S is for Science

Why We Have to be Ever Vigilant

2011-01-08T04:13:00.000-08:00

The British Medical Journal concluded the Wakefield study was fraudulent.

The investigation published in the British Medical Journal by Brian Deer lays out in detail, how the paper published in 1998 by British surgeon Andrew Wakefield, linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism was a deliberate fraud

"They" will lie, "They" will make up what ever "They" can to get what "They" want. We have to be on guard, check every fact, Always question and never rest.

sorry no video here's the links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSAIE_c06HE

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2011/01/05/exp.tsr.gupta.autism.fraud.cnn

The Sun!

2011-01-04T05:17:00.000-08:00

All I can say is Wow!

Link

Ever Vigilant

2010-11-12T03:50:00.000-08:00

Another Post as to why we need to constantly be on guard.

Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law the “Science Education Act” in 2008

...And now, not shockingly, the LFF has already started to use it to chip away at evolution and sound science standards by claiming the state’s biology textbooks give too much credibility to Darwin’s theory.

We the people need to stay on guard at all times we need to keep this kind of nonsense in check. There will always be someone to take advantage of any opportunity to slip in some kind of nonsense. Once it is in, it is almost impossible to get back out.

Read the full article here.

Making of a Scientist

2010-11-10T04:21:00.000-08:00

On our daily drive home form school my daughter usually has several questions about every conceivable topic, yesterday was no different. Being on a quest to blow her first bubble, and armed with a piece of Double Bubble bubble gum, and knowing she has to chew out all of the sugar first, she asks me how much sugar is in gum, and how can you tell.

My mind turns to Archimedes and the legend that he discovered displacement theory. Though to test our troubling gum question we would not be able to use displacement as a measuring tool, we could use a scale and measure the weight difference and get pretty close.

After returning home, chores, homework, and the table set for dinner. We began our experiment.

   We would need;

   a piece of un-chewed bubblegum
   a scale
   sugar
   notepad

Step 1; Weigh gum and record weight
Step 2; Chew gum till no longer any sugar left in gum
Step 3; Weigh gum and record weight
Step 4; Check record difference in weight
Step 5; Add sugar to scale until weighs as much as difference
Step 6; Measure by volume how much sugar.
Step 7; Record data
Step 8; Publish and wait for nobel prize!

This was good fun and took only about fifteen minutes. Heres the data

The un-chewed gum weighed in at about 6 grams.
After chewing the gum didn't even register a gram. Weight of gum after chewing less than a gram.
Total sugar in a piece of Double Bubble bubblegum approximately 6 grams of sugar or about a table spoon.

Doing an experiment with your daughter priceless!

Why We Need to Stay vigilant.

2010-11-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

A couple of post a go I brought up the topic of why we need to be vocal and get our views on science and the world. A recent article in the The Crimson White, the student newspaper of the The University of Alabama, shows how deep the lack of scientific reason goes.

The two columns call for the teaching of biblical creationism along side evolution. They use the same tired arguments and reasons, it's popular, evolution has too many flaws and quote mining from real scientists trying to make it appear that there is a controversy or flaw in the science.

The first column Deals with "Why" the collage should be teaching creation;

...it should be presented as just that: a theory, and the same should be true of evolution.

This statement shows that column for what it is nothing more than a long argument from ignorance. The misuse of the word theory. "it's only a theory", "I have a theory" shows us he doesn't, as many people don't, understand how the word is used in science.

The word theory in science is used to mean, how a system works. If you crack open an manuel on a large peace of equipment, say a printing press or plastic mold injection machine you can find a section in the book called "theory of operation". Does this mean the people of who designed and built the equipment do not understand how it runs? No, it is a description on how it runs. This is what is meant by theory in evolution.

The line that sums up the level of discourse in the first column comes at the end

Ben Friedman is a sophomore majoring in social entrepreneurship.

Where the Evidence Leads; An Apology for Science and Reason

2010-11-09T03:21:00.000-08:00

This month we have a visit form Eli of Chariots of Iron;

We Have some good fun and discuses the validity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ a popular figure in modern Christianity. Being more of a biblical scholar topic not heavy on the science I don't have as much to offer, that doesn't stop me from talking any way. So go and down load it today and listen away!

WtEL

Blue Shift Toooo Cool

2010-10-24T05:13:00.000-07:00

Captured from Unreasonable Faith

Creationism, Young Earth and Politics

2010-10-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

Does anyone really take fundamentalist claims seriously? Really? Why is it important? What should we do about it?

Christine O'Donnell is a perfect reason why this is important.

So is Sarah Palin

Why is this important.

Whooping cough and an epidemic resurgence of diseases that are preventiable with vacines.

Thanks to a campaign of don't trust your local scientist, people like Jenny McCarthy have convinced millions of people to not get vaccinated. Now children are dyeing of a preventible disease.

Thanks to tireless hard work by millians of us and a constant challenge to the Discovery Institute, they are now on the ropes and resorting to "it's all that atheist Hitler's fault" attacks.

What can we do?

Join your local skeptics group, add your voice to the few and make them many.
See an article, a news show, or adds that portray false facts, leads to false conclusions or is just an out right lie, Write, blog or just be vocal. We all need to raise our voice and be heard.

A perfect example;

Discussing details of recent WTEL podcast

2010-09-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

On the follow up from WETL, lets look at some of the claims made about Mutations.

Claims from the creation camp on modern evolution;

1. Mutations only remove information rather than add information.

2. Mutations are always negative and would never make the recipient of said mutation more likely to procreate.

3. Mutations are too rare to have any real impact upon a species.

6. No single mutation could possibly give a species any discernible advantage.

One simple example, Milk. Those of us who are able to drink milk can thank a mutation for this. The cultures who raise herding animals developed the mutation that allows us to digest milk. Since the majority of people in the northern hemisphere have this ability this simple example shows us how a mutation can be beneficial.

Lets compare this mutation with the claims above.

   1. Mutations only remove information rather than add information
   False. The information added is the ability to process Lactase.

   2.Mutations are always negative and would never make the recipient of said mutation more likely to procreate.
     False.The mutation is positive giving the species the ability to consume a new food group, which can give the species food and water during times when there is low food sources, say winter time for example.

   3.Mutations are too rare to have any real impact upon a species.
   False.The majority of humans have this mutation, the largest numbers are in the northern hemisphere. Yet it was only one mutation.

