This is a bit old news by now, but I couldn't let it pass by completely without comment.

The Indiana House of Representatives had a resolution to recognize the 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts of America. One of the Republican representatives, Bob Morris, refused to vote for the resolution. His reason? Among others, that Girl Scouts is a "radicalized organization" that "promote[s] homosexual lifestyles", and that they're being used by Planned Parenthood into "sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts".

Morris wrote a letter to his fellow Republicans explaining his views. It can be read in its entirety at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

While Morris was the only member of the Indiana House to not support the resolution, he is not a lone crackpot on this issue. There are more people than I'd like to imagine who are opposed to Girl Scouts for the reasons he discussed. So, for that anti-Girl Scout movement, I think it's worth taking a look at Morris's letter.

Morris's comments haven't gone unnoticed. The council up there, Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana / Michiana, has released a statement responding to Morris's claims:
What We Stand For

I guess I should also add that my wife and I are the co-leaders of our daughter's Girl Scout troop. While that may make us biased in favor of the organization, it also means that we're actually involved and know what actually goes on in Girl Scout activities.

Morris's comments are what I've come to expect from the extreme right - a combination of some things that simply aren't true, and some things that are true but where I disagree with his opinion. Let's start with this one from near the start of his letter.

The Girl Scouts of America and their worldwide partner, World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood.

No, they haven't. How many times do different branches of Girl Scouts need to set the record straight before he'll believe it. Neither the council in Indiana nor the national GSUSA have any official ties to Planned Parenthood. I don't know for sure abut WAGGGS, but they don't set the agenda for GSUSA, anyway.

Here's one of the claims about Planned Parenthood's influence.

A Girl Scouts of America training program last year used the Planned Parenthood sex education pamphlet "Happy, Healthy, and Hot." The pamphlet instructs young girls not to think of sex as "just about vaginal or anal intercourse." "There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!" it states. Although individual Girl Scout troops are not forced to follow this curriculum, many do. Liberal progressive troop-leaders will indoctrinate the girls in their troop according to the principles of Planned Parenthood, making Bishop Conley's warning true.

Now, I don't know whether or not that pamphlet might have been used, but I'll assume it was included as part of a training program for leaders as an example of the type of material they could use when talking with their girls, if they were going to get into that topic. We haven't gotten into any type of sex ed with our troop (and if we ever do, I doubt I'll be a part of that meeting), but it is something I expect a scouting organization to at least touch on. It was something I had to do when I was in Boy Scouts years ago. Remember that any type of sex ed in scouting is kept age appropriate, and that scouting covers a broad age range. It's not as if people are talking to Brownies or Cub Scouts about sex. Those discussions are for the older scouts, who have already reached puberty, and who will have questions about it. And the policy of the Girl Scouts is to make sure that parents approve beforehand of their girls being in those types of discussions. It's not something leaders would just spring on the girls.

Not knowing exactly what was in that pamphlet, I can't see any problems with what Morris quoted from it. No, sex is not "just about vaginal or anal intercourse". It carries a lot more emotion than simply 'making babies', and is as much about an emotional connection with your partner as a physical one. The part about "no right or wrong way" and to "have fun, explore and be yourself" sounds entirely reasonable to me. It's removing the stigma so that people will be comfortable in their sexuality, not ashamed of 'dirty' feelings.

(Well whaddya know - per Snopes, the Girl Scouts never did use those handouts.)

Many parents are abandoning the Girl Scouts because they promote homosexual lifestyles. In fact, the Girl Scouts education seminar girls are directed to study the example of role models. Of the fifty role models listed, only three have a briefly-mentioned religious background - all the rest are feminists, lesbians, or Communists.

Oh, the horror - lesbians and feminists. Just because Morris is bigoted doesn't mean the Girl Scouts should be. One of the things I've been really impressed by with the Girl Scouts is their tolerance and inclusivity.

Plus, I'd sure like to see some documentation of what he's claiming. I can't recall any of the literature we've gotten from the Girl Scouts with anybody being used as a role model because of their sexual orientation. In fact, I can't recall any literature that discussed anybody's sexual preference at all. And I certainly can't think of anybody who was used as a role model for communism.

As far as feminism - what does he expect? Sexism has been a major problem in our country's history, and it was feminists who fought against it. Shouldn't Girl Scouts point out some of those feminists who paved the way for the girls of today.

World Net Daily, in a May 2009 article, states that Girl Scout Troops are no longer allowed to pray or sing traditional Christmas Carols.

World Net Daily? Really?

Anyway, I can assure you that none of that is true. Our council (much to my own personal chagrine) starts dinners and luncheons with a prayer. We've never been told that we weren't allowed to pray with our girls (though obviously, I don't do it), and there are no rules against singing 'We Three Kings'.

Boys who decide to claim a "transgender" or cross-dressing life-style are permitted to become a member of a Girl Scout troop, performing crafts with the girls and participate in overnight and camping activities - just like any real girl.

