Adding CSI to my list

Christian Solidarity International is one of the few groups that seems to keep the issue of Sudanese slavery alive.

Nick Cohen's blogging for the Spectator!

Nick, I'll make an Objectivist of you yet...

Oh sweet mother of...

This is probably the most depressing thing I have ever done.  I went over to Genocide Watch and downloaded their list of "Genocides and Politicides" since 1945, i.e. since we started to pretend to care about this sort of thing, and went through them.  I discarded anything under five figures of death as chump change.  The answer?

  Forty-three.

  That's right forty-three genocides since 1945 and since we started piously mouthing this crap about 'never again'.  What is wrong with us?

One law for all

One law for all
The NUS riot legitimizes mob violence at a time when that’s the last thing we need.

I see from the pages of this esteemed newspaper that a “third year student from Kings” Mark Reilly’s comment on the spectacle in London is: “I don’t think that the message has got lost because of the violent aspects of the protest […] Democratic channels have been tried and failed”.  You know, there was a certain failed painter in my fatherland with similar views and you may remember how brilliantly that worked out.

If you think that’s a cheap shot, try the following.  Helping out at the OTC’s Remembrance Day services, I and my fellow volunteers were warned to keep a weather eye out for any English Defence League members who had been involved in a recent dust-up involving the burning of poppies by certain members of the Islamic far right.  The conversation, however, quickly moved on to the fact that the principle source of violence in the media recently was the demonstration against fees.

Terrific.  The EDL is planning another demo in about two weeks and now, should their shaven headed members decide to get rough, they will have every excuse.  And should prosecution and condemnation fall on them, they will be able to say, “See?  When it’s a bunch of upper class toffs from University, everyone’s fine with it, but when we do it…”  And you know what?  They’ll be right.

One of the EDL members was described as being ‘clubbed to a pulp’ by the police for his actions.  I can only imagine the sort of self-pitying drivel we’d hear if something similar happened to one of our students.  Is violent hooliganism suddenly okay if it’s done by upper class students from Cambridge but not working class boys from the projects?  My Marxist days are a long, long way behind me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize this sort of thing.

It does no good whatsoever to try to argue that the students’ cause is more righteous.  I’m going to step over the question of whether the EDL has BNP connections, or whether it is simply a group of politically motivated football hooligans – and which possibility is scarier – because it makes no difference whatsoever to this.  We are all equal before the law.  Should I go out and firebomb a car, it makes no difference if that car belongs to Nick Griffin or Nelson Mandela.  Or at least it shouldn’t.

In my youth in the newly free South Africa, one of the most impressive sights to me was that Louis Luyt brought Nelson Mandela to court.  Mandela is a personal hero of mine, and one of the most respected people in the world, let alone South Africa, whereas Luyt is an unpolished Afrikaaner thug with some very questionable associations.  But in the eyes of the law, it made no difference.  And, as furious and
betrayed as Mandela felt, he was not going to spit on the law and the constitution that had been so bitterly won.

“Democratic channels have been tried and failed” – yes, I think I can guess how that little gem is going down in the rougher parts of London.  It is not helped by the NUS and CUSU’s stance that, essentially, violence is bad because it doesn’t work.  There’s always going to be someone who’s going to argue that it does.  So, my message to anyone involved in this mess is: the next time you hear about some ghastly football riot or self-righteously roll your eyes at a BNP demo, and ask how on earth this sort of thing is allowed to happen – take a good, hard look in the mirror.  There’s your answer.

What the...

Top ten transhumanist movies - you include Avatar but ignore Blade Runner?

Transgenic mosquitos

Okay, we don't spray insecticides or DDT, we don't drain swamps (something the Romans knew how to do) and kill off the vector for malaria and dengue fever, we just use genetically modified mosquitoes.  Happy now?  By no means:

"I think it will be 10 to 20 years before transgenic mosquitoes are released into nature. It's very difficult to predict what will happen when we release these things," he added.

"There is quite a lot of research that needs to be done, both in terms of genetics and the ecology of the mosquitoes; and also research to address all the social, ethical and legal issues associated with releasing transgenic organisms into the environment.

 Not for the first time, I realize that Greens prioritize blind nature over human life.

Ancient galaxies in ours

Here's an article from Astronomy.com about the Helmi stream and similar phenomena.