   6.No single mutation could possibly give a species any discernible advantage.
   False. What is the advantage of a mutation like the ability to metabolize milk after our first few years? A renewable food source, calcium, protean as well as a food source that we are able to turn into a storable food. Say cheese just for one example.

When dealing with false claims it is important for us to take apart each and every claim and show how they can be false and misleading.

Was Hitler converted by Darwin, Is Evolution Wrong; same tired old nonsense.

2010-09-08T04:21:00.000-07:00

Marshal and I bring you another "Where the Evidence Leads"podcast.

This Month we interview Don Exodus from YouTube, about David Klinghoffer and the article in the "Huff" Huffington Post, about , of course, Darwin and Hitler and how Hitler was a quire boy until he read Origin of Species. I contend that the Huff is a online rag and Marshal contends that it's not, don't tell him I think he probably is right I rarely ever read it. We go on to discuss another website and more tired old arguments against evolution. marshal boiled down the long list to just a few we discuss them on the show and I will take them apart one at a time in future posts.

1. Mutations only remove information rather than add information.

2. Mutations are always negative and would never make the recipient of

said mutation more likely to procreate.

3. Mutations are too rare to have any real impact upon a species.

4. Most organs and biological features are far to complex to be the

result of random mutations. (Irreducible complicity).

5. The Cambrian Explosion itself disproves the notion that life

evolves slowly. In the span of 20 million years we witnessed the

development of most complex life forms; where prior all life as simple

single celled life.

6. No single mutation could possibly give a species any discernible

advantage.

7. Punctuated equilibrium has been demonstrated to be impossible.

8. DNA or RNA could never randomly come into existence. Life could

never have formed without a designer. (note: not related to evolution a

common tactic)

9. The second law of thermo dynamics means that life is impossible.

(my note: Obviously not true because were it life would be impossible

on earth whether creationism or evolution were true).

10. The sun is not enough to overcome entropy. “Raw energy from the

sun, if not for the ability of living things to convert it to useful

energy such as sugars, proteins etc. would be a destroyer of life. In

many of the scenarios of primitive life the UV radiation is looked as

the driver of the mutations need for evolution, but it conversely

would destroy the organism as well if not protected. In fact the

mutation rate being very slow and the energy being very fast the

destruction would be very many times faster than the creation. Raw

energy from the sun, cannot create the specified complexity needed for

life. It can only cause complexity to be lost in mutations. In the

labs scientists use sophisticated equipment to polymerize proteins in

the right way. If sunlight were to enter this process it would

destroy the proteins.” ( from http://www.evanwiggs.com) (note: sounds

like his conclusions are mere assertions to me).

11. The Big Bang is false. (note: not related to evolution).

12. “The fossil record does not show an increasing complexity.

Evolutionist Dan McShea of the University of Michigan had approached

this question in a detailed study of the backbones of creatures that

evolutionists believe represent ancestor – descendant pairs. He wanted

to see if the ‘descendant’ was more complex than the ‘ancestor’ on the

average for each case. What he found was no trend at all. Other

scientists studied the shells of ammonoids, a spiral shelled creature,

to see if apparently related types got more complex higher in the rock

strata and found there was absolutely no trend. Creationists would

expect this result of these studies. McShea said: “Everybody knows

that organisms get more complex as they evolve. The only trouble with

what everyone knows is that there is no evidence it’s true”

(http://www.evanwiggs.com/) (note: this argument contradicts the claims

about the Cambrian Explosion about the rate at which life simple to

complex.)

13. Where are the transitional fossils?

14. The theories regaurding Bird evolution are fabrications.

• Archaeopteryx, which has been shown as a fully formed bird has been

dated as evolving before many of the dinosaurs with allegedly

primitive feathers.

• The Archaeoraptor hoax from China in 1999 caused a cloud of “faked

fossil’ that hangs over everything coming out of China. (note: a

single incident of fraud completely discredits all subsequent claims?

Wonder if he would apply this same standard to Christianity?)

• Scale cells could never have evolved into feather cells.

Design, what does it mean to be designed.

2010-06-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

We all know what it means to be designed don't we?

Marshal, from Agnostic Salvation Hour, and I just finished another podcast for, Where the Evidence Leads. In this podcast we discuss the book, A Lawyers Case for God. One of the arguments the author uses is when you see design you recognize it, and uses this argument for proof that the universe shows signs of being designed and thusly created by a designer, namely god.

So how do we determine if something has been designed?
In the poorly written A Lawyer's Case for a God. In this book the argument goes something like this, If you spied a robot lying in the sand you would know it was designed. Then the writer implies the universe shows signs of design so therefor it is designed and that means a designer. The Intelligent Design or ID for short, uses the same poor logic with life on earth.

So how would we know the robot is designed. I mean it seams obvious if you just look at it. Ok, so it does look like something made. What exactly makes it look that way. Well it's made of materials that we recognize as man made, metal, plastic and glass. Next we see it is held together by manufactured fasteners, such as screws, nuts and bolts. What else do we notice? Most every one who makes something from crafts to cars, puts there mark on it. Paintings get signed, buildings have a cornerstones, almost everything will have a mark on it. So we look for a manufactures mark, an icon, symbol or just the made by sticker. Yet there is more evidence, when something is made we can trace it back to the manufacturer, often we can find where, when and even who made the item. Now we know with out a doubt it was made by some one and there for it has a creator or designer.

When we "see" that an item is designed we go off of more information than just the look of the item. Why is this important? We often see things in nature that is seemingly designed. In the American rain-forests, in some areas, the ground does not have very good soil. In these places seeds grow out of decaying plants better than in the ground. This has led to explorers believing the forests were planted. They would see old trees in a straight line or row. This defied explanations until further investigation reveled the answer. When a tree dies and falls, seeds grow from the dead tree. As years go by the old tree rots and falls away leaving behind a straight row of trees. From simple observation the trees looked planted, or designed like a garden. On closer examination the condition as to what causes the appearance, show up. If it had been a garden or planed forest there would be other signs such as left over items like broken forgotten tools. Possibly we would find evidence that the ground was landscaped, like the mound builders. There would be other evidence to be found, to support the supposition that it was designed.

This logic by analogy is often used when the I.D. group make claims like "DNA is a code" and if it is a code then it is designed. This is nothing more than pseudoscience by analogy.

Lets take the false statement apart. "DNA is a code" the actual quote should be DNA is like a code, in that it has some traits that behave like a code. DNA is not a code it is a molecule. The analogy is to help others understand what is going on so we use examples that resemble what we are talking about. So saying that DNA is a code and all other codes have a creator then DNA is created or designed.

