51. Faith schools may be Blair's most damaging legacy

Comment #243320 by j.mills on September 5, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Just this week I finished my job. The secondary school I worked at has just closed and immediately reopened as an academy. I think the entire academies scheme is lunacy for a hundred reasons, and in this case the 'sponsor' (which has actually contributed not one penny) is United Learning Trust - an arm of the C of E.

Fortunately I applied for and was given a severance package. A few other people left too. But these establishments just roll along, entirely state-funded but with far less scrutiny than state schools. ULT already have a dozen academies, more than most local authorities, and this is all taking place nationwide with virtually zero public discussion. (The 'consultation' for this particular academy was laughable.)

All staff are required to uphold 'Christian values'. These include tolerance, respect, compassion and hard work, though how those ended up being monopolised by Christianity is not explained. Religious Education lessons will be 'mainly Christian'. It's very depressing.

52. Evolution as Described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Comment #230787 by j.mills on August 15, 2008 at 6:17 am

Steve said:

This isn't saying that thermodynamics explains everything about evolution, but that evolution seems to be a natural consequence of thermodynamics.

...in the quest for a stationary state. The driving force makes no difference between abiotic and biotic mechanisms of energy transduction but favours all those that are dispersing energy more and more effectively.

53. Kung poo panda 'The Sex Lives of Animals' exhibit digs deep.

Comment #221790 by j.mills on July 30, 2008 at 6:12 am

I saw two dogs at it for quite some time once. Each of them seemed to want to get on top. Whilst there is a broad wealth of 'unorthodox' sexual behaviour among animals, I think those two dogs were actually just confused... (Certainly I was!)

54. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #221766 by j.mills on July 30, 2008 at 5:09 am

Perhaps we could think of philosophy as 'speculative science' - exploring the possible answers to questions we have as yet no direct means of investigating. As such, philosophers may take a wider view than specialists in any other field and act as 'integrators' of knowledge.

If that sounds suspiciously close to theology, I suggest that philosophy is parsimonious, conscious of its own limitations and giving way to science when science catches up. There's the old rubric:

Philosophy is questions that can't be answered.
Religion is answers that can't be questioned.

55. Brain That Changes Itself: into the abyss

Comment #220899 by j.mills on July 29, 2008 at 7:03 am

Like, wow, man!

56. Daniel Dennett: Autobiography (Part 1)

Comment #220771 by j.mills on July 29, 2008 at 3:22 am

An engaging bio from Dennett and an unusually interesting thread to follow. You've all done very well! :)

I wasn't so impressed by Freedom Evolves as by his other books (Consciousness Explained was a doozey!). The bit where Dennett really addressed the determinists' objection to free will was the most interesting for me, but he was almost dismissive of the argument. He pointed out that to make choices we must be able to judge consequences, and if this did not require determinism, it certainly wasn't hindered by it: an indeterministic universe would by definition be unpredictable. I would have liked to have seen that startling idea developed more.

But every Dennett book is a splendid treat.

57. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #218211 by j.mills on July 25, 2008 at 4:22 am

I think your avatar provides a clue, Doc... :)

58. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #218161 by j.mills on July 25, 2008 at 1:19 am

Steve Zara said:

I have to say first I am a bit puzzled by questions about whether or not I am still here

I had not the slightest concern or obsession about the title.

59. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #217254 by j.mills on July 24, 2008 at 5:27 am

There is more to a book than its ------ title! The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable could swap titles and you wouldn't know the difference. Leave off this obsession with the title already! It's the book that matters, not its title. I had a bellyfull of that with The Selfish Gene where it seemed that half the critics read it by title only.
Richard

60. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #216723 by j.mills on July 23, 2008 at 12:54 pm

I suggest that the reason for slower sales of "Mt Improbable" is more prosaic: readers already familiar with TSG and TBW might be inclined to see it as more of the same. The next book was "Unweaving The Rainbow", which was more of a change of subject. (I think I got round to Improbable late for that reason.)

But as somebody else said, it's "The Extended Phenotype" that really deserves more attention. I had to read it with a squint and my tongue stuck between my teeth, but it was well worth the brain-ache. A wow of a book!

61. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #216376 by j.mills on July 23, 2008 at 4:40 am

where are the other Biology books (not TGD) books polemical ?

62. Good Science Writers: Richard Dawkins

Comment #216374 by j.mills on July 23, 2008 at 4:26 am

A lot of this chat seems to conflate common with probable. Clearly eyes are common in terms of the number of species and individuals that have them, and more importantly the number of times they have separately evolved. But, a la Paley, you'd still be astonished to find one sitting on a rock on Ganymede.