Alien Planet may have come from another galaxy

Amazing.  This has to be one of the all time greatest titles for a Science article.  Love this:

The planet lives 2200 light-years away inside the Helmi stream, a ring of ancient stars that cuts through the plane of the Milky Way. Astronomers believe the stream formed 6 billion to 9 billion years ago, when the Milky Way ripped another galaxy to shreds, swallowing some of its stars in the process. Astronomer Johny Setiawan of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, likes looking at these stars because they tend to have unusual properties. But even by these standards, one star in particular caught his eye: HIP 13044.

Emphasis added.  I love my gothic space opera, but it has nothing on the real world.

Barack Obama, reactionary crank

Nick Cohen nails it.

Another loss to freedom of speech

I am really ashamed of this generation of students.  Another case of thuggish dimwits deciding to shut down a speaker they don't like.

  The other thing is what they have done to the charge of racism.  I am with the Hitch that "It would be or ought to be dangerous if we ever get to the point where the charge of racism becomes so overused and hackneyed as to be meaningless", but that is the point we're at.  Taking a look at this article, I can jump clear over any of the accusations of racism.  Why?  Because if there was any evidence, they would show it.  If it is an article about Nick Griffin, there is no trouble showing racism.

  I notice from her Wikipedia page, that the source of this is her comment that the Canadian police were tying themselves in knots to avoid linking the 2006 terrorist plot with Islam.  Which is all but unarguable.

Yet more blood and soil nonsense

Good grief.  Yes, Man is the Destroyer Of The Earth.  Well, not to worry.  Here are some nice, socialist boys who certainly knew how to take care of the problem of humans, didn't they?  Oh, think that's a cheap shot?  Who do you think was a vocal proponent of the union of man and nature?

I'm sure I'm being unfair.  It's not like his ideas had a major impact.  It's not like the Green have been responsible for mass death or anything like that.  It's not as though they're in favor of suspending democracy, or have violent fanatics.  Perish the thought.

UPDATE: Go figure.  Guess who thinks this is a good comic?  Incidentally, why is it outrageous to say that a subset of humanity is a cancer, a blight, a destroyer, but to say all mankind is a cancer, a blight, a destroyer is meritorious?

Good grief, take two

I have a long standing distrust of Ilana Mercer.  This latest blog entry is an example of what I mean.  She quotes as follows:

“‘We found strong support,’ they write, for the proposition that libertarians ‘will rely upon reason more — and emotion less — than will either liberals or conservatives.’ Blubbery Clintonian empathy isn’t our bag, baby; we don’t ‘feel your pain.’ Where ‘liberals have the most ‘feminine’ cognitive style … libertarians have the most ‘masculine.’ And where others often ‘rely on peripheral cues, such as how attractive or credible a speaker is,’ when formulating opinions, libertarians are more likely to pay ‘close attention to relevant arguments.’

Oh, goodness me.  To read this, you might forget that Ms. Mercer, in a long whine about Wikipedia, wrote:

I predicted libertarians would ooze all over this particular spontaneous bowel movement. I was right.

(Yes, that's me in the comments section.  You may notice that Ms. Mercer has decided to skip over the endorsement of scientists.  I wonder why that is?)

  And when she calls for a "return to reason", it's worth bearing in mind that she takes a militantly "who knows, who cares" attitude towards evolution by natural selection (though she's not above little gems like: "In fact, Rousseau, Darwin and Nietzsche can go places Hitler, Stalin, Chavez and Obama could never dream", proving that there really is no such thing as neutrality here, merely a shady taking of the worst side).  Or, if that isn't blatant enough, she thinks the symbol of the AWB is not "intended Nazi insignia", and that Tereblanche's funeral didn't have Nazi salutes (here's a hint - when the Daily Mail thinks a group is pro-Nazi, they're probably right).

How does such a mediocre group as American liberals keep winning?  They're up against types like this.

Space Marine trailer

This makes me wish I still played computer games.

Diving at 6000 meters

I've been up Kilimanjaro, and the pressure changes towards the top can be rough.  But these lunatics went diving at that altitude.

Here's something cool from the Q & A section:

How do the extreme conditions at the summit lake compare with the conditions scientist estimate existed on Earth when the earliest life forms first appeared (on Earth) millions of years ago?

Asked by:
Dennis Mitchell
, 
8th Grade

Answer: You have the same atmospheric pressure, the same range of temperature, a similar high-UV radiation environment, and the lakes on Mars were probably frozen part of the year. Sedimentation likely occurred the same way in both places, and both would be hydrothermal environments. It is an almost perfect environment.

Global warming boosted forest growth

As might be expected, higher temperatures and more CO2 lead to greater plant diversity.