Another example we can use is a painting. We know a painting when we see one right? Sure it has some kind of canvas often a would frame, nails to hold the frame together, staples to hold the canvas on the frame plus there will almost always be a signature. What about other paintings or pictures in nature as the one I've shown here... not only does it show a mans face but the model was listening to an ipod. LOL

Mr Diety

2010-05-26T04:33:00.001-07:00

nuff said

Everyone Clap for Hand Fish

2010-05-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

Hand fish are an extremely rare and unusual fish, using there fins as hands to move around.
Examples like this show how the diversity of life is evidence for the evolution,
Unfortunately we are still bombarded with poor logic and sometimes just plain ignorance when it comes to the natural world.

This looks like somthing from a fifties era horror movie.

Synthetic Life or Assembly

2010-05-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

Synthetic Life or is it assembly?

I defiantly see it as assembly. What has essentially happened is from a not so good movie (albiet a better real life story) Tucker and his car. when they first built it they used off the shelf car parts with a new body and used the car to help get funding to build a whole new car.

Now this only works as an analogy. What really was really done was that pieces of dna were assembly and then used to replace the dna in an already functional cell. That is where it gets really amazing, the cell worked.

So now we have a brand new kind of life. What really is fascinating is this is just the first step. Soon there will be Wholly new life forms and quite possibly made from different building blocks.

So what could this seemingly Frankenstein concept really do for us to help. One we can use this type of technology to make viruses that cure cancer, as well as a host of other diseases. How about an organism that breaks down CO2 faster better, and can be used to filter coal burning power plants. Instead of changing an organism's existing dna we now may be able to completely build it from the ground up.

For more info see links below.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7751164/We-need-a-real-debate-about-Synthia.html
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/631
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=off&q=craig+venter+synthetic+life&aq=1z&aqi=g-z3g-c1g6&aql=&oq=Craig+Venter&gs_rfai=
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthetic_genome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHIocNOHd7A&feature=related

Science Still Rules in Missouri

2010-05-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

Recently the was another very sneaky bill set up to allow creation nonsense in Missouri class rooms
House Bill 1651. House Bill 1651 died before being assigned to a committee. Three cheers for MO!

Cover of Nature

2010-05-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Marrellomorph Arthropod, as shown on the cover of Nature, the premier weekly science news magazine.
Soft bodied fossils are the rarest of fossils and this on fills in a thirty million year gap, previously thought to have died of at the end of the Cambrian era.
This fossil was found in southeastern Morocco at the Fezouata Formations.

More on the National Day of Prayer

2010-05-11T04:48:00.000-07:00

A Clear concise rebuttal

National Day of Prayer: still we fumble forward.

2010-05-09T03:08:00.000-07:00

I get emails;
The emails have, over time dwindled with the mighty help of Snopes. Yet I still have a few die hards telling me our President is really a Muslim, A certain senator is demanding a bigger plane, so on and so on. Sometimes politely sometimes not so politely I inform the sender and all CC, that the contents of there email is mistaken.
Now comes the onslaught of "National Day of Prayer", and the recent court ruling against it. All I can think of is an echo chamber and the words "sunday sunday sunday".

There's the email of the Senator praying on the steps of Congress, can you say Matthew 6: 5-6?

Then there's the email telling me "our country has never gone with out a "National Day of Prayer", Sorry it was started in the 50's to help fend off the godless Communists.

The latest quoting President Reagan, (full disclosure I liked Reagan allot) the email goes on to tell a false history of the National Day of Prayer.

So what do all of these emails have in common, start theme to Jeperdy? Alix, what is prayer?
My question is what does science say about prayer? Change game show to "The $64,000 Question"

Lets look at the latest study of prayer funded by the very questionable Templeton Foundation. Here is an excellent article on the study. This study took a common type of heart surgery, and did a blind study on what happen to those who were prayed for and those who were not. For an idea on how blind study works try my post on Scotch.
The results showed there was no difference in post surgery complications in either the group who were prayed for and didn't know it and the group who were not prayed for and didn't know they were prayed for. The group who was prayed for and knew they were prayed for had an increase in post op complications. Prayer didn't seam to work, in a positive way.

Conclusions? Being prayed for behind the curtain doesn't seam to do any thing, however expectations of being prayed for seemed to decrease the amount of help. So prayer, like esp, divining rods, and holy water only seam to work "Post Hoc".

How about a National Day of No Prayer, and lets see if we are better off.

Great Video on Why Science Rules!

2010-05-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

Question Two: Drop

2010-04-30T04:04:00.000-07:00

If you throw a ball level with the ground and drop a ball from the same hight which will hit the ground first?

Well of course the dropped ball. It travels the least distance. Right? Not really.
lets look at what is going on. Get in your car have some one else drive. Now sit still and drop the ball. Next head down a straight road at a good speed. Repeat the drop it. What happened? It took about the same time didn't it? The first test the relative speed of the car was zero, then the speed was say fifty mph. You can do this in your head if you want. They both "fell" at the same speed whether or not the car was moving.

So what is going on here? People equate time with distance. This is only natural as it takes time to move a distance. Objects fall in time at the same rate as all other objects regardless of weight or size. So when an object falls it is pulled down at the same rate wether or not it is moving laterally with the ground or not. So when you toss an object level with the ground it will fall at the same rate as an object dropped. This principle is what allows us to have satellites in orbit.

A beautiful experiment to prove this point was done on Mythbuster's, where they shoot a bullet and drop a bullet.

Max

Question One

2010-04-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

Does Heat Rise or Fall?

If you put your hand above a candle then beside it that should answer it. So heat rises, right?
No, Hot air rises for he same reason ice and ships float, as well as lids pop off in microwaves.

Displacement. This is where an material like air is heated the molecules gain energy and vibrate more. The result is they begin to take up more room. Essentially making them less dense. Being less dense they rise above the denser matter and "float" up. As water freezes, becomes a crystal, the molecular alignment causes the "ice" to become less dense, takes up less room. Hence floats.

Fires in zero or very low gravity, extinguish themselves since the hotter air does not rise and the oxygen is not replaced due to lack of convection.

Hubble turns twenty and doesn't even act like a teenager

2010-04-25T04:17:00.000-07:00

Wow has it been Twenty years already. The Hubble has done for science's image more than any other scientific instrament out there. When talk of letting the Hubble go by the wayside and die in orbit my heart sank. and then the fantastic rescue mission, the most complicated repair mission in space yet.

