I'll ignore the trinity for this discussion. The father son relationship would certainly seem to suggest at least two deities, but let's just accept the Christian explanation, and assume that they're different manifestations of the same god.

Let's start off looking at the Catholic saints. There are patron saints for everything, from various illnesses, to occupations, to places. I remember when my wife and I were selling our house, my sister in law suggested we bury a statue of Saint Joseph in our front yard. These characters are deities in all but name.

But not all sects of Christianity accept the saints, so let's move on to another character from Christianity - Satan. Here's a being so powerful that he was able to fight a war against Yahweh. He has his own kingdom, Hell. And many sects of Christianity believe that he's powerful enough to influence events in the universe, and that he's going to wage another war against Yahweh at some point in the future.

Most Christians also believe in angels and demons. Archangels are even mentioned by name in the Bible and other religious texts, such as Michael, Gabriel, Luke, Raphael, Uriel, Metatron, and Azrael. Many Christians also accept the concept of guardian angels. So, while the angels may not be as powerful Yahweh, they do have powers that they can use to influence the world.

Now consider the Greek pantheon. Gaia was the first deity, from whom all the other gods came. After the war between the Olympian Gods and the Titans, there were only three main gods who shared control of the universe - Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Yes, there were other lesser gods, but they all answered to those three. It seems like this is fairly comparable to Christianity. There are two primary gods, Yahweh and Satan, and all the lesser gods answer to them. The biggest difference seems to be that Yahweh isn't just a powerful god, he's also the creator god. But other polytheistic religions also have the creator god as the most powerful one (such as Vishnu's role in Hinduism).

Considering all this, it seems that calling Christianity a monotheistic religion is mostly an issue of semantics.

Maybe this doesn't really matter for my culinary question. Since we're talking about the future here, by the time that humans have the technology to travel to other planets, we'll probably have the technology to engineer gut microbes to digest that food for us. Maybe I should go crygenically freeze myself, and get thawed out every thousand years or so to see what new and delicious foods are in humanity's pantry.

Added 2010-03-09 After I wrote this entry, I sent off the same question to a friend of mine who happens to be a biologist. Here was his response.

Good question. Actually its funny that you asked me this now because my lecture on Monday is on digestion. My short and unsatisifying answer is it depends. First, it would depend on whether alien life is carbon based. If it is, I think that there is a very good chance we could digest it unless it is in forms that our digestive enzymes cannot break down, like cellulose. In order to use the nutrients that are in the food we eat, we must break them down into molecules that are small enough that they can be absorbed. In other words, we can't directly use proteins, lipids, and complex carbohydrates, but if we break them down we can reassemble their components into the forms that we need. The enzymes we use to break down what we eat (like amylase that breaks down starch and glycogen) ARE tuned in, as you put it, to the types of food that we eat. So if alien life had some sort of complex chemistry that we do not have the enzymes to process then we would not be able to digest it. The second issue is whether it was somehow toxic, which seems to me to be reasonably likely. If alien life had a different balance of elements, which I assume it would (unless it is derived from the same origin as life on earth, which is possible) I think the chances are good that some of them would be toxic to our systems.

First, here's the table that compares the scientific literacy of several countries. This table was taken from the section, Chapter 7. Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding. The numbers in the table are the percentage of people that responded correctly, while the correct answer is listed in parentheses after the question.

Now, here's the table detailing the U.S. history on these questions over the past several years (with the year 1985 removed to let the table fit on this page - but don't worry, the only data from 1985 was for the question about the continents).

And for something new compared to my previous blog entries on the science and engineering indicators, here's a graph of the above data to make it easier to see the trends.

Just look at those results - around a quarter of Americans think that the Sun goes around the Earth, half don't realize that electrons are smaller than atoms, and half don't know that it takes a year for the Earth to go around the Sun! Keep that in mind whenever you hear people citing public opinion polls on the validity of concepts like global warming or evolution.

It's always a bit depressing to see those numbers. It's hard to believe that the people of our nation are so ignorant. If there's one lesson to take away from these results, it's that we need to vastly improve our education system.

Update 2010-02-26: I updated the graph to add a title and labels to the axes. Also, the night after I wrote this entry, I went home and asked my 10 year old daughter the questions from the survey. She managed to get 9 out of 10 correct.

The simplest reason to be confident in science is a pragmatic one - just look at the results. Science as the formalized discipline that we're used to is a fairly recent development. It's only been around a few hundred years, getting started in the Renaissance, but not really coming into its own until after the Enlightenment. But look at how fast our technology has progressed in that short time compared to the previous millenia of human existence. We've invented telescopes, steam engines, automobiles, semiconductors, airplanes, computers, TVs, radio, lasers, vaccines, antibiotics, cures for some cancers. We've sent people to the moon. These accomplishments are all based on knowledge that we've learned through science. It seems very unlikely that we would have been able to accomplish all of that if we didn't have a pretty accurate understanding of reality. Granted, there are other fields of science that haven't yielded practical applications, and possibly never will. For example, understanding the Big Bang may not ever give us any new technologies. However, given the technologies we have developed from other fields, we know that the methods produce reliable results.