One such episode in Earth's history occurred 56.3 million years ago and is called the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Within 10,000–20,000 years, the world warmed by 3–5 °C and atmospheric carbon dioxide doubled to around two and a half times the levels we see today. These unusually warm conditions lasted for around 200,000 years.

Not wishing to misstate things:

However, Guy Harrington, a palaeobiologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, warns that any positive effects on plant diversity could be cancelled out if temperatures rise too quickly for plants to adapt. "It's the rate — how fast you're turning up the heater — that's the most important thing," he says.

Not to mention that these effects "may also be limited to the tropics.  That said, it concludes:

Jaramillo believes that there is a more pressing threat to the diversity of tropical rainforests. "Deforestation is the real enemy," he says, "not the increase in temperature and carbon dioxide." 

This sounds a lot like Lomborg's eminently sensible maxim: If Polar Bears are what we're worried about, we could quit shooting them.

Private Eye on John Stewart's fatuous rally

Hat tip Nick Cohen.

An inspirational love of peace and a desire for sanity were not much in evidence in 1989 when Cat – then a new convert to radical Islam – told Geoffrey Robertson QC that he supported the Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie for renouncing the faith he was born into and criticising Mohammed and the Koran.

Quite.

Devil Grass

A newer, tougher breed of grass is marching across the States.

Good night, Spirit

And good work.

Hawking radiations discovered

Physicists have managed to make something that looks roughly like Hawking radiation, the thing that Hawking says, if found, would guarantee his Nobel Prize.  Well, sort of.  As I understand it, Hawking radiation is the result of black holes gobbling down half of a virtual particle pair.  Not the result of trapped light.

Maher on the internal contradicitons of the Left

This is pretty illustrative of the internal contradictions of the modern left.  I agree that American defense spending is, in the words of Francis Wheen, staggeringly strange.  However, Mr. Maher seems to have forgotten the time when he was banging on about the lack of troops and resources in Iraq.

  And on the subject of internal contradictions, Mr. Maher might want to look into the numbers of people who are "in favor" of "doing something" about Darfur, Rwanda etc. and are still in favor of the "peace" crowd and leaving the United Nations to run things.  As the Hitch pointed out, those promises, those statements about 'never again' were actually believed.  People gambled their lives on those promises and they died without even being noticed.

Interesting interview

I've heard stuff about Theo Sarrazin, and I was surprised to find this interview.  Even if the interviewer gets a few things wrong, e.g. "Isn't it racist to maintain that Muslim immigration is connected more strongly than any other with welfare dependency and criminality?"  Er, no, no it isn't, anymore than it's racist to point out, as Theodore Dalrymple does, that Sikhs are one third as likely, and Hindus one sixth as likely as native whites in Britain to have violent criminal records, or that the heroin trade is unknown amongst those two groups.  Sarrazin's assertion might be wrong, might be unpleasant, might be hurtful, might be demagogic - but it isn't racist.  Get your terms right.

And again

Salon is at it again, peddling nonsense about Bjorn Lomborg.   This time they're not even pretending to disagree with Lomborg's science, except in the most unfalsifiable way.  Take this, a quote from originally Scientific American, but one that the author clearly agrees with:

"a political scientist who wades into the vastly complex, unsettled literature of environmental science, scrutinizes a fraction of what is to be found there, and emerges confident that the simple summary he has developed is a fair and accurate representation of the science -- notwithstanding the warnings of experts in the disciplines he skims that he is mistaken."

I shall step lightly over the comment that the science is "vastly complex" and "unsettled", not terms we usually hear.  The point is that this quote is, as we say in science, 'not even wrong'.  What warnings?  By which experts?  No answer is given.  Lomborg works closely with the IPCC report, probably the distillation of scientific consensus on this matter (you can read the entire article and not find this non negligible detail).

  And there's this:

the viewer is likely to come away with the impression that he was fully exonerated of intellectual fraud when the real record is a fair bit murkier than that.

Actually, no, no it isn't.  Lomborg is not guilty of scientific fraud, and the attempt to prosecute him on these grounds was political hackwork of the worst kind.  As, for that matter, this article is.

  There's a reference to Sharon Begley's article.  I've gone through her charges with a fine-tooth comb.  Every single one of them is wrong, and not just slightly wrong, but completely wrong.  As in, claiming-that-Lomborg-omits-references-from-his-book-that-are-included wrong.  This is also the article that a certain bearded puffball took seriously.