Surely the 'improbable' that RD sought to explicate was the existence of complex stuff at all? There may be some bacterium carrying a simple but unique biological feature: it may be very uncommon without being very complex ('improbable').

63. Losing Sight of Progress

Comment #215487 by j.mills on July 22, 2008 at 2:29 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

That the cave salamander is blind
Shows the merciful turn of God's mind,
For who'd want to see
Creepy-crawlies for tea?
Keeping Sal in the dark is so kind!

64. Lourdes fears priestly scandal will make profits dry up

Comment #210331 by j.mills on July 14, 2008 at 9:14 am

Putting aside whether Bernadette saw anything at all, I was intrigued to read in the Fortean a while back that her 'visions' went on for months before it was 'decided' who or what it was that she was 'seeing': a ghost? a fairy? an angel? The area was rife with superstition: the visions began in 1858, and as recently as 1851 a nearby town had burned a witch!

I'm inclined to think that people tend to go to Lourdes AFTER medicine has done all it can, rather than BEFORE...

65. Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes

Comment #210301 by j.mills on July 14, 2008 at 8:26 am

I have this wet dream that one day Dennett will do one of those sprawling documentary series, like The Ascent of Man or Civilisation or Cosmos. On the history of philosophy or genes, memes and AI, or something. Somebody make it so.

66. Thousands Flock to Revival in Search of Miracles

Comment #208716 by j.mills on July 11, 2008 at 7:14 am

But she is deaf.

"She was onstage last night around 11 o'clock," Carter said. "Todd prayed for her, and she said she actually felt fire and heat in her right ear."

"Even if we don't see any change, in the immediate run here, sometimes prayer is cumulative," Wise said.

67. Religious bigotry upheld in court

Comment #208632 by j.mills on July 11, 2008 at 5:17 am

Spinoza said:

The Bible says "Do not lie with another man as you would with a woman."

68. Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

Comment #208588 by j.mills on July 11, 2008 at 4:00 am

Bruce Baghemil's book of a few years ago, Biological Exuberance, catalogued in eye-popping detail the huge range of homo- and bi-sexual behaviours observed in over 300 species. (Sage grouse engage in lesbian orgies, zoo dolphins masturbate on the wall of the tank - and don't even ask what they do with their blowholes...)

Everything that you could think to say on the subject, he said, addressed and demolished. The take-home message for me is that these are complex behaviours that arise for many reasons. Any simple explanation you come up with will almost certainly be inadequate. The fundie idea that homosexuality is 'unnatural' is just laughable in the light of all this.

69. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208555 by j.mills on July 11, 2008 at 3:15 am

Doubt if anyone's reading this far, but for the record:

Dear President Bruininks

You will be aware of criticism from some Catholics and others of PZ Myers' recent blog concerning the communion wafer incident.

I would only urge you to focus on the central issue here, which is free speech. No religious freedoms have been curtailed, nobody has been harmed, no property damaged. Myers has simply commented on a topic of public interest in his usual uncompromising style.

If some people find the comments disagreeable, their recourse in a free society is to respond. You would not be serving democracy, free speech or even religious freedom by doing anything to silence or sanction Mr Myers, and I hope you will say as much to his critics.

Thank you for your time.

70. The BBC announces a major season marking the life and work of Charles Darwin

Comment #207616 by j.mills on July 10, 2008 at 4:00 am

Some people above asked how they could see this stuff outside the UK. Lots of BBC programmes are now made available online for a week(?) after broadcast, through their iPlayer facility. You don't even need a TV! (Much less a licence...) And you can listen to the radio stuff live over the net or (for the following week) on their Listen Again facility. All hail Auntie Beeb!

(They're doing a natural history show called 'Life'? One of these days they're gonna run out of titles.)

71. Susskind Quashes Hawking in Quarrel Over Quantum Quandary

Comment #207606 by j.mills on July 10, 2008 at 3:50 am

I expect they used 'quashes' for the alliteration. Could have gone with 'queries' though.

72. Susskind Quashes Hawking in Quarrel Over Quantum Quandary

Comment #207594 by j.mills on July 10, 2008 at 3:32 am

Shame to do all that teasing and then say so little about the holographic projection business. Hopefully someone will tell us more in the Book Nook! :)



Limerick Summary News Service!

Susskind swats Hawking with zeal!
(You'd think they could just make a deal.)
Radiation's ejected,
Information's projected,
And the universe isn't quite real.

73. Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Comment #207147 by j.mills on July 9, 2008 at 8:45 am

Deputy Undersecretary Bill Carr said complaints of evangelizing are "relatively rare."