Moving away from pragmatism, let's look at how science works. Richard Feynman once said, "Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." There are all types of ways that we can make mistakes in our reasoning. There's a great article I've linked to before from this site, which does a fantastic job of discussing this: The double-blind gaze: how the double-blind experimental protocol changed science. The article is focused on medicine, but it's applicable to science in general. The article mentions a few of the confounding factors that can affect our reasoning, including the placebo effect, the re-interpretation effect, and observer bias. Wikipedia has a whole list of cognitive biases. A big part of science is recognizing and accounting for all these potential mistakes. Along similar lines, science is not just a search for evidence that confirms your ideas. It's a search for evidence that would disprove your ideas. A big part of science is recognizing when you're wrong.

Science also trains us to think less in terms of absolute certainty, and more in terms of degrees of certainty. If you're being honest with yourself, there's no way to be absolutely certain of anything. It's possible that we're living in The Matrix, or hallucinating, and nothing is as it seems (if this sounds familiar, I've discussed it before). In normal everday conversation however, we tend to ignore those types of outlandish possibilities, and say that we're positive of something, even if technically we mean nearly positive. There are many things we've learned through science that we can say that we're positive are true. The roughly spherical shape of the Earth, the Earth orbiting the Sun, common descent (if not all the exact lineages and mechanisms), are examples of a few of those facts. We should no sooner expect those facts to be overturned than we should expect to wake up on the Nebuchadnezzar fighting alongside Neo. Other things we've learned through science don't have quite as much evidence. Antrhopogenic global warming is an example of this. We can say that we're really darned sure that climate change is happening and that we're responsible, but it's not quite so certain. It would still be really surprising to see AGW turn out to be false, but not earth shattering. You can keep moving down through levels of certainty through things like String Theory, which doesn't really have any evidence confirming it specificaly over other theories, but which is at least consistent with known evidence. If string theory turned out to be false, I wouldn't be all that surprised. You can go even further, and find theories inconsistent with known evidence, such as the supposed link between vaccines and autism, or the aether theory of light. We can be pretty sure that those ideas are false.

In addition to making us think in terms of degree of certainty, science also makes us think in terms of degree of accuracy. Isaac Asimov wrote a good essay titled, The Relativity of Wrong. You should read the whole thing, but here's a great quote from that essay, "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." An example I've used before is the atom. The current model is the valence shell model, where electrons have a probability of being in particular positions relative to the nucleus. This is an improvement over the Bohr model, where electrons travel in circular orbits around the nucleus and where the orbit radii are defined by quantum mechanics. The Bohr model was an improvement over the Rutherford model (or Solar System model), where the electrons orbited the nucleus, but quantum mechanics wasn't incorporated to predict the orbit radii. The Rutherford model was an improvement over the plum pudding model. And the plum pudding model was at least more accurate than not knowing of the existence of electrons. So, you can see how our explanations have gotten more and more accurate concerning the structure of an atom. Our current model may also be supplanted, but at least we're zeroing in on the truth.

Those are the reasons why we can have confidence in what we learn through science. It's produced results that just wouldn't be possible if the methods didn't work. But it's not simply a matter of thinking that everything science reveals is absolutely right - it's recognizing how science works, what explanations are most likely to be true, and how close we should expect those explanations to be to the actual truth.

Now, there's a very good article in the NY Times Magazine describing their shenanigans in regards to the new social studies standards. I highly recommend this article. Here are a few highlights to wet your appetite.

Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

...some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next."

McLeroy makes no bones about the fact that his professional qualifications have nothing to do with education. “I’m a dentist, not a historian,” he said. “But I’m fascinated by history, so I’ve read a lot.”

I'm not a doctor, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.

McLeroy remains unbowed and talked cheerfully to me about how, confronted with a statement supporting the validity of evolution that was signed by 800 scientists, he had proudly been able to “stand up to the experts.”

Merely weaving important religious trends and events into the narrative of American history is not what the Christian bloc on the Texas board has pushed for in revising its guidelines. Many of the points that have been incorporated into the guidelines or that have been advanced by board members and their expert advisers slant toward portraying America as having a divinely preordained mission.

when Steven K. Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., testified at the board meeting last month in opposition to the board’s approach to bringing religion into history, warning that the Supreme Court has forbidden public schools from “seeking to impress upon students the importance of particular religious values through the curriculum,” and in the process said that the founders “did not draw on Mosaic law, as is mentioned in the standards,” several of the board members seemed dumbstruck.

One recurring theme during the process of revising the social-studies guidelines was the desire of the board to stress the concept of American exceptionalism, and the Christian bloc has repeatedly emphasized that Christianity should be portrayed as the driving force behind what makes America great.