Then there's this little gem:

I say "quasi-scientific" because Lomborg was trained as a political scientist and statistician, and has no background in the complex array of hard-science disciplines underlining climate-change research. 

I'm currently reading a scholarly account of genuine academic fraud, Timothy Evans's Lying About Hitler.  Before flaying David Irving, Evans writes: "Irving could not be dismissed just because he lacked formal qualifications."  Quite.  Francis Crick was trained as a physicist, and taught himself X-ray crystallography, not to mention biology.  Whinging that Lomborg has no formal training in climate science is not even the constituent of an argument against his work.

  But in fact, the point is moot, because Lomborg isn't like, say, Climate Audit.  His claim is that he works straight from the published literature of the best available climate scientists.  The question is whether he accurately cites his sources.  The cretinous Ms. Begley to the contrary, he does.

Okay, so what?  This is one more instance of the Superfluous making a nuisance of themselves, one more instance of the flies of the marketplace.  Here's so-what: I'm used to this garbage from media twits, and the great herd of independent minds.  I really, really hate seeing it from scientists.  The fact that the crew of Science Blogs thinks its acceptable to throw out accusations of scientific fraud based on trial-by-media.  Note: not scientific error but of scientific fraud.

This is just too disgusting for words.  What's next?  We judge evolutionary biology by articles in World Net Daily?

Oh good grief...

Apparently the Fourth Reich is located in Ohio.  I'm joking of course.  But I can't get rid of this impression that the Nazi esthetic seems to manage to survive and thrive even completely independently of its noxious philosophy (scroll down for that last one).

  I'm sure there's a lesson here somewhere, but I can't find it.

Ezra's kicking butt and taking names

Ezra on the Canadian oilsands again.  I think he is pretty steamed that Mr. Best-Friend-Of-Iran-and-Burma is trying to prove he's not a total squish by hectoring the Canadians.

"Talk to the Han".  Priceless.

Reading rewires the brain

According to Science.  There's also this:

Researchers have long thought that the brain becomes less flexible with age, so it's also interesting that this region seems to change even in adults who learn to read, he says. "Showing that this area is responsive to learning throughout life is a real contribution.

Another piece of evidence for the voluntary nature of consciousness?

Flander's Field

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.

An immortal poem.  Here is a good commentary.  And everyone should remember this.

Flying pigs update

Pharyngula has noticed Islamic religious madness, which is considerably worse than the American Christian type.  Given Myers's record during the cartoon crisis etc., this is pretty surprising.

One quibble tho':

A young woman, Asia Bibi

A young Christian woman.

  But one hopes that this is a sign that even died-in-the-hairshirt unthinking liberals are beginning to get it.

UPDATE:  Judging by the nasty, petty, not to say vain and dishonest comment section, maybe not.

About those riots in London

The Daily Gut get's it pretty much spot on.

Phil Plait missing the point

Phil Plait manages to have the facts right, but his conclusions wrong.  I like the guy, and this is a type of naivete that one sees a great deal with scientists.  Specifically, it's the title: Energy and science in America are in big, big trouble.  This is based on some of the more irritating Republican candidates' more irritating views.

  Plait's position is mirrored in this rather plaintive post: "Why isn't Science doing better under Obama?"  I'd like to home in on the following term:

Bush's anti-science regime

Ah, yes.  Who can forget the mini-Dark Age that was so terrible that eight years into it, Mario Cappechi took the Nobel Prize back to the University of Utah?  Where he leads one of the premier labs on Embryonic Stem Cells?

The effect of who sits in the White House on America's scientific achievement is basically nil.  Which is readily observable from the fact that the US has not been reduced to cavorting druids, death by stoning, and dung for dinner.

Rather timely, Nature has an article out about how throwing money at science doesn't necessarily get you more science or better science.

UPDATE:  Thought so.

Very good

Another story from Science about how daydreaming and happiness are inversely correlated, and how maintaining a full-on focus on the real world, regardless of how unpleasant it might be, is the surest path to direct happiness and psychological health.  I believe Miss Rand wrote exactly that some time ago.

And more:

Psychologists assume that the mind responds to a stimulus out in the world, but in this study, "it almost looks like the stimulus is irrelevant.

Miss Rand wrote that too.  Atlas Shrugged, published 1957:

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character. 

[...]

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call “human nature,” the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question “to be or not to be” is the question “to think or not to think.” 