74. Group Asks for Divine Intervention to Ease Oil Prices

Comment #204151 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 8:39 am

If Yanks pray for lower prices, and Saudis pray for higher prices, how does god decide? I'm inclined to think he'll camouflage his intervention so cunningly that it will be indistinguishable from the normal operation of the markets...

(What happens if enough people pray for there to be no god?)

75. Sharia law 'could have UK role'

Comment #204144 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 8:31 am

As I understand it, voluntary mediation under Sharia law already exists and so long as it IS voluntary and doesn't conflict with the REAL law, it seems no more objectionable than going to counselling or arbitration.

That seems to be all that Lord Phillips and Rowan Williams mean, and if so, rather than it going too far, I'm wondering why they bothered opening their mouths and causing a storm in a teacup. The obvious backlash to their comments means they've probably done more harm than good.

Incidentally, Nova, many British Muslims were born here - probably most by now. They're as entitled as any other citizen to seek a change in the law, and since they generally AREN'T seeking that and represent only about 4% of the UK population anyway, it's not going to happen. Islam may present stuff to worry about, but this isn't it.

76. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #204076 by j.mills on July 4, 2008 at 5:08 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

A New Zealander traded his soul
For thirty-eight hundred dollars, that's all.
Instead of baking in Hell,
He'll sniff the fine baking smell
Of eternity's long pizza hall!

77. Former state science director sues over intelligent design e-mail

Comment #203533 by j.mills on July 3, 2008 at 5:21 am

Hobbit said:

When I tried to explain that those who innocuously believe in the sky fairy empower those who then go on to do evils things in the name of their particular sky fairy, he got very upset and told me I was being disrespectful of others beliefs.

78. Aliens need Christ's redemption, too

Comment #202208 by j.mills on July 1, 2008 at 3:37 am

God cannot make a universe so large that He gets lost inside it.

79. Saving Us from Darwin

Comment #192454 by j.mills on June 13, 2008 at 5:09 am

A model of clear exposition. Great writing.

(Is this the same guy who wrote The Pooh Perplex?)

80. Opponents of Evolution Adopting a New Strategy

Comment #189027 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 8:21 am

Weaknesses in evolutionary theory? By all means give students an overview of the debate around punctuated equilibrium, or whether there is any meaningful form of group selection other than kin selection. It's a bit advanced and time-consuming for high school, especially if you also apply the policy to gravity, quantum, religious studies, etc. But I've no objection in principle.

Or am I missing something? [Innocent blink.] Is that not what they meant? Did they mean, some christians would prefer this not to be true? 'Cause I've gotta think that's not really a weakness of evolutionary theory, more a weakness of reasoning among those christians.

81. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #189000 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 7:34 am

Whether evangelical intransigence is pleasing to God isn't anything that humans can ever be absolutely sure of. If it is pleasing to him, God may send a great revival that will sweep the country and restore them to their place of predominance.

82. Darwin still causing waves after 150 years

Comment #188977 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 5:25 am

I think KRKBAB (#28) has a point. Stuff like The Ancestor's Tale is fascinating to us pop-science gluttons but intimidating to those who don't even read their own Bible.

For my money, the best Dawkins book for beginners is River Out Of Eden, which was written for the Science Masters series of introductory texts. Even that isn't a pocket-sized tract that could be handed out at the door of the temple. The Ladybird Book of Natural Selection is what we need! :)

83. The Great Evangelical Decline

Comment #188973 by j.mills on June 5, 2008 at 5:02 am

Just on this discrepancy between the apparent decline in evangelical membership and the strident public voice of creationism etc; a quote from a novel by John Crowley:

Secret societies have not had influence in history. However, the notion that secret societies have had influence in history has had influence in history.

84. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #188153 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 9:25 am

Al-rawandi, is that supposed to be some ironic ad-hominem gag or did you not read the article above? How would it be relevant to scooternyc's comment if Dershowitz was a plagiarist?

85. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #188141 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 9:07 am

@Ramases: you can start at http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/ - which, as the address suggests, takes a position.

Here's the process. The Govt wants academies (g*d only knows why), so it pressures county councils to convert schools. This may be by merging schools, often with a completely new building or at the least massive refurbishment. All schools in England (UK?) are going to benefit from a wave of funding called Building Schools For The Future (BSF), and the Govt is known to be telling counties that they'll go to the end of the queue for BSF unless they 'consider' (= accept) an academy or two. Blackmail, basically.

Counties roll over and ask for sponsors. A sponsor for an academy can be anyone, basically, so long as they can put a bid together including £1.5m to go into an endowment. This can be supplied over 5 years and the school gets only the interest, so it's a pittance really. (If you're a university who wants to be a sponsor, I think the endowment is waived altogether!)