Besides the fact that incorporation by reference [trying to tie the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence] is usually used for technical purposes rather than for such grandiose purposes as the reinterpretation of foundational texts, there is an oddity to this tactic. “The founders deliberately left the word ‘God’ out of the Constitution — but not because they were a bunch of atheists and deists,” says Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.” “To them, mixing religion and government meant trouble.” The curious thing is that in trying to bring God into the Constitution, the activists — who say their goal is to follow the original intent of the founders — are ignoring the fact that the founders explicitly avoided religious language in that document.

What is wrong with the Texas process, according to many observers, is illustrated by the fate of Bill Martin Jr. The board has the power to accept, reject or rewrite the TEKS, and over the past few years, in language arts, science and now social studies, the members have done all of the above. Yet few of these elected overseers are trained in the fields they are reviewing.

To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”

Those quotes are only a taste of the article. Go read the whole thing.

Depending on where you are in the world, you may call tomorrow something else, like Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day. But from where I'm from in Pennsylvania, it's called Fastnacht Day. Traditionally, you make potato based donuts, called fastnachts, supposedly as a way to empty your larder of all the fatty, sugary foods in preparation for the Lenten fast. My elementary school even used to give out donuts with the lunches on this day. So, in celebration of Fastnachts, here's a recipe on my main site on how to make fastnachts, and a link to the (not so thorough) Wikipedia article.

You're supposed to wake up early to make the fastnachts on Tuesday morning (they're freshest that way), but I usually make them the night before. They keep pretty well in a brown paper lunch bag. I also like to put a little bit of powdered sugar into a ziploc bag, and a mix of granulated sugar and cinammon into another one, to coat the fastnachts just before eating them.

Doughnut Picture from Wikimedia Commons

What does it add to describe a fact as 'scientific'? I guess the first thing is to understand is what's meant by science. Generally, there are two related meanings to the word. The first is that it's a method. We should all know this method from grade school - come up with an explanation, gather evidence to test the explanation, refine your explanation, and repeat. The second is the body of knowledge we've learned through that method. But the thing is, everything that has an objective answer can be examined through science.

Consider an example. Some would consider the Earth orbiting the sun a 'scientific' fact. We as humanity may have learned about it through science, and we as individuals may have learned it in science class, but it doesn't change the fact that it's true. It's not as if the Sun used to orbit the Earth until Galileo came along. Can't we just call it a plain old fact?

There are a couple reasons I bring this up. One is for the people who like to point out that science can't tell us anything with absolute certainty, and therefore science doesn't deal in facts (like this exchange I had). When you consider things like solipsism and Last Thursdayism, you have to grant that for fact to have any meaning, it must mean very high level of certainty, and not 100% absolute certainty. Going by that definition, science certainly does deal in facts.

The other is for the people who think of science as something separate, as not really describing things as part of their world. To them, it may be a 'scientific' fact that evolution occurs, but but in their world, science is wrong, so describing evolution as 'scientific' means it may not have actually occurred.

Oh well, I'm not be expressing myself as clearly as I'd like, but it's late on a Friday, and I'm about ready for some supper and a beer. I guess the main point I'm trying to get across is something I already said in the first paragraph. Calling something a 'scientific' fact is redundant. Statements are either true or not, and if they're true, then they're facts. Since we can study everything with an objective answer through science, it really doesn't add anything to describe any facts as scientific. If they're not scientific, they're not really facts to begin with.

Added 2010-02-01 I thought about this a bit over the weekend, and realized that that last sentence might come off as a bit smug. So, I thought that maybe I should list a couple examples.

As the first example, consider the claim that Hawaii is the 50th state of the U.S. To look at this scientifically, we need to gather evidence to support that claim. We could start off by looking at current legal documents, which show that Hawaii is definitely a state. We could move on to archived documents, and find the Hawaii Admission Act, which shows when Hawaii became a state. We could move on to find documents of when each of the previous 49 states became states. We could study newspaper articles from each of those periods for additional confirmation. After studying all that evidence, then we could say that it is a 'scientific' fact that Hawaii is the 50th state of the U.S.

Next, let's move on to something that some would think was a bit more subjective. Consider the claim that I love my wife and daughter. To test this, people could observe my behavior around my family, and the actions I commit in relation to my wife and daughter. They could study my involuntary facial expressions, to see how I react around them. They could observe my behavior when they're not around, looking for signs of loneliness, or observing how I talk about them. So, even the claim that I love my wife and daughter can be considered to be a 'scientific' fact, since we can use the scientific method to investigate it.

That's what I mean when I say that all facts worth talking about are scientific. Sometimes, we only practice rudimentary forms of the scientific method to determine their veracity, but, at least in principle, the scientific method can be applied to them.

I've been hearing a lot recently that creationism is a fairly modern American movement, and that Christians were more nuanced in their understanding of scripture before that. For example, there was a recent entry on Pharyngula, summarizing a lecture by Ron Numbers, describing how creationism is really the product of Ellen White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism. I've also heard Richard Dawkins make the claim a few times that young earth creationism is something new. There are certainly quite a few Christians today who interpret Genesis figuratively or allegorically, and quite a few of those who argue that it's obvious that Genesis isn't meant to be interpreted literally.