Hmmm

One of those controversies.  Apparently a scientific expedition to Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentinia may be in trouble because the researchers may come into contact with the local people who are a little ticked about a Brazilian company bulldozing their homes.  This line caught my eye:

Contact with isolated groups is invariably violent, sometimes fatal, and always disastrous 

I've known 'isolated groups' like that, in the nastier parts of Edinburgh and Cape Town.

Myers is at it again

This reflects one of the things I find irritating about the farcical American left (to be fair, it's a delusion that's shared by the right): the idea that the ranting nincompoops are found only on the other side.  For example, it took me all of two seconds to find the following compilation.  And if Myers wants to bang on about the 'teabaggers', he might want to recall the antics of the 'No quarrel with Saddam Hussein/Sympathy with Al Qaeda' crowd.


  This delusion is remarkably wide spread.  Here's  Bill Maher (whom I quite like) being both incorrect and unfunny in the same way.  As Maher is perfectly well aware the parallel of people on the right who think Obama's a socialist is those on the left who think Bush is a fascist, and those numbers stack up pretty well.  The parallel between those who think Bush is a war criminal, are those who think Obama is a squish and a panderer to tyrants and fascists everywhere, which is the view of Nick Cohen, who actually is a socialist and a decent and respectable one at that, as well as the Iranian and Burmese revolutionaries.  And Maher can't not know that the number of rightwing nitwits who think Obama is like Hitler is dwarfed by the leftwing nitwits who think Bush is like Hitler.  Maher manages to miss the key point about the "rally to restore sanity": that it had Yusuf lets-kill-Rushdie Islam there.  It goes without saying that Myers misses that point too.


Reason weighs in as a voice of sanity.

Oh, for crying out loud!

This edit really irritates me.

 the controversial historian David Irving

I called him the Hitler-sympathizer David Irving, and I meant it.

Ten Days until Prospero Burns!

So says our local GamesWorkshop.  Here is the official trailer.

Skywatching

Trying to catch Jupiter in the sky tonight.  There are some other killer sights to see.

Nice article

My article for Varisty's Comment is now up. Slightly put out by some of the edits, such as the following:

It would be cheap of me to point out that if Ms Fresko’s phantom friend wanted to compare the image in the termcard with genuine anti-Semitic cartoons, she could easily procure one from fine Islamist purveyors everywhere

There's a reason I said Islamic and not Islamist in my original piece.

the spectacle of the nutbag Lauren Booth

I specifically called her a far-right nutbag (this edit just does not make sense).

And

The claims Ms Fresko makes are tantamount to demanding special protection for religious groups

I never wrote this because a) whatever else is true about Miss Fresko's article, she never called for special protection, and b) I don't believe that religious groups "should not have special protection" because I believe they should have extra abuse.

The Hitch on free speech

This speech introduced to to the wonders of Areopagitica.

Old Oxford chum has her own blog

Joanna Bagniewska went to Oxford to me, and her sense of fashion seems not to have abated.

So, who was wrong about removing Saddam again?

Here is an interesting article by Christopher Hitchens. The following caught my eye:

On the morning that I received that note, the Washington Post carried a brief and heart-breaking report. It described a lawsuit, brought to the Baghdad District Court by a coalition of "civil society and human rights organizations." The suit demanded that elected Iraqi parliamentarians give back the salaries they have so far earned, and forego future payments, until they have overcome the paralyzing torpor that has deprived the country of the fruits of its hard-won right to vote. A short while ago, the same alliance of forces convinced the nation's Supreme Court to order the lawmakers to resume their negotiations.

I still have a tendency to rub my eyes when I read about this sort of thing, rather as I do when I read of Tariq Aziz's lawyers readying their appeal and meanwhile complaining about the prison conditions in which their client is being held. Citizens' groups approaching the courts; petitions about the seating of members of parliament; radio and TV networks disputing the issues and the outcome; millions of Iraqis joining the argument by way of cellphones and the Internet; Sunni and Shiite and secular parties competing for the allegiance of the Kurdish bloc in the assembly. … Do people understand the night-and-day difference that this involves?

Hitch, it's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care. Do you seriously think that people who wanted Saddam to remain and then to hand over Iraq to the likes of Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army, give a damn about the people there?

UPDATE: Here is a particularly ripe example. Managing to be almost entirely wrong is not compensated for by an excess of malice.

Humans, Chimps, Neaderthals

This article in Science is very interesting. Analysis of chimp & Neaderthal brains shows that there is a crucial structural difference - bulging parietal lobes and cerebellums (cerebella?). This simple difference ruled out Neaderthals from advancing the way we have.

Another boost towards the scientific basis of human exceptionalism.