Once all the decisions have been made, a lip-service consultation process is gone through (stage-managed 'debates', biased questionnaires, one-sided information). There have actually been successes in delaying academies through protest at this point, though I don't know if any academies have been quashed outright. I think some plans have fallen through for want of a sponsor.

ULT is the biggest sponsor so far, with a dozen or so academies - more secondary schools (with sixth forms) than many a local authority. The proposed sponsor for an academy in Preston was Carphone Warehouse. Dixons sponsored one, then pulled out, leaving the county to pick up the tab. That Vardy creationist car-dealer fellow has an academy or two.

Once the go-ahead is given, capital costs (mainly for building) of typically £25m are supplied by Govt, along with an extra £1m-ish per year for the first 4 years. The Govt continues to pay all the school's running costs forever. Note the massive inequity this creates with neighbouring schools. (In my borough there are 5 other secondaries - which means all that money will be squandered on just 20% of children, while the rest will inevitably feel second-class.)

Admissions criteria, exclusion policy, what subjects and qualifications to teach, staff pay and conditions, can all be set by the sponsor, who can also decide whether to bother accepting special needs students. (Staff transferring have protected conditions, but only until they accept a change, such as a promotion, for which they'll have to move to the sponsor's own contract.) Academies, as private organisations, are exempt from most education law, including the Freedom of Information Act (!) - which means it is incredibly difficult for researchers to find out what these schools are teaching.

Attainment improvements so far have been paltry, and easily attributed to the huge funding and policy freedoms rather than to 'innovative' private sector leadership. Indeed, the Govt has routinely had to send in its experts to get academies on track - at further expense.

Before the first dozen academies had reached any exam results, Blair expanded the scheme to 200 academies. Before any cohort of students had been through a 5-year cycle in an academy, he expanded it to the new target of 400 - about 10% of UK secondary schools.

The school I'm at will become an academy "open to all faiths and none", but "with a religious character". RE lessons will be "mainly Christian", Christian festivals will be celebrated and all students and staff will be expected to subscribe to the academy's "Christian values" - respect, service, hard work, discipline and compassion. Anybody know where in the Bible that list comes from?! Me neither. The co-opting and re-branding of ordinary aspirations as "Christian values" is something I find particularly galling - is there a school in the world that wouldn't support those 'values'?

If you're really interested, there's a PriceWaterhouse Coopers report, a National Audit Office report and a Select Committee report, variously critical, all online on Govt sites. I expect you've enough to be going on with...

(Oh, here's an MPs Committee of Enquiry report: http://www.antiacademies.org.uk/downloads/MPs-report.pdf )

86. When two worlds collide: threat of class warfare over faith-based schooling

Comment #188024 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 6:57 am

Haven't had time to read everybody's posts, but wanted to tell you about my workplace. It's a secondary comprehensive school in the UK and in September it will become an Academy. This means that the government will throw (typically) £30m at it, and continue to pay the running costs, whilst freeing it from the sensible restrictions applied to state schools (admissions, exclusions, staff conditions, curriculum) and handing over control to a private sponsor.

It's a bonkers scheme that is quietly ripping through the UK education system. The sponsor in this case (as in many) is a religious organisation, United Learning Trust, essentially a CoE charity (which puts no money in!).

The county council sold this scheme to the public (to release government funding for other projects) as Promoting choice and diversity. Yet the school is right next to an existing CoE secondary school, and two miles away from any other secondary school in any direction! Where before you had one faith-based school beside a 'secular' one, now you will have two faith-based ones. So much for promoting diversity. (A bankrupt goal in the first place.)

Bugger choice: give me excellence.

(Meanwhile I'm taking a severance payment and scarpering. Yuck!)

87. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #187988 by j.mills on June 3, 2008 at 5:39 am

This article just seems like a statement of the bleedin' obvious.

After 9/11, someone told Bush that "This is the time for wisdom, not power." I thought that had merit; didn't matter in the slightest that it was Saddam who said it, but that was used as argument to dismiss it. (Who needs wisdom anyway?)

You concentrate on what's being said, not who's saying it, otherwise you end up with squalid squabbles at Prime Minister's Question Time and tin-pot 3rd-world dictators 'disappearing' their dissidents. I might enjoy it when Hitchens derides his opponents, but it isn't really adding to the debate. One's aspiration should always be to address the argument, not the speaker.