For me the greatest discovery of Hubble has to be when we pointed the lens to the darkest place in the Sky. The images we received of millions of galaxies sent shivers down my spine.

Here's a link to some great pictures.

Re-Writing several of my former post.

2010-04-22T04:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the Hiatus, we had a death in the family. For the next few post I will be on the back burner and rewriting a few of my old post, trying to make them "more better". lol. Anyone who is a regular, thanks for the patients being patient.

New Podcast Coming...Next Week.

2010-04-09T04:06:00.000-07:00

This Podcast Marshal and I Interviewed Peter Sinclair from YouTube. His channel is GreenMan6610.

We covered some basic misconceptions and only scratched the surface of global warming.

Look for the podcast Agnostic Salvation Hour, WTEL3 ( where the evidence leads ) next week on PodOmatic and iTunes.

Science City, more City than Science

2010-03-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Spring time, equals spring break and some time off work for myself and to spend time with the family. Our first adventure sends us to Union Station in KC MO, to the much advertised Science City. On Monday they offered a five dollar day, our fears of overcrowding were quickly dismissed and there was plenty of room at all the exhibits.We were able to take our time and see and do all the that there was to do, as well as take a snack break at the expensive candy shop next to the souvenir store, before closing.

Science city was great fun for our daughter, the water maze at the city park and the sewer pipe slide were the two favs, though she really did like arresting me at the crime lab! As most kids will, she ran from spot to spot, we as adults felt compelled to make her stop and read about the exhibits, as parents are wont to do.

This was more of a children's museum than an actual science museum and to our pleasant surprise we found many items from the defunct KCK children's museum in use here. Over all, the museum was heavy on the City and light on the science. Several of the exhibits didn't work and there were many maintenance issues. From what I understand, Union Station and Science City run in the red. This has allot to do with our communities not supporting our museums as well as they are supported in other major cities.

Keep your eyes open, the museum seams to be housing what can only be a ufo.

$40,000 Dollar Dowsing Rod

2010-03-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Just about everyone who follows mainstream news knows about the fake bomb detectors.

So there's not much more I can cover, but heres a quick over view what it is and what dowsing is.

Dowsing is the ubiquitous method of finding water under ground. You simply find a long Y shaped stick, hold it under some pressure and let the ideomotor effect take over. Dowsing rods come in all kinds of configurations. The now famous ADE-651 is a great example. These are being sold by a company out of Britain and the BBC has a great story on it.

So what really is there to talk about? Often I am told that superstitious beliefs are harmless why don't I just let people have there beliefs and leave them alone. Or I'm just a crotchety old bastard that likes to argue. Well I'm not crotchety but I do like to debate certain subjects especially the intricacies of science. I also love to check up on the facts of a subject.

Not to long ago there was a email zipping around about the new coins and how thy were leaving of "In God We Trust". This fate was about the worse thing to happen to America ever "at no time in our history have we ever not been under the umbrella of God and removing this is going to end his all mighty protection" it went on and on. Well not being one to leave a false statement alone, I quickly wrote a quick history on the motto "In God We Trust" and included a jpeg of several bills with out the in question motto.

I also pointed out how the coin issue was merely a stamping error and if you had any of these coins to hang on to them they might be valuable. I then hit "reply all" since no one deletes all the headers on fwd emails this amounted to my Server showing their guide lines on spamming to me. I received many replies my favorite showing up on this sunshine with flowers and bunnies as the background and the words "GET A LIFE" in 24 point text.

Though this seams to be a long and twisted way to make my point, which is people want to believe in silly ass shit, even after being confronted with real evidence. Take for example the "birthers" who believe our President was not born in Hawaii (on that email I received a reply that money can get you anything). These silly beliefs set up a mental condition that allows normal rationally smart people to accept silly and now deadly beliefs in nothing more than a piece of plastic and an antenna. This has cost lives. Anti-vaxers cost lives. People do die from the flu, people do die from the measles and chickenpox, and now people do die from dowsing rods??????????????WTF

Cosmic Fingerprints #4

2010-03-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

This was the worst one yet, I can't even begin to count all of the poor logic and errors, as this guy goes on I get more and more frustrated at the illogic of him and others like him.

Max,
See this email I just sent you, that you're reading

right now? This email is proof of the existence of God.

"And their off" how did we go from Big Bang to information theory?

Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy.

No, it sounds stupid.

But I'm not asking you to believe anything just yet, until you see the evidence for yourself. All I ask is that you refrain from disbelieving while I show you my proof.

That way, hopefully, you will suspend all critical and rational thought.

It only takes a minute to convey,

but it speaks to one of the most important questions of all

time.

So how is this email proof of the existence of God?

This email you're reading contains letters, words and

sentences. It contains a message that means something.

As long as you can read English, you can understand what

I'm saying.

You can do all kinds of things with this email. You

can read it on your computer screen. You can print it out on

your printer. You can read it out loud to a friend who's in

the same room as you are. You can call your friend and read it

to her over the telephone. You can save it as a Microsoft

WORD document. You can forward it to someone via email, or you

can post it on a website.

Regardless of how you copy it or where you send it,

the information remains the same. My email contains a message.

It contains information in the form of language. The message

is independent of the medium it is sent in.

Messages are not matter, even though they can be carried

by matter (like printing this email on a piece of paper).

Stop right there. With out matter there is no message, or as it should be stated information. The message is the interpretation of information. With out added energy the information cannot be transferred or copied. You cannot have any information with out either matter or energy.

For example we will use an iPod. It has only so much storage and when it is full you are unable to add more information. It takes Energy to transfer the information. The ipod uses electricity to convert the stored information into an audio format (sound). Then there has to be a medium for the vibrations to transfer through (the air). The music is then received by your audio sensors (your eardrums). Where it is converted into mechanical energy or kinetic energy. Which is then turned into electrochemical energy and is interpreted by our brains and stored as memory. This storage is first short term memory by activated neurons and then long term memory by growing physical connections between neurons.

Now here is the key concept, at no point in the previous example did we not have a physical environment for our "message". Without the physical environment there is no "message" or information. With out neurons and the electrochemical energy, there is no thought process or simply with out the neurons that make up the brain there is no "mind". Messages are material they just feel immaterial.

Messages are not energy even though they can be carried

by energy (like the sound of my voice.)

Messages are immaterial. Information is itself a unique

kind of entity. It can be stored and transmitted and copied

in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same.