But how true are those claims? I went to the first place that all of us lazy researchers go - Wikipedia. Granted, I'm aware with the problems of trying to use Wikipedia as a primary source, but it's usually pretty useful.

The Wikipedia article lists examples of Christian creationism going all the way back to the beginning of Christianity (as well as numerous flavors of creationism of other religions predating Christianity). Even Saint Augustine, so often quoted for telling Christians not to speak about natural phenomena of which they were ignorant, thought that pretty much all of Genesis except for the creation story was literal, and seemed to think that the Earth was still only a few thousand years old.

They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed. (City of God)

Sure, there were people that thought the Earth was much older, but young earth creationism doesn't appear to be a particularly new phenomenon.

I think that when people talk about creationism being a modern phenomenon, they're actually referring to a modern resurgence. By the 1800s, geologists were starting to learn enough about the history of our planet that it was pretty obvious that it was very ancient. They didn't have the techniques to pin down the age as well as we do now, but their estimates ranged from millions to billions of years. For anyone who studied the evidence, it was no longer possible to be intellectually honest and still maintain a young earth perspective. So, educated Christians who hadn't already done so switched to non-literal interpretations of Genesis. Day age and gap theories were among the popular interpretations.

It was in response to this 'liberalizing' of Christianity, as well as in response to the Enlightenment, that fundamentalist Christianity sprang up. And it was against this backdrop that young earth creationism had its resurgence, including the visions of Ellen White.

I think another point that's worth bringing up is the difference between what educated and uneducated people believe. I don't mean for this to sound condescending - merely factual. As I bring up over and over on this site, just look at the Science and Engineering Indicators put out by the National Science Foundation. One in four people in this country don't realize the Earth orbits the Sun (it's even worse in Europe), and one half don't realize that electrons are smaller than atoms. Of course, practically anybody with a good education knows those simple facts. But, consider what future historians would think about our society's understanding of those facts. If it wasn't for polls like those, all they would have to go on would be books, articles, and other written records. And it's mainly people with good educations who leave those records. Outside of polls and similar research, written records are biased towards the educated. Now, considering young earth creationism, I think there might be a similar bias going on when we try to figure out what people believed in the 1800s and even earlier. What gets recorded in books written by educated priests is not the same thing as what was believed by the uneducated population.

So, it seems a bit misleading to claim that young earth creationism is a modern phenomenon. You could get away with talking of a modern resurgence, but young earth creationism appears to be as old as religion itself. And to claim that Genesis is clearly figurative or allegorical seems a bit of a stretch, as well, considering how many intelligent people accepted it as literal before we knew enough about the history of our planet to know otherwise. It's tough to know what people were thinking thousands of years ago concerning the creation stories now recorded in Genesis, but it certainly seems possible that they were accepted at face value.

Explanation of Image File Types.pdf

I mentioned that I did some traveling for Christmas. We flew up to Maryland/Pennsylvania to visit with my family for a few days before Christmas. We got there just in time for a big snow storm that dumped over a foot and a half of snow. Living in Texas, I thought that that was exciting enough, and that even though we wouldn't be up north for Christmas Day, at least we'd gotten to see snow during the Christmas season. When we flew back to Texas, it was 70º when we got off the plane, and we had a bit of a laugh at how different the weather was. That was before Christmas Eve. We had a freak snow storm hit us - a lot of snow. I know the official reports were for 4 to 6 inches, but it sure seemed like more. Maybe some of that had to do with snow drifts, or the ice that was already on the ground from a previous ice storm. The roads were horrible. A lot of people say the drivers down here aren't used to the snow, but I think it's much worse because the counties just don't have the equipment to handle the snow. The drive from Ft. Worth to Wichita Falls, which usually takes us a little less than two hours, took 9 hours that Christmas Eve. And we were lucky. Some people got stuck in a huge traffic jam that kept them in their cars for over 24 hours.

Here are a few pictures from my holidays - the first is from Pennsylvania, and the second two are from Texas. I had a white Christmas all the way around.

In year's past, I've made a point to mention my favorite books of the year. The problem this year is that I liked so many of them, that it was hard to weed this list down. Anyway, my favorites from fiction were Anne of Green Gables and Luncheon of the Boating Party. My favorites from nonfiction were Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life (Zimmer is one of my favorite authors), and Death from the Skies.

Coraline

This is a story about a little girl named Coraline, who feels a bit neglected by her parents (. She discovers a mysterious door in their new house that leads to a strange world, much like her own, but populated by people with buttons on their eyes. Her 'other mother' tries to convince her to stay, and Coraline must find a way back to her world. This book has now been made into a movie. I saw the movie for this before reading the book. As usual, the book was better.

