Happy 51 to PZ

In honour of PZ we have just had 51 cm of snow dumped on us. (Doubters and infidels will claim confirmation bias, but in combination with the fact that 51 in base 133 is 666, clearly this is numerological proof of the existence of God.)

Here he is, having dropped in on his cephaolopodmobile to grace us with his presence:

Vermont: Creating Problems on the Cheap

The citizens of Brattleboro, VT, have passed a non-binding referendum proposition directing the Town Attorney to "....draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution...[and]...arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro....". Sounds good to me: and after Brattleboro is done with them, they can be impeached by Congress, and when that's settled, they can be shipped off to the Hague for a war crimes trial.Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Reaction from certain quarters is predictable:

But a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee denounced the article.

"It appears that the left-wing knows no bounds in their willingness to waste taxpayer dollars to make a futile counterproductive partisan political point," said Blair Latoff. "Town people would be much better served by elected officials who sought to solve problems rather than create them."

First, Brattleboro's "elected officials" haven't done anything yet, and likely never will -- the article is non-binding (and probably non-enforceable). But hypothetically supposing that the town council did act on it, let's do a little arithmetic:

Let's assume that it cost as much as $3000 for the town's lawyer to draw up the indictments.

That is one billionth the amount that certain other "elected officials" (the ones, as it happens, who are the targets of the hypothetical indictment) have spent, or otherwise cost the American taxpayer, to invade Iraq -- and "create a problem" that, one way or another, the whole world will be living with for decades. And that's not even counting several hundred thousand people dead.

But yeah: a few American citizens exercising their democratic right to place a question on the municipal ballot are troublemakers who are "wasting taxpayer dollars to make partisan points" and should just STFU.

A Fall of Marsdust

This is very cool: the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter just happened to capture this photo of an avalanche in progress, on the Martian north polar icecap. What are the odds? The article at the MRO site is worth reading for the details, so I won't bother summarizing it here. If you have high-speed internet (or lots of patience), have a look at the high-res version.

To me, it brings home that Mars is a world, not just a red dot in the sky. And unlike the moon, it's a world where stuff happens -- landslides, weather, erosion -- and happens now, not just a billion years ago. By complete coincidence I just happen to be re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars SF trilogy, which covers the first about 150 years of Martian colonization. It's a great story, with strong characters, strong social and political themes, with the planet itself -- its environment, its geology, its history -- being overwhelmingly present throughout.

I want to know: when are we sending humans there to explore the place? When are we sending humans there to live?

A Skeptical Sort of Weekend

....and related themes like science and rationalism.

Zimmer Zinger

The fun actually started last Wednesday, when we got to see Carl Zimmer deliver Carleton U's annual Discovery Lecture. The talk was great, ranging over creationism, a crazy Aussie biologist who plays with some of the most venomous reptiles on earth, science tatoos, the new Encyclopedia of Life, and the joys of science journalism. The most memorable nugget was his account of the phylogeny of venomous reptiles and their diverse toxins, all acting in different ways. It turns out that the genes that make them are each coopted from some other gene that produces a product used elsewhere in the body; eg. cytotoxic venom from a digestive enzyme and things like that. To top it off: afterwards we got Carl to sign our newly-purchased copies of Soul Made Flesh and At the Water's Edge. The only sour note was when the faculty person introducing Zimmer made some remark implying that us over-30's aren't hip to Web 2.0 stuff like blogs. Hrumph.

It occurred to me that I missed my calling: being a science writer would be the perfect career for a dilletante like me. The only problem is that I don't think I'm a good enough writer to sustain a marketable level of prose for a few decades (or even a few hours). Well, maybe when I retire.....

Freaky Friday

Friday night was the HAO meeting, this month being held jointly with the Carleton Secular Alliance and the newly-formed University of Ottawa Skeptics. In celebration of Darwin Day, the theme was evolution vs. creationism. Gilles Messier lead off with a brief presentation on evolution, followed by three "creationists" -- actually Xander Miller, Chuck O'Dale and Your Humble Narrator presenting real creationist arguments. I think Xander's presentation was best, as he rattled off a string of Hovindisms like a genuine charlatan. My own spiel felt a bit disorganized -- I just find it damnably difficult to take a mass of irrational bullshit and compose it into a coherent, connected narrative.

After the presentations the audience had a chance to shoot us down, with prizes for the best and worst refutations. The "good" prizes were books about evolution, of course. The booby prize (awarded to a guy who -- tongue-in-cheek -- just called us idiots) was a Bible.

Perpetual Saturday

Saturday morning found six of us from the Ottawa Skeptics back at the U of O (where at least, I now know where to find parking) for a demonstration of Thane Hein's Perepiteia generator -- rumoured (though denied by its inventor) to be a Perpetual Motion Machine. Theo and I will be writing a longer report for the Skeptics site later, so for now I'll provide just a brief summary of my impressions:

• We did witness the motor acceleration as claimed, together with a reduction in input power.
• He denied that he was building a PMM -- but continued to insist that it violated energy conservation, apparently unaware that that is practically the definition of one type of PMM. He also talked a lot about "violating Lenz's Law", and "regenerative acceleration" (by analogy to regenerative braking used by electric vehicles), and how it "takes energy to stop a car" (no it doesn't: you have to make the kinetic energy possessed by the car go somewhere else).
  
• Between the above and other pieces of the conversation, I take Thane to be sincere -- but very, very confused. He really doesn't seem to understand the terminology he tosses around.
  