Messages do not stay the same, try playing telephone with a large group. We give meaning to information that meaning feels transitory as if it is greater than it's parts. It can be the Gettysburg Address or something nefarious like orders to commit a crime. With out the physical the brain does nothing, creates nothing nor thinks any thoughts.

Messages can be in English, French or Chinese.

Or Morse Code. Or mating calls of birds. Or the Internet.

Or radio or television. Or computer programs or architect

blueprints or stone carvings. Every cell in your body

contains a message encoded in DNA, representing a complete

plan for you.

There is no message in DNA, it is a very complicated molecule. We refer to DNA as having a meaning or a plan. Do bacteria think? They behave as if they do. Any extremely complex system can appear to have many anthropomorphic signs, this however is only an illusion.

OK, so what does this have to do with God?

It's very simple. Messages, languages, and coded

information ONLY come from a mind. A mind that

agrees on an alphabet and a meaning of words and

sentences. A mind that expresses both desire and

intent.

Whether I use the simplest possible explanation,

such as the one I'm giving you here, or if we analyze

language with advanced mathematics and engineering

communication theory, we can say this with total

confidence:

"Messages, languages and coded information never,

ever come from anything else besides a mind.

No one has ever produced a single example of a message

that did not come from a mind."

Nature can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes,

sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalactites. Tornadoes

and turbulence and cloud formations.

But non-living things cannot create language. They

*cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they

cannot talk. And they cannot create information.

Non-thinking processes produce information all the time. We just do not give them meaning as in a form of communication.

It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose

accidentally from the "primordial soup," the early ocean which

produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells.

Yes this is the common Hypothesis, experiments have been conducted and some show this may be the case. Other evidence shows that early Earth my have been seeded with organic compounds, of which organic compounds from outside of earth have recently been verified.

But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to

answer the question,'Where did the information come from?'

The "information" came from the same processes that caused every thing else in our solar system. The supernova that created our solar system and all the chain reactions since.

DNA is not merely a molecule. Nor is it simply a "pattern."

Yes, it contains chemicals and proteins, but those chemicals

are arranged to form an intricate language, in the exact same way

that English and Chinese and HTML are languages.

No they aren't DNA is not a language it is a chemical process not a created code not a computer language. It is a chemical process.

DNA has a four-letter alphabet, and structures very similar

to words, sentences and paragraphs. With very precise

instructions and systems that check for errors and correct them.

The key here is "similar" not "is". We use all kinds of analogies, but an analogy does not make a fact.

To the person who says that life arose naturally,

you need only ask: "Where did the information come from?

Show me just ONE example of a language that didn't come

from a mind."

There are none. This does not make DNA a language just because you think it is.

As simple as this question is, I've personally presented it

in public presentations and Internet discussion forums for

more than four years. I've addressed more than 100,000 people,

including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that

life arose without the assistance of God.

Just because you say a thing a 100,000 times does not make it true.

But to a person, none of them have ever been able to

explain where the information came from. This riddle is

"So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist

can solve."

Your not willing to listen to the answers. At one point in time we did not know the Big Bang even occurred. Yet we looked and found it. We can't project back to the very smallest of time right after the Big Bang nor can we tell what caused it, yet that does not mean Odin, Thor, or Hera caused it nor any other god. Just because we don't know a thing does not mean we will never know a think. Poor logic and jumping to conclusions does not make it so.

You can hear or read the full presentation on this topic at

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm

Watch it on video:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/perryspeaks/

Matter and energy have to come from somewhere. Everyone can

agree on that. But information has to come from somewhere, too!

Information is separate entity, fully on par with matter and

energy. And information can only come from a mind. If books

and poems and TV shows come from human intelligence, then all

living things inevitably came from a superintelligence.

Poor logic, information comes from the natural world all the time. We as humans collect it use it and derive meaning from it. We have used that "information" that has come from the world around us, from not "minds" to learn how are world works, really works. Things like Germ theory, to prevent disease. We learned to watch the weather so we would know when tornados, hurricanes and floods would come. All this information comes from "non-minds". Not a "superintelligence".

Every word you hear, every sentence you speak, every

dog that barks, every song you sing, every email you read,

every packet of information that zings across the Internet,

is proof of the existence of God. Because information

and language always originate in a mind.

In the beginning were words and language.

Wrong in the beginning there was nothing.

In the Beginning was Information.

When we consider the mystery of life - where it came from

and how this miracle is possible - do we not at the same time

ask the question where it is going, and what its purpose is?

Respectfully Submitted,

Perry Marshall

Full presentation: "If you can read this, I can prove God exists":

http://cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm

Where the Evidence Leads; An Apology for Science and Reason

2010-03-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

We, Marshal the host and producer of this podcast as well as the parent podcast Agnostic Salvation Hour, Loey another speaker on Agnostic Salvation Hour, Steve from the Skeptics Annotated Bible as well as humble me, just finished up the WEL podcast. Look for the goodness on iTunes, the only place I know where to download it, in the next couple of days.

Cosmic Fingerprints #3

2010-02-27T04:26:00.000-08:00

Email number three,

Max,

In your kitchen cabinet, you've probably got a spray

bottle with an adjustable nozzle. If you twist the nozzle

one way, it sprays a fine mist into the air. You twist

the nozzle the other way, it squirts a jet of water

in a straight line. You turn that nozzle to the exact

position you want so you can wash a mirror, clean up

a spill, or whatever.

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the

matter would have sprayed out into space like fine

mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion

particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even

form a single star.

If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the

material would have dribbled out like big drops of water,

then collapsed back where it came from by the force

of gravity.

A little too fast, and you get a meaningless

spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole

universe collapses back into one big black hole.

This is called the "Goldilocks syndrome", it's where every thing is "just right". The earth lies inside a Goldilocks zone. Not to hot not to cold. Our three examples being Venus, Earth, Mars. Venus being too hot, Mars being too cold and Earth being just right. However there is evidence that the reason Venus is so hot may have to do with the atmosphere being like a green house and trapping the heat in. The opposite may be true of Mars, With out an active magnetic core, like Earth, Mars was unable to keep it's atmosphere from being slowly blown away by the solar wind. Thus unable to keep a very warm, to our standards, temperature.

The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference

is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and

too slow, the force, something that physicists call

"the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in

ten with 120 zeros.

If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would

look like this:

0.000000000000000000000000000000

00000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000000000000000001

In their paper "Disturbing Implications of

a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists

from Stanford University stated that the existence of

this dark energy term would have required a miracle...