Anne of Green Gables

This book is a classic, having sold over 50 million copies since it was first published in 1908. After reading it, it's clear to see why. The book is about an orphan girl, Anne Shirley (that's Anne with an 'e'), who gets mistakenly delivered to an unwed brother and sister, who had originally requested a boy to help them out on their farm. In short order, the brother and sister take in Anne, and the rest of the book is about her adventures growing up in the small coastal village of Avonlea. The book is more a series of short adventures, without a strong overall plot. There were several reasons I liked this book. As a father of a 10 year old girl myself, I could definitely put myself in the place of Matthew Cuthbert. It was easy to see the story through his eyes. There were also all the little historical details, such as preparing for an all day trip to town when the town was only a few miles away, or preparing dinner in an era without electricity or gaslines. Although this book is often thought of now as a children's book, when Lucy Maud Montgomery first wrote it, she intended it for audiences of all ages. I recommend this book to any parent. Montgomery went on to write several more books about Anne. I may have to find the time to read them.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

My daughter got me started on this series. Obviously, it's pretty popular - the boxed set of the first three books is currently at #168 in Amazon's best selling list, and a movie based on the first book is coming out in a few months. The series is about a young man, Percy Jackson, who turns out to be a demigod - the son of a mortal mother and godly father. In the story, the classical Greek gods are real, and still influencing the modern world. And as could be expected (otherwise it wouldn't make for an interesting story), some of the mythical beings are causing problems. Percy and his demigod friends must go on quests to save the day. I liked this series well enough. It was written from Percy's perspective. Staying true to how a 1x year old would write, the style takes a little getting used to. There's adventure, but the stories are never too serious (a few people do die, but when you're dealing with mythology, and dead people continue existing in the fields of Exxxxxxx, death isn't all that tragic). My 10 year old daughter really liked the series. She even read the final book of the series during the summer. And through the series, she learned quite a bit about mythology that she wouldn't have otherwise. True, these stories are adaptations of the classic myths, but I think it's still a great way to get kids interested in those myths.

Brisingr

This is the third book in the Eragon series. The author, Christopher Paolini, was only 16 when he wrote the first book. Although he originally intended the series to be a trilogy, once he got into the writing of the third book, he realized he needed to split it into two books. The title character, Eragon, is a young man from a small village in Alagasia???. The region is under control of an evil dictator, xxxx. The lands used to be protected by dragon riders, and xxxx had even been one of the riders. But, in his ruthless quest for power, he killed every last dragon rider and every last dragon so that he would be supreme in his power. This series has become very popular - a best seller that spawned a movie adaptation. I think when something like that happens, there's a certain segment of the population that becomes extra critical of the book, and that's what I notice in other reviews I read of this series. Certainly, Eragon isn't the best fantasy series. It doesn't come close to the Lord of the Rings, and some of the plot elements are not very original at all (imagine Star Wars with dragons instead of X-wings). But I think that as long as you keep your expectations reasonable, it's a very enjoyable book. I also very much enjoy the digressions into philosophy and morality. Eragon is growing up in a world with many different peoples, many different philosophies, and many different religions, which leaves him wondering how to make sense of it all. Paolini doesn't overdo these digressions - just enough to be interesting. I would certainly recommend this series. I'm looking forward to reading the fourth and final book when it's released.

Twilight

I usually try to avoid learning about a book as much as I can before reading it. I don't want preconceptions or expectations to ruin the story. Usually, that works out pretty well, but this book is a perfect example of how that can go wrong. About all I knew about this book before starting was that it was a monster book about vampires in high school, and that it was popular enough to have been made into a movie. So, I was expecting a typical fantasy book. About two hundred pages into it (the book's 544 pages long), I remember thinking to myself that the book had a pretty slow start, but I didn't really mind the author laying the groundwork for character development, especially considering that it was a series with far more to follow. About a hundred pages later, I realized that this wasn't just laying the groundwork - this was the plot. This wasn't a fantasy! It was a romance, wrapped up in the guise of fantasy. It's not that I don't occasionally enjoy a romance (I liked Pride and Prejudice), but this was a major letdown when I was expecting something with just a bit more action. And besides, it wasn't particularly enjoyable from a romantic perspective, either. I found a review on Amazon (alert - contains spoilers) that mirrors many of my thoughts on the book. I somewhat agree with that reviewer in calling Bella a Mary Sue. And the vampire, Edward, was hardly likeable - he was a creepy stalker. Perhaps this isn't a traditional romance. Perhaps we're not supposed to want to see the relationship between the two work out, because I know I never found myself hoping that the hero and heroine would still be together by the end of the book. I watched the movie for this after I'd already read the book. This is one of the rare occurences where the movie is actually better. There were still the problems of the nature of the relationship between the two main characters, but at least the movie stripped down the story to the good parts. Now, I find myself in a bit of a quandry. I almost always finish a story once I've started it. In fact, I make it a point to do so, so it's very rare that a book's so bad that I put it down. I managed to finish Twilight, but it's part of a series. So now I find myself wondering - should I try to finish out the series, or just quit on it. I suppose I could just watch the movies.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

