Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
A very narrow idea of freedom
Maybe all this talk of the actual science of what the Bill entails has distracted me from the issue at hand: Should MPs have a free vote or not?
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, became the most senior church figure to call on Mr Brown to sanction a free “conscience” vote of MPs on the Bill.
“Certainly, there are some aspects of this Bill on which I believe there ought to be a free vote, because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience. I don’t think it should be subject to the party whip.”
That seems reasonable. After all, punishing MPs for voting with their conscience would be unreasonable, right Cardinals? Wait, what’s that internet? We have a quote from an article last year where the church suggested rather heavily that they might deny communion to any Catholic MPs who stepped away from the party church line?
In his sermon the Cardinal, Scotland’s most senior Catholic, said politicians who support abortion should be aware of the “barrier such co-operation creates to receiving Holy Communion” but after the Mass he would not say whether he meant that Catholic politicians who back abortion should be cast out from the Church. “I’m not going to say whether or not those who are involved in any way in helping or aiding abortion can approach the altar to receive Holy Communion. It’s not up to me to judge them, I’ll leave that to God to judge them.”
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, added his support to Cardinal O’Brien, urging all Catholics “especially those who hold positions of public responsibility” to educate themselves about the Church’s prohibition on abortion so that they could make decisions “with consistency and integrity”.
It seems to me that instead of being a triumph of the will of democracy over party politics, a free vote seems to mean that the party whips step back so the church whips can step forward. Or is that too cynical?
And in related news: James Graham draws my attention to an article by the good cardinal telling atheists they’re heartless meanies who are incapable of love, which is incidentally why our soulless secular solutions haven’t found the solution to the HIV problem in Africa: They need more love! I know, I know, I would have thought a constructive role for the church might be more telling people that using condoms doesn’t damn them for eternity or, at the very least, to stop telling people that condoms are deliberately infected with it, but I think we’ll have to defer to his wisdom on this one.
Science: 1, McCain: 0
Q: What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.
Q: So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) You’ve stumped me.
Q: I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?
Mr. McCain: (Laughs) Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception. I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.
So the Republican nominee not only doesn’t support contraception education, but claims not to be informed enough about it. This isn’t an obscure or technical issue but a whooping huge one a potential next president claims not to be informed about, does that blow anyone else’s mind? I’d be happier if he’d just take the plunge and admit that yes, contraceptives are effective at preventing HIV but he chooses not to support them because he, you know, condoms are evil. Plus if people don’t have condoms, they won’t have sex because they might get HIV! That is totally how it works.
In another Crime-Against-Reason moment he tells us he believes in the long debunked link between autism and vaccines. When we’re having the first measles outbreaks since the introduction of the vaccine, the prospect of a President who isn’t fully up-to-date is a concerning one.
The Wi-Fi deaths rays return!
Remember when I predicted that scare-mongers would push to strip wi-fi out of schools after that needlessly shit-stirring Panorama on wifi? Well a council in Wales have decided that science doesn’t rank up there with mindless speculation and wants more ‘guidelines’.
No…I’m not sure what that means either.
Wi-fi allows cable-free web access, but some scientists fear it emits radiation similar to mobile masts, which have been linked to cancer.
Well, linked in the same way that people talk about it a lot, not in any kind of way that involved a decent scientific study.
The Health Protection Agency said emissions were within safety guidelines but Carmarthenshire Council said more advice was needed.
Right…so an established authority is saying ‘Yep, no problem’, but yet more advice is needed? I can just see the dialogue now:
‘Are these emissions safe?’
‘Yes, studies have failed to find negative effects. These radio-waves are safe!’
‘Hmm….but you can’t prove they’re utterly safe?’
‘Well, no you can’t prove a negativ..’
‘MORE GUIDELINES AND PUBLICITY NEEDED’
Because this story can’t just die out, no no.
“The dangers of these wi-fi connections are possibly along the lines of using hand-held mobile phones.”
Exactly! I’m glad we agree on something. No dangers whatsoever.