"An unknown agent" intervened in cosmic history

"for reasons of its own."

Back to quoting someone again. I often say "oh my god", when I see something dramatic or surpassing. This however doesn't mean I am invoking Odin or Thor. To bring to a more dramatic example, when a loved one is hurt in an accident and their life is threatened, emotions take over our rational nature. We will often assume the worst case possible. When they survive or recover our emotional brain flips from doom and gloom to elation. At this point It becomes a "miracle" that they survived. Not a health care system of Ambulances with highly trained professionals, a hospital staff, all highly trained and some of the best life saving equipment in the world. No it was a "MIRACLE"

Just for comparison, the best human engineering

example is the Gravity Wave Telescope, which was built with

a precision of 23 zeros. The Designer, the 'external

agent' that caused our universe must possess an intellect,

knowledge, creativity and power trillions and trillions

of times greater than we humans have.

For a very long time many people gave the credit for the Pyramids of Giza, to aliens, not humans. When confronted with amazing things why is it the nature of man to invoke gods instead of just marveling at the amazing power of the natural world. Humans have only been a technical society for about a couple of hundred years. Nature can make a blackhole, the most powerful and amazing object in the whole universe. In-fact the universe seams to be designed to create black holes not people. It is amazing we as humans are able to build anything with the precision of the Gravity Wave Telescope.

Absolutely amazing.

Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find

some way to explain this. One of the more common explanations

seems to be "There was an infinite number of universes, so it

was inevitable that things would have turned out right

in at least one of them."

Actually no we don't. I don't have to believe in some god to explain this, I'm willing to wait for science to explain this and eventually science, by the power of humanity, will explain this and many other mysteries. Just like we did 200 years ago with lighting.

The "infinite universes" theory is truly an amazing theory.

Just think about it, if there is an infinite number of

universes, then absolutely everything is not only possible...

It's actually happened!

It means that somewhere, in some dimension, there is

a universe where the Chicago Cubs won the World Series last

year. There's a universe where Jimmy Hoffa doesn't get

cement shoes; instead he marries Joan Rivers and becomes

President of the United States. There's even a

universe where Elvis kicks his drug habit and still

resides at Graceland and sings at concerts. Imagine

the possibilities!

I might sound like I'm joking, but actually I'm dead

serious. To believe an infinite number of universes

made life possible by random chance is to believe everything

else I just said, too.

The only thing that is provable at this time is just after the big bang starts. The science that deals with the big bang is unable to get us to the actual event, or before it. The tv show Sliders was based on the multi-universe idea. There is also String theory that gives us nine dimensions. Super Gravity is another contender. These are the three strongest contenders for the theory of the universe. At this time we don't have the ability to test for them, which means until we can they are unprovable. This however does not mean there are a bronze age gods out there spreading milk across the galaxy.

Some people believe in God with a capital G.

Faith is believing with out any proof.

And some folks believe in Chance with a Capital C.

Trusting in science is not "Faith". Ignorance is not a reason to believe.

Tomorrow's installment: "If you can read this email,

I can prove to you that God exists." Sound a little bold?

Tune in tomorrow - same time, same station.

Respectfully Submitted,

Perry Marshall

The next one should be great!

Cosmic Fingerprints #2

2010-02-25T04:19:00.000-08:00

Here is day two of Cosmic Fingerprints.
There is not much to disagree with this posting and seams fairly accurate.

Max,

The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first.

But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition

of the Big Bang would have left behind a sort of

'hot flash' of radiation.

If a big black wood stove produces heat that you

can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should

produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout

the universe.

In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at

Bell Labs in New Jersey found it. At first, Arno Penzias

and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while

trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna,

they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise.

They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the

antenna.

At first they thought it was bird droppings. The

antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat

of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when

they're brand new) but even after cleaning it off,

they still picked up this noise.

This noise had actually been predicted in detail

by other astronomers, and after a year of checking

and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion:

This crazy Big Bang theory really was correct.

In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much

resistance to the Big Bang theory.

He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to

describe the universe in ways which require no explanation.

And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only

*describe* things - that's perfectly sensible. If you

have a universe which has always been there, you don't

explain it, right?

"Somebody asks you, 'How come all the secretaries

in your company are women?' You can say, 'Well, it's

always been that way.' That's a way of not having

to explain it. So in the same way, theories which

don't require explanation tend to be the ones

accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable

and the best way to make science work."

But on the older theory that the universe was eternal,

he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people

dismissed it. What we find - the simplest theory - is

a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing

of the universe."

Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel

Prize for their discovery of this radiation. The Big

Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly

validated theories in all of science.

Robert Wilson was asked by journalist Fred Heeren if

the Big Bang indicated a creator.

Wilson said, "Certainly there was something that

set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can't

think of a better theory of the origin of the universe

to match with Genesis."

"if you are religious"

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment: "Why the

Big Bang was the most precisely planned event in

all of history."

Let's see what we get next this should be interesting.

Cosmic Fingerprints #1

2010-02-23T04:36:00.000-08:00

Recently I while reading a science blog and saw an add for a free daily "news letter" that would explain the origins of the universe.

So I bit and I signed up for it. Now in a multi part posting we can all go through it and see what we have.

Max,

100 years ago, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics.

Let's start here first, papers don't prove scientific concepts, papers may explain experimental results, and propose many other things, but they don't 'prove'.

Second, the theory of the atom was pretty much already accepted.

Pretty good debut for a 26 year old scientist, huh? His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a 'fudge factor' that ensured a 'steady state' universe,one that had no beginning or end. But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying,"This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." He referred to the 'fudge factor' to achieve a steady-state universeas the biggest blunder of his career. As I'll explain during the next couple of days, Einstein's theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there's an even more important implication of Einstein's discovery. Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, beganwith the Big Bang. That's right -- time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by an intelligence outside of space and time.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whhooooa, we need to stop here, and he was doing so well. "...intelligence outside of space and time.". Just because there was a beginning does not mean there was an "intelligent beginner" the cause can be nothing more than a process that requires only the right set of conditions to occur. But I'm sure he will explain how he knows there was an "intelligence" at the beginning.

About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book "The World As I See It" that the harmony of natural law "Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."*

* Pretty significant statement, wouldn't you say?

So now we know how the author knows there was an "intelligence" behind the big bang. One of the smartest men to ever live said so. As the asterisk points out Einstein's statement is very profound and very provocative. Yet that does not make it true. Take for example another very profound statement, "all men are created equal" a very profound statement one that, however is not true. Take for example the severely mentally ill, they are not on equal footing as someone who has full faculties.