Ezra Levant on the Canadian Oilsands

I am very partial to Ezra Levant's argument that Canadian oil is the "Fair Trade Coffee" of the oil world. What's interesting about this debate is that it illustrates just how much the green movement is divorced from reality. Take that dismal line about being 'addicted' to oil. I supposed one might say a diabetic was addicted to insulin. Oil is used because it is an incredibly efficient source of energy and allows us to develop. Which is another thing Nikiforuk has a problem with; the sheer luddite nature of the environmentalist movement is quite clear. His principle beef is that it has allowed development - human being struggling out of poverty, gaining mastery over their lives and their surroundings, things like that. Not to mention that line about the "American Empire". Which colonies does America have, again? And 'oil slavery'. As far as I can make this out, Nikiforuk thinks that the internal combustion engine is equivalent to cotton plantations.

Nice

I like my 40K.

Research integrity

Another good one. Also a very good summary of what fraud is and is not, and certain people might like to take note of that.

Bye-bye Dark Matter?

Interesting article in Science. Apparently there's a new model that may do away with the contentions Dark Matter model. First a quibble:

Dark matter is a mysterious, invisible substance, which makes up most of the known universe.

This sort of prose is just begging for misinterpretation. As I understand it, some of the contenders for the composition of Dark Matter are Black Holes, which we can't see because they just happen to be black, neutrinos, and dust, which are too small. Mysterious is technically true, but it's really asking for the weirdos to misread this.

But that's just a quibble. The rest is excellent:

Harvard University astrophysicist Charlie Conroy and colleagues studied these two particular clusters because they are far from the galactic centers of the Milky way and Andromeda galaxies; that distance has shielded them from cosmic turbulence and kept them—and any putative dark matter—in a relatively pristine state. Using data obtained by other astronomers, the team created computer models of what globular clusters should look like in the presence and absence of dark matter halos. Over time, clusters without dark matter slowly lose their gravitational grip on the stars at their edges, the team found, whereas those with halos hold onto these stars. Both NGC 2419 and MGC1 are missing stars at their fringes, leading the researchers to conclude that they formed in the absence of dark matter halos. The same may be true of most globular clusters in the local universe, says Conroy.

Read it all.

Awesomeness

The Ultramarines movie

The Hitch on Douglas Murray

I had the good luck to encounter Mr. Murray at the Cambridge Union a while back. He was very clear, very precise and very personable. I've now found the Hitch's review of the man and his book. Well worth reading.

Excerpt:

I was simultaneously impressed and depressed by the assignment, because the work turned out to be (a) masterly and (b) written by someone who turned out to be only a few years older than my son. (Mr. Murray was born in 1979, which meant that he had finished the biography while he was still at college.

Keep going for the excerpt from Murray's own writings. I particularly like this:

In a free society nothing should be incapable of being said: the scandal in a society as free as America’s is that so much is not even being asked

These people really believe what they are saying

Richard Dawkins has a fine post up about Roshonara Choudry. One of the things that I like about Dawkins is that he really is a thinker who looks at reality directly. As he says and Sam Harris Echoes: "These people really believe what they are saying".

Social conservatism on crack

Gene expression has a good post up with reference to a Gallup Coexist poll on the subject of attitudes of Muslim versus non-Muslim views on such matters as the acceptance of homosexuality, abortion etc. The figure that struck me is the percentage of British Muslims who think that homosexuality is morally acceptable: 0%. That's right, zero percent.

Now, take a look across the Atlantic to Toronto, would you? Toronto is, quote "one of the most multicultural cities in the world", close quote. It has just also elected one of the most stereotypical conservatives one could find. That is, in addition to laudable goals such as not wasting the taxpayers substance, he is known for what one might call a highly unreconstructed view on matters such as gay rights and AIDS, endorsing someone called Pastor Wendell Brereton who believes, amongst other things, that same-sex marriage will dismantle a healthy democracy. Added to that, his opponent is an openly gay man living with his husband.

Now go back to the start and ask yourself: who do you think voted for Mr. Ford?

Writing about TAM 2010

Yes, this has been quiet for a long time, but it will become necessary for me to restart & expand this. I'm currently working on an article for The New Individualist. It's about The Amazing Meeting and what it implies about the viability of the Skeptics movement. Short version: nothing good, at least if P.Z. Myers is anything to go by. To put it bluntly, I consider Myers guilty of lying, of moral cowardice, of moral irresponsibility, and of abandoning proper scientific procedure for political reasons.