• My undergrad degree is in electrical engineering, but I took no more than the basic rotating machinery courses -- and that knowledge now has three decades of rust accumulation. Thus I really can't speculate what causes the effect he is seeing, without a bit of remedial study (OK: I can speculate -- but nothing I want to trot out in public just yet).
  
• However, the attention this is apparently getting from serious academics suggests Thane may have stumbled on something interesting -- a method of increasing induction motor efficiency, or creating a novel speed-torque characteristic -- but I flatly don't believe he's doing anything that would re-write all of modern physics.

Sunday Skeptics

Today was the monthly meeting of the Ottawa Skeptics, held at our house. I only mention it to point out how much time we spent on this kind of activity (and with a bunch of the same people) this last week. Other than discussing Saturday's demo, the only occurrence of interest was that Lieutenant Kizhe bit our new member. Stupid cat.

McPrayer

I've never much liked public prayer, other than in church (and similar intentional gatherings).

When I was growing up, the Lord's Prayer was still said at the start of the school day. In elementary school, the whole class had to say it together, so entire generations grew up being able to recite it (along with the words to O Canada) forwards, backwards, sideways and in their sleep (the last being pretty close to the state most of were in while performing this morning ritual). As the child of agnostics, I went through the motions. My parents could have had me excused, but for some reason did not.

In high school the Prayer was read over the PA system, and we no longer had to recite it. Also about that time, I became a fundamentalist Christian.

And I still didn't like starting the school day with the Lord's Prayer, for a number of reasons. For one thing, I knew that many of my classmates weren't Christians (OK, some of this was according to the fundamentalist conceit that they are the only Real Christians -- but lots of them really weren't Christian, even by non-bigoted definitions). I thought it was stupid to expect people to stand up for some ritual they found meaningless. For that matter, even I found the whole thing pretty meaningless. I was perfectly capable of praying my own prayers on my own schedule, thank you very much, and hearing the same prayer at the same time -- sandwiched between the bustle of coat-removal and the taking of attendance -- really didn't do it for me. To me, sincere faith and authentic expression thereof were what was important, and enforced group participation in a perfunctory rote observance was a travesty.

Now as an atheist, I consider this sort of thing at best an irrelevant waste of time, and at worst an improper intrusion of a particular religion into our common public life. Which brings us to....

....the Ontario Legislature where, ever since 1969, each day's sitting has opened with the Lord's Prayer. However, current Premier Dalton McGuinty proposes changing that custom, and has asked for an all-party committee to study ways of becoming more inclusive. Said McGuinty:

"We're much more than just Protestants and Catholics today. We have all the world's faiths represented here. If they're represented outside the legislature, I think we ought to find a way to ensure that diversity is reflected inside the legislature as well."

There are, of course, some detractors:

NDP House Leader Peter Kormos agreed with the idea of an all-party committee reviewing the use of the Lord's Prayer, but warned Mr. McGuinty that he may face pressure to drop prayers altogether.

“The Premier is trying to show how pluralistic that he's prepared to be when it comes to faith communities,” Mr. Kormos said.

“But I think he'd better be careful because there are going to be folks from the humanist perspective who are going to argue that if you open that box, then let's not have any prayer at all.”

Gosh, Peter: you say that like it would be a Bad Thing. And the humanists might have opinions on it! Hide the children! And I'd always thought the NDP was progressive -- silly me. Anyways, I've got bad news for him -- the nasssty humanists didn't wait for Dalton to "open that box" before commencing their War On Ceremonial Prayer.

Is Kormos (who, according to Wikipedia, is an Eastern-Rite Catholic) cool with Baptist, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, First Nation and Muslim prayers? How about Wiccan? They're all about equally not his religion. Does he really prefer to participate in other people's prayers than none at all?

As I see it, there are only two ways to resolve this in a way that doesn't leave the government implicitly endorsing and/or denigrating somebody's religious views. Either:

1. Have no prayer at all (or at most a "moment of silence" when members can silently pray or meditate or do whatever gets them properly psyched for the serious business of taunting each other during question period and falling asleep during bill-readings).
2. A roster of prayers from any and every faith (possibly delivered by invited clergy) -- but only if said roster includes the occasional reading or meditation from an atheist or humanist source. If everyone else gets represented, then so do I, damnit!

I have some preference for #1, but could live with #2.

And who knows? The MPPs might even like hearing something different every day, instead of the same old same old.

Mug Shot #2

Much prettier than #1, n'est-ce pas?

Seriously: wouldn't you love to have one of these Beagle Project mugs, standing on your kitchen table, full of your morning dose of chai or java? You know you would! And your purchase of one (or several!) will help build and launch the replica HMS Beagle, which is to sail around the world in 2009, to mark the Darwin bicentenary. And she's not just a museum ship: the Beagle crew will include working scientists, carrying on research in the on-board labs.

The fundraising merchandise has more than mugs! Won't you (or your SO) look totally HAWT (in a geek sort of way -- but that's the best kind, right?) in one of these Beagle Project T-shirts?

PZ Myers is so gonna want one

A mechanical, ride-on squid!!

This is just one of the mobile sculptures at Les Machines de L'Ile, a unique gallery of mechanized sculptures in Nantes, France. Others include a 45-tonne mobile steel elephant, on which visitors can ride -- which reminds me of a Jules Verne novel I once read (OK, I confess: I only had the Classics Comics version).

Hat tip and photo credit to Adina at Point of Discontinuity.