europe, but sadly I expect that such examples can be found with some cursory research. Nationalists spend far too much time telling themselves how great their country is. Perhaps they should do something more useful and help their own homeless, say, to make it a great country for all…
Monday, April 23, 2007
just when you think you’ve heard it all
As Religious Strife Grows, Europe’s Atheists Seize Pulpit (original article from the WSJ, subscription required)
With 40 minutes to go before show time, the 500-seat Alexis de Tocqueville auditorium was already packed. A fan set up a video camera in the front row. A sound engineer checked the microphones.
The star: Michel Onfray, celebrity philosopher and France’s high priest of militant atheism. Dressed entirely in black, he strode onto the stage and looked out at the reverential audience for his weekly two-hour lecture series, “Hedonist Philosophy,” which is broadcast on a state radio station. “I could found a religion,” he said.
Mr. Onfray, 48 years old and author of 32 books, stands in the vanguard of a curious and increasingly potent phenomenon in Europe: zealous disbelief in God.
Being an outspoken atheist in fine in my book, but zealous? That would reek of proselytizing…
Passive indifference to faith has left Europe’s churches mostly empty. But debate over religion is more intense and strident than it has been in many decades. Religion is re-emerging as a big issue in part because of anxiety over Europe’s growing and restive Muslim populations and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy. That is all adding up to a growing momentum for a combative brand of atheism, one that confronts rather than merely ignores religion.
I’m all for confronting organized religion, but I don’t enough about what they’re up to in Europe to form an opinion about it.
the proper way to not believe?
Atheists split on how to not believe
Atheists are under attack these days for being too militant, for not just disbelieving in religious faith but for trying to eradicate it. And who’s leveling these accusations? Other atheists, it turns out.
Among the millions of Americans who don’t believe God exists, there’s a split between people such as Greg Epstein, who holds the partially endowed post of humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and so-called “New Atheists.”
Come again, a humanist chaplain? As a commenter on Dawkin’s site quipped:
“Humanist Chaplain sounds like an easy job. You’re too religious for the atheists, and too atheist for the religious. So who’s knocking on your door?”
Epstein and other humanists feel their movement is on verge of explosive growth, but are concerned it will be dragged down by what they see as the militancy of New Atheism.
Look, buddy, I loathe organized religion. What makes you think I like organized disreligion any better?
The most pre-eminent New Atheists include best-selling authors Richard Dawkins, who has called the God of the Old Testament “a psychotic delinquent,” and Sam Harris, who foresees global catastrophe unless faith is renounced. They say religious belief is so harmful it must be defeated and replaced by science and reason.
I do believe we’d be better off if we get past our predisposition towards superstition, but why am I thinking of windmills?
Epstein calls them “atheist fundamentalists.” He sees them as rigid in their dogma, and as intolerant as some of the faith leaders with whom atheists share the most obvious differences.
Oh my. Fundamentalism in the original sense simply doesn’t apply to atheism; fundamentalism in the broad sense of contemporary dictionary definition is useless, because it applies to anything anybody feels strongly about. Atheism doesn’t have dogma or doctrines in a sense equivalent to the religious meaning; theists are welcome to falsify naturalism—although I’m not holding my breath. Finally, I don’t see intolerance of “some of the faith leaders” as a bad thing.
The tone of the New Atheists will only alienate important faith groups whose help is needed to solve the world’s problems, Wilson said. “I would suggest possibly that while there is use in the critiques by Dawkins and Harris, that they’ve overdone it,” he said.
Here we return to the question of possible alliances. Personally, I do believe that Dawkins, Harris, and the other usual suspects are right on; it’s just that I don’t necessarily share the conclusions that they draw from there and the feasibility of ever getting where they want to go. Religion hasn’t made a dent in human nature and rationalism will fare no better.
Harris, author of “Letter to a Christian Nation,” sees the disagreement as overblown. He thinks there’s room for multiple arguments in the debate between scientific rationalism and religious dogmatism.
I have a certain sympathy for secular humanism, but I will never be a member of any humanist organization. Come to think of it, the “New Humanists” come across just as “dogmatic” as the “New Atheists” and the grand masters, the “Old Religionists”.
But Epstein worries the attacks on religion by the New Atheists will keep converts away.
Oh for crying out loud. The only conceivable converts to “New Humanism” are believers that the likes of Epstein are willing to collaborate with, so exactly what’s the loss?
what came first, the chicken or the T-Rex?
T. rex tissue beefs up dinosaur-bird connection
Foghorn Leghorn would be proud.
The cantankerous Loony Tunes rooster and his brethren appear to be the closest living descendants of the ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex that ruled the world of dinosaurs.
That’s the conclusion of a team of researchers who analyzed a remarkable 68-million-year-old sample of T. rex tissue.
It began two years ago when paleontologist Mary H. Schweitzer and colleagues at North Carolina State University announced they had found bits of soft tissue inside a fossilized T. rex bone excavated from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana.
The finding supports the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs — an idea that until now had been largely based on comparing bone structures.
“This allows you to get the chance to say, ‘Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related,’ ” Asara said. “We didn’t get enough sequences to definitively say that, but what sequences we got support that idea.”
Dare I wonder what spin the cretinists will apply to this?
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