Just because Einstein said it, does not make it true. Take another quote from the same person, "god would not play dice with the universe". This was in response to Hissenburg's uncertainty principle, a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics. I'll blog about that latter on. Einstein even argued against quantum theory's more esoteric concepts. Quantum Mechanics bothered Einstein on a deep and spiritual level. He did not like the fuzzy logic of the Quantum world.

Even great minds can be wrong.

He went on to write, "Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe--a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."

And yet another quote that is wrong. There are more nontheists scientists than there are theist scientists. For example look at the "Steve" project.

Well so much for profound, if your not familiar with logical fallacies and not up to speed on many of the trickier arguments theist use. It can seam and does at first seam to be very reasonable. He slips none factual statements and make it seam like fact my tying it to an expert. Let's see what his next email will bring.

Best Alternate Theory Yet

2010-02-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

To continue the theme from last post!

Found this On PZ blog LMAO

2010-02-15T13:28:00.000-08:00

Question number three

2010-02-15T10:24:00.000-08:00

It you throw a ball level with the ground and drop one from the same height, which one will hit the ground first?

In the mind many picture a base ball player throwing baseball at nintyeight miles an hour. In your mind you can see the ball just flying on forever. While the dropped ball falls strait to the ground in all most no time at all. So of course the dropped ball, a no brainer.

Well there's lot going on here, not just physics. I remember when young trips out to the farm for the weekend. It was about a two hour drive. Yet the drive there took forever and the drive home almost no time at all. Well we all know what this is, simple anticipation. The way there all I could think about was what we were going to do. The ride home no anticipation so time seemed to go by faster. Though the time is basically the same the perception of time changes.

Some thing similar occurs with the ball, anticipation as well as projection. We include the distance the ball is traveling as part of the time. In our minds it can be difficult to separate distance with time. After all it takes time to travel any distance.

As we learned in question two all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of weight. But what about falling with speed?

Let's conduct an experiment. We will need a driver, some form of automobile (not a convertible) and a ball. Now sit some where as not to distract the driver, have the diver stop at a fairly level location, now drop the ball in the seat next to you. Note the time it took to fall. Now have the driver drive down a level straight section of the highway, at highway speed, drop the ball again from the same place as before, note the fall time.So what happened. Most of us did the experiment in our minds. and yes both balls fell at the same speed.

What is going on here? As we showed in question two, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of there mass. This also includes there movement at an angle perpendicular to the force of gravity. This is how satellites stay up. They are constantly falling in reference to the ground or center of gravity, they just travel fast enough that they are constantly falling in an arch.

For a conformation of this look at the Myth Busters episode where they shoot and drop a bullet.

Question Two: An Oldie but a Goodie.

2010-02-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

Question 2) If you drop two items from the same hight one is made of hollow glass and the other is made form solid gold which will hit the ground first?

Almost everyone knows this one. Most of us had this in school and it is very counter intuitive. To answer the questions all items fall in gravity at the same rate. Then why do some things fall differently? that is where the medium that the item is moving through comes into play. Basically lighter objects or objects that have less mass, are more affected by the friction generated by the medium. Take for instance a balloon compared to a marble. Now lets use a balloon that is the same weight as a marble, yes it will be a big balloon. Drop them from the same hight and what happens? The marble drops like a, well, stone, straight down. Now drop the balloon. It will fall slowly maybe even drift side to side, but will take forever to reach the ground. Now they both weigh the same, so what is going on here.
The balloon has a huge surface area compared to the marble, so it has contact with much more of the medium it is travailing through. Therefor the friction in the air will affect the balloon to a much greater degree than the marble. To really see the difference pop the balloon and then drop it. Quite a bit of difference.
So the question should be; Which item will hit the ground first if dropped in a vacuum.

For conformation on this please refer to the Apollo program, this very experiment was done with a feather on the moon.

Where the Evidence Leads; An Apology for Science and Reason

2010-01-28T04:17:00.001-08:00

Marshal Bass and I recorded our first podcast last night with Prof Segei Shandarin From KU. It was interesting and alot of fun.

We started out by reading A Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. With the Prof we only went into the big band and the cosmological argument out of the book but digressed wonderfully into many different areas of cosmology and partical physics.

Schrödinger's cat

2010-01-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

This was a thought experiment to show how Schrödinger thought of the way in which the quantum world influenced the our world.

The interpretation he disagreed with was that particals exist in all states until acted upon, or measured. For an example, an electron would exist in all possible places around an atom at the same time. Only when you measure/observe does it actually show up in one place. Hence the "superpostion" of existing in all states at once.

Schrödinger disagreed with this view on quantum mechanics. He found them to be absurd. To show how absurd this is, he created the cat in a box experiment. Which has been misinterpreted to be a real experiment in which the cat, unobserved, would exist in all possible states at once.

The mechanics of the box, are controlled by a quantum event, the decay of an radioactive atom, which is subject to the rules of quantum mechanics. Thus tying the quantum conditions to the macroworld and the cat would be in all states at the same time.

It doesn't matter weather or not there is any one to hear the tree fall, it still falls and all the physical interactions that would make "noise" still happen. The cat is either dead, alive or dying, regardless of the cat being observed.

Schrödinger's cat thought experiment was not to be taken as if the cat really was in a quantum state but that the inherent uncertainty of the quantum world does not make the world above the quantum level uncertain as well.

Scotch, Double Blind and Coke

2010-01-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

After a double blind taste test I've found Clan McGregor is not as good as Johnny Walker Black, my poison of choice. Though Clan is THE best bar (or well) Scotch I have ever had.

How does one go about doing a double blind study? It helps to have a willing wife and daughter. Fix two samples the same, glass, ice and portion. Then my daughter brings them to me one at a time. I'm literally blind folded, so only my sense of taste and smell come into play. After doing this twice, I decide which one I like best. Then the results are reveled.

So how is this double blind? The subject, me, doesn't know which one is being served. I'm blind, literally. The one serving me doesn't know either. The one setting up the test isn't involved in giving the test, only recording the results.

This way the person setting up the test doesn't give any clues as to which I'm tasting or introducing any bias into the results and neither does the sever. If we were to do a real world study to find out which Scotch I did like best we would follow stricter blind rules and due the test for a longer period of time.
To start my wife would put both liquors in two different bottles that looked the same, mark them A and B and then put them in plain paper bags. My daughter now marks the bags 1 and 2. At this point none of us know what containers hold which Scotch. Then my daughter or my wife would fix me a drink as I would normally consume them alternating between the two and recording the data. This method although thorough, would take far to such time effort. I usually take about six months to a year to drink a bottle of Scotch.