When I was in elementary school, art class was partly doing projects, but also learning about famous and influential artists and their works. One of my favorite paintings from as far back as I can remember is Luncheon of the Boating Party. So, when I saw this book at the store, I couldn't resist picking it up. The book is very good. It's historical fiction. The author, Susan Vreeland, did quite a bit of research into Renoir, the story of this particular painting, and all the different people who posed for him in the painting. Obviously, the historical record on one piece of artwork is going to be incomplete, so Vreeland used some artistic license to fill in the gaps. In fact, the story of Alphonsine Fournaise, the principle character besides Renoir, was almost entirely invented by Vreeland. Vreeland did a wonderful job, not just in telling the story of this painting, but in capturing the spirit of the impressionist movement, and of late 19th century Paris. There was one shortcoming of the paperback version - there were no color plates of the various works of art discussed in the book. It might be worth buying the hardcover version which did have these pictures, or at least looking up those pictures and printing them out, to keep along with the paperback. Although it has very little to do with the book, here's a picture of me and my daughter looking at this painting when we were on vacation this past summer.

Angels and Demons

Dan Brown may be a best selling author, but he doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation among critics (apparently, his latest novel, The Lost Symbol, hasn't been warmly received, either). Like most people, I was introduced to Dan Brown with the Da Vinci Code. I enjoyed the book. Brown's writing style has a way of sucking you in. Later, as I did some independent research on the claims from the book, I was disappointed to learn just how much of it was made up. I realize it was fiction, but in a genre such as that, it would have been more enjoyable had the conspiracy theory been more believable. Despite some of the negatives, I liked the Da Vinci Code enough that I wanted to read the book that came before it, Angels and Demons. The biggest problem - they were the same story! Sure, there were a few differences, and a different McGuffin, but the plot lines were extremely similar. Having learned my lesson with the Da Vinci Code, I was more skeptical of the claims in Angels & Demons. So, from the very beginning, it was difficult to suspend my disbelief. Brown's portrayal of CERN, particularly the spirit of the scientists working there, was horrible. For example, and at the expense of a minor spoiler, after the public learns of the kidnapping of the priests, the scientists at CERN cheered! I know a few PhDs, and while many scientists may not like the institution of religion, few are so callous that they would rejoice at the kidnapping of a fellow human being. Brown just went over the top in his depiction of the conflict of science and religion. In the end, I just had to imagine that all of this was happening in an alternate universe (like in Pullman's His Dark Materials series), because it was too different from reality to be believable, otherwise. I definitely would not recommend this book. If you've never read anything by Brown and want to see what all the hoopla's about, read the Da Vinci Code (but keep in mind that it's mostly made up). If you've already read that, save your time, because there's not much different between that book and this one. As for me, I'm going to steer clear of The Lost Symbol, because I'm pretty sure it will just be a third retelling of this same plot.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

I've already completed a full review of this book. I highly recommend this book. It was very informative and interesting. The first section of the book was the section I could have done without, but which is probably useful to a fair amount of the population. It dealt with creationism, debunking many creationist arguments, and showing why they're just so silly. The first part also gives a decent overview of some important concepts in evolution, such as cladistics. The second section was where Prothero got to the meat of the book, and began presenting the fossil evidence for evolution. One common misconception, and one that I myself shared before learning more about evolution, is that fossil evidence is the primary form of evidence that we have for evolution. It's not. One of the things I was struck by when I read On the Origin of Species, was that Darwin only spent two chapters on fossils, while the rest of that book looked at the other evidence that lead Darwin to discover evolution - evidence such as distribution of species, the difficulty in classifying species vs. breeds, comparative anatomy, vestigial features, etc. But even though fossil evidence wasn't strong in Darwin's time, we've discovered many, many more fossils since then. Prothero does a good job of presenting an overview of some of these fossils. In fact, we have so many fossils now that they couldn't all be covered in a single book, which forces Prothero to be a bit superficial in his covereage of some lineages. I think this makes a good introduction to evolution. It doesn't cover all the forms of evidence we have to study evolution, but it does cover that form of evidence that seems most real - the remains of all those long dead creatures.

God-or Gorilla

I received this book as a gag gift from my parents. It was published in 1922, and is one long screed against evolution. It was interesting to read. On some topics, you could feel some sympathy for the author, McCann, because we didn't know as much about those topics in his time (such as genetics). There were also points, like the Piltdown hoax, and Haeckel's embryo illustration alterings, that were still fairly fresh back then. Still, McCann made many of the same mistakes as creationists of today. You could see the precursors of 'irreducible complexity', the 'tornado in a junkyard', and many other standard creationist staples. For anyone like me, with an unhealthy interest in creationists, this is an interesting book to read as a historical curiosity. To anybody else, though, I'm afraid the book would be a waste of time. I am working on a full review to this book. I'm really trying hard to finish it, and have much higher hopes than for my full review of The God Delusion, which never materialized. Considering that there are thousands of reviews for The God Delusion, but I haven't yet seen a single one for God-or Gorilla, I have a bit more motivation to finish this one.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