88. Random Acts of Evolution

Comment #187472 by j.mills on June 2, 2008 at 7:50 am

Does anyone of a biological bent know what it COSTS us to carry around all that junk? I realise that DNA makes up only a tiny fraction of each cell, but then again we have trillions of cells. Does a lot of our food go into maintaining freeloading genes, or is the resource requirement trivial?

89. 'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon

Comment #187399 by j.mills on June 2, 2008 at 5:13 am

Unusually for this site, there's precious little comment about religion in this thread - their religion. It's entirely possible there are no atheists in their tribe, and simply seeing different people with different languages and behaviour, with all this cool stuff but no gods (or different ones), may be difficult for them to deal with. Seeing how big the world is must dimish their own universe and everything they've believed up to this point.

Their vulnerability to disease is probably the biggest concern, but the psychological effect of expanding their universe is not trivial. It's not like us meeting aliens because we're open to the possibility already.

I don't have an answer as to whether they should be contacted. Maybe their women are oppressed and need to know about their human rights! But I do think that if they are contacted, even if the individuals survive the diseases and culture shock, their culture itself is a goner, destined to become a quaint relic at best. It's a decision to value individuals over societies - the needs of the one over the needs of the many, to slip in another Star Trek reference!

90. Storm erupts over 'virginity' divorce

Comment #186361 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 8:00 am

Well, I expect none of us will have much sympathy for the groom here, but it's worth noting that he hasn't only discovered his wife's not a virgin: he's also discovered that even before they're married she's lied to him about something she knew was important to him. Maybe not well matched from square one...

91. Synthetic Copycat Of Living Cell Underway: Life, But Not As We Know It?

Comment #186270 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 3:17 am

Honestly, aren't there enough cells in the world already? Skin cells, brain cells, stem cells, sex sells, terrorist cells, death sells, Microsoft Excels, selsa dip?

It's really just a capsule, a shell. Doesn't say what scale the picture is. Blue hot dogs could be very marketable. "Synthetic cell shell sells!"

92. Fossil reveals oldest live birth

Comment #186245 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 2:35 am

Limerick Summary News Service!

An archangel must have cut with a sword
This fish's umbilical cord.
As his cut made two fish,
Gabriel made a wish:
"Keep creating joke fossils, oh Lord!"

93. Fossil reveals oldest live birth

Comment #186232 by j.mills on May 30, 2008 at 2:00 am

Sounds a bit fishy to me.

(I'm here all week, folks.)

94. Mark Steyn vs. the 'Sock Puppets'

Comment #185914 by j.mills on May 29, 2008 at 4:40 am

Human rights are a vital instrument for defining a space of free action around each citizen that the state cannot intrude upon. They mark a genuine step forward in the progress of civilisation.

But there is no right not to be offended, and there is a right to free speech. This case seems way, way off what the relevant legislation must have been intended for. Whether there is ever an argument for quashing "hate speech" is a difficult question for society to haggle over, but this case is plainly not in that category. It gives Canada a bad name.

95. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #185169 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 6:16 am

This focusses on a putative gene for evangelising. The Dennettian approach is to focus on the structure of the information evangelised - does the transmitted content facilitate its further transmission? If you're looking for a genetic component, I'd say look at our susceptibility to information, be it good or dud.

96. Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

Comment #185165 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 6:07 am

And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city, and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch.

97. Animal Science Without Evolution

Comment #185144 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 4:42 am

In reference to finding a term for religious people in denial, Nalfeshnee said:

I propose: DEVOLUTIONIST.

"devolution" means "the handing off of power to a central authority".

98. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, ed. Richard Dawkins

Comment #180958 by j.mills on May 16, 2008 at 7:55 am

I found it an elegant and interesting book, though oddly structured in having mostly biology in the first half and much more emphasis on hard sciences in the second. Didn't actually learn a great deal (or if I did I've forgotten it all!), but it's very enjoyable.

99. Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour

Comment #177406 by j.mills on May 9, 2008 at 3:34 am

the Prince of Wales who, on his Coronation, hopes to become Defender of Faith rather than Defender of the Faith.

100. The History Channel might do something right

Comment #176279 by j.mills on May 7, 2008 at 4:52 am

The blurb sounds sensationalist to me. (Would it hurt them to say "95% of ANIMAL species"?) Isn't Dawkins working on an evolution series? That's probably the one to look out for.

I'm always kinda disappointed by those fabulous Attenborough BBC wildlife shows, "The Blue Planet", "Life On Earth", etc. They present lots of wonderful footage but they're less good at hammering home the messages, perhaps aiming too low. I'd welcome some computer graphics in those things - not CGI dogfights and rendered dinosaurs, but evolutionary trees and simulations of DNA replication.

As for science movies - "An Inconvenient Truth" was pretty good and did well.