But why would such a level of detail ever be needed for a taste test? Ask Coke about the Pepsi challenge. Coke never challenged the study, didn't due a controlled study, and their conclusion was that people like the taste of Pepsi better. They reformatted the formula, and because they didn't follow a strict scientific methodology, Coke almost went out of business.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Parasites one a day

2010-01-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

Bumped into this web site and had to pass it along!

Parasite of the Day its a new parasite every day wow!

If you like parasites and you haven't read Parasite Rex, it's a must read!

The wasps as my daughter says "ARE MEAN!"

Ten Questions Presentation

2010-01-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

Fun night at the Midwest Skeptic's Science Night Meetup. I gave my Ten Questions stand up talk to a packed room. Great crowed last night and a lot of fun. Got some really good feed back and enjoyed it allot. Looking forward to doing this again I'll have to find anew topic. Anyone have a good idea?

Afterwards we went to Callahan's and I discverd a new. Brand of Scotch ...
Clan Mcgreggor has to be the drink of gods.

Russian Rocket, Twin Towers, Big Foot, UFO's

2010-01-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

Russian Rocket, Twin Towers, Big Foot, UFOs and the little Kodak Camera I had when I was ten. What do they have in common.

With the spectacular failure of the Russian rocket being caught not only with cameras but on damn good video, by mere phones. Lots of them to boot. With pretty good quality especially at night. This just boggles my mind. Shooting with cameras at night is hard even when prepared, but video!

I love the camera in my blackberry storm, hell I loved the crappy camera in my old flip phone. I love them for the same reason Chase Jarvis loves his iphone camera. Its always there. The camera you have with you is infinitely better than the one you left at home. You can't use the one you didn't bring.

For my tenth birthday I got a Kodak Instamatic. I took that thing with me every where I could. The pictures sucked but I loved it. Latter I would graduate to better film cameras and then digital. Same with video started out with relatively poor equipment and moved on to a digital hand held devise smaller than my old instamatic.

Now my Blackberry does more and better in both still and video. I'm not alone it seems they are every where, absolutely every where. It is truly ubiquitous technology.

Less than ten years ago the world was amazed that some one had actually caught the first plane to striking the Twin Towers on video. Now not only would we expect it we would get it in spades.

It seemed it was only seconds after the video hit the web that the UFO crowd began railing and saying how this was a portal, aliens warping in, all that crappy scyfy channel technobabble bs.

That is what it was, bs easily dismissed. It did however get me to thinking allot about UFOs and something the head of MUFON said a few years ago when asked about the lack of good photographic evidence for flying saucers. He said, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

Let's take a look at that statement by it self. Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. That statement does not lend itself to say big foot. What is the number of North American hunters, Hikers and Naturalist, let's say allot. How many of them have phones? Most of them. How many of the phones have a camera? Most all of them. So now who out of our sample would take a picture/movie if they saw a big foot? Every single one of them. So how many pictures of Big Foot have been taken in the last ten years? How many were taken in the seventies? The difference is not huge but the number of available cameras has increased significantly. With less overall results and an increase in equipment,people and time, there is now good evidence that Big Foot as postulated is not real creature.

Now I can apply that same logic to the claims of extra terrestrials visiting earth by space craft. How many people in the north hemisphere have phones with a camera or just a camera and even a video camera? If you take into consideration just north America and Europe, the number would be just about everyone. Now let's apply the big foot process. How many available cameras in the last decade vs how many in the seventies? Now compare the number difference in just the number compared with available cameras and opportunity to take them. The number of photos is less. Want an example look at the number of videos as well as photos taken of the lights over the New Mexico Mt range just a few years ago. There isn't an event of interest that happens that is not photographed, videoed and almost immediately uploaded to the net.

So yes the absence of evidence can lead to the evidence of absence. Just use critical thinking and you will find the flaw in the most stubborn of the non-rational.

Ten Question for the Non-Rationale in Your Life

2009-12-31T03:49:00.000-08:00

Question One;

1) Does Heat rise or fall? a) Rise or b) Fall

Please circle the correct answer, those of you who know the correct answer, please stop laughing and pointing.

This question and the others that follow have been carefully crafted to be obtuse. I have specifically designed them to show what is a commonly believed physical property is not true. Most people will overwhelmingly choose, a) Rise. Our senses will tell us that heat does rise, just place your hand over a candle, there is all the evidence you need.

However heat neither rises nor falls. Look at ice, it rises also and it is colder than liquid water under most conditions. If ice did not rise our world would be drastically different, the oceans would be mostly solid with a thin layer of liquid on top.

So what is going on? Why does heat seam to rise? For the same reason that ships float. Displacement. If something is less dense it takes up more room than that of the denser material and as long as its in a some what liquid or gaseous medium the less dense material will "rise" like a balloon in water or a ship or a iceberg. The air is heated, it expands becomes less dense and rises above the candle also carrying the extra energy or "Heat" with it, making it seam as though the Heat is rising.

The question is a trick question, I know it's not fair, I use it to bring home a point, and the point is, the physical world we live in, is more complex than we can observe with just our basic senses. We need to use science to help us under stand our world correctly. But why use a seemingly underhanded approach?

The best way for someone to learn is to make mistakes. So by setting up the question so that only if they know the basic physics that underly the question will they give the correct answer which is not listed. Then I'm able to explain how a commonly held assumption is actually incorrect. Then in the process get people who normally would not think critically about the world around us, to start.

Ten Question for the Non-Rationale in Your Life

2009-12-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

I began this log with a project of mine, how to bring a scientific point of view to the world. Mostly for those who see the world as a place of cartoon physics instead of the real world of actions and reactions. My first real quandary was after watching the Pink Panther step out of a falling elevator, just as it hit the ground, unscathed. I was a kid. I knew something was wrong but could not figure out why it was wrong. This lead to the discovery of inertia through the sacrifice of several raw eggs.

I am often bemused when others are unable to see, what is clearly evident to me. Often due to this odd mental myopia, some will come to the strangest of conclusions based on the weirdest mental twisting. Trying to find a way to open others eyes has lead me to many different approaches of explaining how the world works based on physical principles not imaginary forces.

This has led me to my Ten Questions, of which I have presently only three I'm still working on the other seven.

Tomorrow I will post The first.