She said this should include insisting children should not put lap tops on their laps.
Actually yes, this is a good idea. It turns out that it can cause sterility in men because it causes the temperature in the scrotum to stay elevated. Creepy. However, this is to do with sitting position and heat from the laptop. Absolutely nothing to do with the wifi.
“I think it is very important that the transmitters are positioned as far away from the children as possible and at the lowest that is needed.
I think what Judith Davies isn’t quite getting is the full implication of the inverse square law that applies to field strength here. The power drops off incredibly quickly and it was never high to start off with, even putting the access point a meter away dramatically cuts it down the already way below the safety guidelines. There is absolutely no risk here.
“It is very important that parents are informed if wi-fi is in their school.”
Perhaps, but perhaps the school’s science teachers could also demonstrate at the same time exactly how little strength these particular radio waves we’re talking about here have, that would be great.
More like Die-Fi
I watched the Panorama: ‘Wi-fi: A Warning Signal‘ the other night and was just shocked. It’s an excellent example of some really shoddy journalism and science and it’s taken me a few days to fully get my head round the issues.
The program hinges on three main arguments:
- Mobile phone masts are dangerous
- Wifi signals are more powerful than phone masts and therefore are as, if not more, dangerous.
- A subset of the population are extremely effected by electromagnetic fields, therefore it’s not inconceivable that they have an effect on the rest of us.
However, all of these arguments are based on shody or non-existant science and scaremongering dominates. Keyton uses emotive words like ‘radiation’ around 30 times which, whilst a scientifically accurate description (in the same way that radiation could be used to describe light), is for most people associated with the dangerous radioactivity. A Swedish scientist Kenyon makes much use of was voted most misleading scientist of the year in 2004 by 1,600 of his peers for his views on electromagnetism (which is the area he is quized on in this program). He dismisses a WHO official because of his former work in the mobile phone industry yet didn’t raise an eyebrow about the ever helpful Alasdair Philips who makes money off of telling people EM fields are harmful and selling them protective gear right now.
Let’s take it one at a time.
The God Argument
Looking in the Google ads bit at the side of the page I found a link to ‘The God Argument‘, it tries to make the logical case for God being behind the universe’s creation. Let’s have a look:
Is The Universe Eternal?
The Kalam Argument demonstrates using simple logic that the universe cannot be eternal. The argument is initially credited to Aristotle.
The Kalam argument says that if the universe is eternal, then the past must be eternal and without a beginning. But if the past was eternal, then we could of never arrived at the “NOW”. To get to the “Now” from an eternal past, means we would of had to traverse (go through) an infinite amount of time (all of eternal history)! But that’s impossible, it’s like trying to count to infinite, you can count on forever but you will never arrive! A good analogy is trying to jump out of a bottomless pit, you won’t have much luck.
The world of time we live in and eternity are two very different things. Time cannot be eternal in the past as we could never traverse infinite or have an infinite succession of events. The universe could go on forever without end, but this is different from being eternal and unchanging.
The problem with this is that time cannot be divided into a series of ‘ nows’ (as Aristotle himself said when analysing Zeno’s thinking in the arrow paradox). We could arguably divide a second into an infinite series of instances which we have to travel though, yet it doesn’t stop us moving through the seconds. A better analogy than jumping out of the bottomless pit would be falling down a bottomless pit, but this still isn’t good as it implies the pit had an opening, which an eternal universe wouldn’t have.
The universe might turn out not to be eternal, but you can’t disprove it through a thought experiment.
“If you demonstrate that someone is wrong, you are now deemed to be silencing him.”
Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already outdated and discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.
But for the people who commissioned this film, all that counts is the sensation. Channel 4 has always had a problem with science. No one in its science unit appears to understand the difference between a peer-reviewed scientific paper and a clipping from the Daily Mail. It keeps commissioning people whose claims have been discredited – like Martin Durkin and a certain nutritionist of our acquaintance. But its failure to understand the scientific process just makes the job of whipping up a storm that much easier. The less true a programme is, the greater the controversy.