Who the hell cares? If a kid wants to dress up like a girl and do 'girl activities', and their parents support it and have talked to a counselor about it, who am I to disagree? To be perfectly honest, I'd prefer that there was just Scouts, without the gender distinction. That's how Campfire does it. And once they get old enough, girls can join the Explorers branch of Boy Scouts.

The fact that the Honorary President of Girl Scouts of America is Michelle Obama, and the Obama's are radically pro-abortion and vigorously support the agenda of Planned Parenthood, should give each of us reason to pause before our individual or collective endorsement of the organization.

Does this guy know what 'honorary' means? She's a figurehead, with no real influence over the organization. The First Lady has been the Honorary President since Lou Henry Hoover. They're not picked for their political leanings, but simply because they're the wife of the president. (I can only assume that the first female president will also be made the Honorary President of the GSUSA.)

Now that I am aware of the influence of Planned Parenthood within GSA and other surprisingly radical policies of GSA, my two daughters will instead become active in American Heritage Girls Little Flowers organization. In this traditional group they will learn about values and principles that will not confuse their conservative Hoosier upbringing.

Yeah, all that tolerance from the Girl Scouts sure is confusing.

If you have the time, I really do recommend reading the What We Stand For section from the Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana / Michiana. Here are excerpts of a few of my favorite sections.

GSNI-M remains dedicated to our values of creating an accepting environment where girls build leadership skills necessary for success, supported by our committed staff and dedicated volunteers. We believe that Girl Scouting is the place to develop moral values, strong ethics, and a social conscience which will serve girls throughout their lives.

That said, if the child is recognized by the family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then Girl Scouts of Northern Indiana - Michiana is an organization that can server her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe.

Yes. Girl Scouting suuports girls from all backgrounds and beliefs. While we are a secular organization that refrains from teaching religious or spiritual beliefs or practices, we believe that the motivating force in Girl Scouting is a spiritual one, and we greatly value our longstanding partnerships with religious organizations across many faiths that share the values of the Girl Scout Promise and Law.

Their response exemplified the values of scouting, without being craven and caving to pressure from extremists. After reading it all, it made me proud to be involved in the Girl Scouts.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Mar 2 | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife spotted an interesting message on a sign out in front of one of the churches here in town. So, she took a picture of it and texted it to me.

For anyone that can't download images, here's the message.

IF MAN CAME FROM APES WHY ARE THERE STILL APES?

I've been seeing this as a parody of creationists for so long, that it's almost a bit surreal to see someone actually using it seriously. And it's not just some random commenter on a blog, but the message a church is putting out to the public. Even if the sign person at the church has enough freedom where the message doesn't have to get approved by someone else first, my wife tells me that the message has been up for over a week - plenty of time for someone in the congregation to say something about it.

I could just point and laugh at the sign, which may even have been enough for this entry, but that's not very productive. So, while I've covered this on the blog before, since the prior coverage was brief, I'll go through again explaining why this question sounds silly once you actually understand evolution. Since I have covered this before, some of the content below has been copied copiously from a previous post.

One of the easiest ways to see the error in this line of thinking is to use an analogy. I'll use myself as an example. My great great grandfather and grandmother on one side were German - not just of German ancestry, but born in Germany and immigrants to the U.S. So, I can quite literally say that I am descended from Germans. But it's also quite obvious that I'm not descended from any living Germans. A certain group of Germans and I share a common ancestry through my great great great grandparents. The descendants of my great great great grandparents split into two lineages - one that continued in the U.S., and one that continued in Germany. That lineage in Germany is composed of my cousins, not my ancestors.

Another way to see the error in this line of thinking is to pose it with a different group of animals. It's a bit like asking, 'If crows evolved from birds, why are there still birds?'

It's a very similar case with us and chimpanzees and bonobos. Around 6 million years ago, there was a population of apes that was neither human, chimpanzee, nor bonobo. Over the generations, this population split into multiple lineages, each of which evolved independently. Most of those lineages have gone extinct, but there are still three of us left. We are cousins. We can go back further in time and find the ancestor that we share with gorillas, and further to find the ancestor we share with orangutans, and on and on all the way back till life began. None of those ancestors will look exactly like any of their modern descendents, since evolution has been occurring in all of the lineages. (Obviously, we haven't actually found fossils of all species that have ever existed. But, in the same way that you know you must have a great great great great great great grandmother, even if you don't have any record of her, we also know that we must have common ancestors with Earth's other organisms, even if we haven't yet found their fossils.)

I think there's another misconception associated with this assertion. I think it goes back to the Great Chain of Being, where people feel that evolution is directed, and that us humans are the pinnacle. That's not the case. Much of the change that occurs in evolution is through mutation and natural selection (though those aren't the only drivers). Mutation is random. It just happens, without any conscious intent. Think about yourself - did you pick any of the mutations that make your DNA slightly different from your parents? Did you pick any of the mutations that make your children's different from yours? Natural selection isn't random. It acts like a filter - eliminating the mutations that don't work as well, while allowing the ones that do to pass through. But it's only a filter. It relies on the raw material from random mutations.

It's also important to keep in mind that mutations aren't good or bad on their own. It all depends on the environment an organism is living in, the animals lifestyle, and other factors. DNA to make gills is very useful for a fish, but wouldn't do a damn for us.