This was a pretty good book, and I'd recommend it, but I've been spoiled by the science writing of the likes of Carl Zimmer and Frans de Waal. Neil Shubin is certainly a competent writer, and a practicing scientist, so his accounts are first hand, but he's not quite at the same level as those masters. Shubin did a good job of explaining evolutionary concepts. Given the title of the book, it can be expected that he focused on comparative anatomy, vestigial organs, and contingency in his treatment of evolution, which he did. However, I thought that the way he presented the information would make it easy to misconstrue how evolution works. Rather than clearly showing how, say, humans and goldfish both evolved from a common ancestor, which we would certainly call a fish, Shubin's approach would make it easy to misunderstand that we humans evolved from an animal very much like a goldfish, which we didn't. Still, as long as somebody has a decent understanding of evolution, they shouldn't fall into this trap. I just wouldn't recommend the book as a primer for someone who knows very little about evolution. One of my favorite parts was actually only tangentially related to evolution. Neil Shubin is the scientist who discovered Tiktaalik Rosea. For anyone unfamiliar with this animal, it's a transitional form between fish and tetrapods, more on the fish side of that transition. It filled in a previous gap in the fossil record, between fully aquatic animals such as Panderichthys and Elginerpeton on the fish side, and semi-terrestrial animals like Acanthostega on the tetrapod side. Shubin devotes a chapter to his expeditions to the arctic to find the fossil. That description of the conditions they had to endure, and how an expedition is actually carried out, was very interesting.

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

This book is a bit of a mixed bag. Some parts are very, very good, while other parts seemed unnecessary. I have to agree with the critics who say that Dawkins hammered too hard on creationists. It's not that I think that creationist arguments are good, or that there's any place for creationism except in mythology, but there's a time and place for everything, and the way Dawkins hammered on creationists was a bit of a distraction. It would be like reading a book on geology, where the author continually hammered on flat earthers. Flat earthers certainly believe silly things just like creationists, but they're simply a distraction from the incredibly interesting true science. I guess that's a bit of an unfair comparison, though - flat earthers are a very fringe group in the modern world, while about half of the U.S. population are creationists. Perhaps there is a need to directly address their misconceptions, but I'm not sure if Dawkins' approach is necessarily the best. Moving past that, other parts of The Greatest Show on Earth were very good. For example, in the second chapter, Dawkins gradually introduced the reader to natural selection. Starting with artificial breeding by humans, Dawkins likened that to insects breeding flowers. From there, he moved to sexual selection, then how predators can act as breeders for prey by avoiding those prey with the best camouflage or disguises, then how prey can act as breeders for certain animals like anglerfish by choosing those fish with the best lures, and finally tp natural selection, how simply by enhanced survival and reproduction, various traits can be selected for. I thought this was an ingeneous way to introduce the concept. Dawkins also deserves praise for covering so many lines of evidence for evolution. He didn't just discuss the fossils. He covered biogeography, genetics, comparative anatomy, etc. Unfortunately, given the breadth of the topics, it necessarily meant that he couldn't cover any single one in great detail. I think I would recommend this book, but not necessarily as a primer on evolution for a creationist who'd never studied it before. I think the tone of the book might put them on the defensive, so I think I'd recommend Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. Still, to anyone else, this book does a good job of introducing the many lines of evidence for evolution. And in the parts where Dawkins ignores the creationists, he's great.

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life

E. coli has been studied so extensively that it is probably the most understood species on the planet. Carl Zimmer, one of my favorite authors, wrote a book about what we know about this organism and how it relates to us. It was extremely fascinating. One of my favorite things about Zimmer's writing style is that he tells stories. He doesn't just relate the facts of what we know. He describes the scientists who discovered it, and the experiments and observations they devised to learn what they did.

Death from the Skies

This is the first book I've read of Phil Plait's, though I've been reading his blog, Bad Astronomy, for quite a while now. I've tended to focus my science reading a bit on biology in recent years, so it was nice to read something from astronomy. Although the title sounds sensationalistic, the book is based on good sound science. It describes possible scenarios that could cause the destruction of the Earth (or at least cause mass extinctions), such as asteroid impacts, or being consumed by an Earth massed black hole. It also discusses the probability of any of these events happening (asteroid - pretty high, given enough time; black hole - not so much). He also goes on to describe the eventual inevitable death of our solar system when the Sun uses up all its nuclear fuel, and even further out, the entropy death of the universe, long after all the stars are gone and even all the black holes have evaporated. He does give some hope - there are possible scenarios that could cause a rebirth of the universe trillions of years from now. If you've ever read Plait's blog yourself, you'll know of his quirky sense of humor, and his absolute love of science. He keeps the best of those aspects in this book. I definitely recommend this book.

Egyptian Book of the Dead

I've already completed a full review of this book. To quote from my full review, "[The Egyptian] conception of the afterlife... was a bit different than the Christian one that most people in this country are used to. There wasn't a simple, one time judgement, after which the deceased either went to heaven or hell. The afterlife was more like a parallel world, and the dead would have to know how to get around." The Book of the Dead was their guide to that world. The book I read contained a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but it also contained a very extensive introduction. To quote from my full review again, "I enjoyed the book quite a bit, particularly the introduction, which was actually more of a history lesson in ancient Egyptian religion. However, after doing more research on the book, it appears that Budge made several mistakes. This is understandable, of course, considering how much we've learned since Budge performed the translation. However, if one were interested in getting the most accurate picture of ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, there are probably better sources out there."

The e-mail is about Obama's reaction to the recent shootings at Ft. Hood. It claims that Nidal Hassan was an advisor to Obama on homeland security, and that Obama has been quiet in his response to the shootings for this reason. As evidence, the e-mail provides a link to notes from a meeting that lists Hassan as a participant.

For the most part, this e-mail is false or misleading.

The link provided goes to the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI), not the federal government's Department of Homeland Security. The HSPI describes itself as follows.

Founded in 2003, The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) is a nonpartisan “think and do” tank whose mission is to build bridges between theory and practice to advance homeland security through an interdisciplinary approach. By convening domestic and international policymakers and practitioners at all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia, HSPI creates innovative strategies and solutions to current and future threats to the nation.

Nidal Hasan is listed in the pdf link, and this is the same Nidal Hasan responsible for killing the people at Fort Hood. However, he is listed as a participant, or in other words, an audience member. The presenters are listed earlier in the pdf, and Hasan is not among them. The HSPI has released a statement on Hasan's connection to the institute (currently available on their homepage). Here is the first paragraph of that statement.

In his capacity as Disaster & Preventive Psychiatry Fellow at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Nidal Hasan registered ("RSVP'd') to attend as an audience member a number of Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) events in the period June 2008 to February 2009. All of these events were open to the public. At no time has Nidal Hasan been affiliated with HSPI or The George Washington University.

So, Hasan was an audience member, or at least RSVP'd, for a meeting on homeland security organized by a university think tank. I think it's disingenuous to try to use that to try to show that Hasan was connected somehow with the president (other than the fact that as commander in chief, Obama was Hasan's boss, though removed by many levels of supervisors).

The full text of the e-mail forward is available below the fold.

Subject: WHY NO NEWS ABOUT FT HOOD SHOOTER

Nidal Hasan on Obama's Security Task Force..............

Now we have a little insight into why Obama said to not jump to conclusions about Nidal Hasan and why Congressmen were not briefed before the press leak.

This murdering Muslim Terrorist who killed and wounded the soldiers and civilians at Ft Hood, Texas was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team. Look on page 29 of the Homeland Security Institute link below.

I wonder how many more skeletons there are to come out of the cupboard. Who else is there in the government or its numerous advisors or Czars that will harm our country and citizens?

http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/old/PTTF_ProceedingsReport_05.19.09.pdf     Go to page number 29, scroll down toward the bottom on the Left Column

He is listed under "THINKING ANEW- SECURITY PRIORITIES FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION", as Nidal Hasan, Uniformed Services University School of Medicine (8TH DOWN ON LEFT COLUMN PAGE 29).

Please send this link to everybody on your email list. The world needs to know who Obama really is. This is very scary guys.

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Carter Signs UAS License Agreement with AAI Carter Aviation Technologies LLC (Carter) of Wichita Falls, TX is announcing that they have completed negotiations with AAI Corporation, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. company, of Hunt Valley, MD...

Jeff Carter Signs UAS License Agreement with AAI

Carter Aviation Technologies LLC (Carter) of Wichita Falls, TX is announcing that they have completed negotiations with AAI Corporation, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. company, of Hunt Valley, MD on an exclusive licensing agreement for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) using Carter's revolutionary Slowed Rotor/Compound (SR/C) Aircraft Technology - a combination of rotorcraft and fixed-wing aerodynamics. The 40-year exclusive agreement covers all UAS programs worldwide.

Read more

]]> tag:www.jefflewis.net,2009:/blog//1.281 2009-11-17T17:46:25Z 2009-11-17T17:47:48Z

It's funny. Once things become routine, we lose our sense of awe at how amazing they actually are. Consider that a hundred years ago, when Wilbur Wright took his first trip to Kittyhawk, it took him 4 days of actually...

Jeff It's funny. Once things become routine, we lose our sense of awe at how amazing they actually are. Consider that a hundred years ago, when Wilbur Wright took his first trip to Kittyhawk, it took him 4 days of actually traveling, along with another 3 days of looking for a boat, to make for a full week to get halfway across the country from Ohio to an island off the coast of North Carolina. And that was using rail travel. A little less than a hundred years before that, it took 4 to 6 months to travel halfway across the country going the other way, to get from Missouri to Oregon along the Oregon Trail. Even the Pony Express, which relied on swapping out horses every 10 miles, and running both day and night, took 10 days to deliver a letter from Missouri to California.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and had breakfast with my brother in Pennsylvania. By that evening, I was at home watching TV with my wife and daughter in Texas. And people told me I had a long travel day because I had a layover for a few hours in Charlotte! Air travel is amazing.

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