So, let's go back to that ancestral population of apes. Somehow, it got split into at least two lineages. Those lineages, once they became reproductively isolated, could no longer share DNA between each other. So, whatever beneficial mutations popped up in one population would have been available only in that population. Any mutations that made the eventual chimp lineage better at climbing trees, for example, would have been unavailable to our lineage. Likewise, any mutations that made or lineage better at walking on the ground would not have been available to the lineage that led to chimps & bonobos. So, once that population was split, the two lineages went their own separate evolutionary ways.

Environment could also have played a role. Now, I doubt the following is exactly what happened, but it's an interesting thought experiment. What could have caused that ancestral population to become split? Imagine that it was a new river, that cut through their range. Imagine that the river became so big that the ancestral apes couldn't cross it. And suppose that on one side of the river, the forest stayed largely intact, while on the other side, the forest gave way to savannah. Now, with one lineage living in forest, and the other in savannah, you can see how natural selection would have favored different mutations in each of the two lineages, causing each to evolve markedly differently.

So, once you understand a bit about how evolution works, the question 'If man came from apes, why are the still apes?' seems nonsensical, and even a bit silly.

Here's a related blog entry I wrote a few years ago:
Why Do People Have a Problem With Our Relation to Other Apes?

That entry also addresses the semantics of this a bit. In my opinion, we are just a type of ape, so saying that we evolved from apes just seems obvious.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jan 31 | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a hell of an idea. A philosopher, Alain de Botton, who already has earned a bit of a questionable reputation for saying that atheists should copy the trappings of religion, has pushed this idea even further into the ridiculous. He thinks there should be atheist temples. He's proposing a 46 meter tall black tower - 46 meters to symbolize the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth, with a millimeter thick band of gold at the bottom to represent humanity's existence.

I find this to be incredibly silly, and I'm not alone. The comments to the article linked to above are nearly all atheists ridiculing the idea. Pharyngula also has a blog entry on it, with over 100 comments so far saying how stupid they think the idea is.

I touched on this before in my review of The Year of Living Biblically, but it's worth repeating here since it's so relevant.

Atheism is only a big deal in the present, because religion is such a big deal. There are lots of other things people don't believe in, but nobody notices because there's no countering belief. Let me use an example. I realize there are still a handful of people who believe in fairies, but they are the exception, not the rule. Most people are a-fairiests. But nobody would propose building a museum or a temple dedicated to the non-belief in fairies.

Right now, us atheists are vocal because religion has so much undue influence in society. But if society gradually shifts to become more atheistic, as appears to be the case, eventually being an atheist will just be the default position, and nobody will make a big deal of it.

In my case, and in the case of many of the 'new' atheists, atheism is really only a side effect of other, positive values. We're committed to rationality, critical thinking, evidence, the wonders of the universe. But there are already grand buildings dedicated to those values - museums, universities, libraries. These aren't like temples in that people go there to worship, but they do provide a setting for those values to thrive. I'd much rather see money going to support those existing institutions than see it go to some cockamamie temple of non-belief.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 27 | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

This is old news by now, and has certainly made the rounds in the skeptical blogosphere, but like I often do, I'm repeating this for friends and family who don't frequent the same areas of the web that I do.

At Cranston High School West in Rhode Island, there was a mural painted to look like a banner with a prayer on it. For reference, here's the full text of the prayer (per WPRI):

Our Heavenly Father, Grant us each day the desire to do our best, To grow mentally and morally as well as physically, To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, To be honest with ourselves as well as with others, Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win, Teach us the value of true friendship, Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West. Amen

The mural had been there for decades, but just recently, it has become the focus of some controversy. The short story is that a student, Jessica Ahlquist, complained to the adminstration that the banner was illegal and that it marginalized non-Christians. The school didn't listen, so she went to the ACLU. The ACLU told the school that the banner was clearly illegal, and that there wouldn't even be a debate if it were to go to court. The school still did nothing. So, the ACLU followed through, filed a lawsuit, and unsurprisingly, a judge ruled that mural had to be removed. As part of his opinion, he wrote:

No amount of debate can make the School Prayer anything other than a prayer.

Well, as you can expect, throughout the whole affair the 'good' Christians of Cranston have not been happy about this at all. It really has brought out the worst in some people. The blog, JesusFetusFajitaFishsticks, has a collection of some of the comments that have been directed at Jessica. Of course, there are the usual Christian threats that she'll burn in Hell, along with lots of people calling her a bitch. There are some threats that get even more explicit, such as:

Fuck Jessica alquist I'll drop anchor on her face

Let's all jump that girl who did the banner #fuckthatho

"@Ry_Simoneau: But for real somebody should jump this girl" lmao let's do it!

@jessicaahlquist your home address posted online i cant wait to hear about you getting curb stomped you fucking worthless cunt

As that last comment pointed out, someone even published her home address in the comments section of the local paper. In fact, the threats were so bad, that Jessica had to get police protection.

And it's not just young students acting out against Jessica. Grown adults are getting in on the act. Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo, a Democrat, made some comments about Jessica on the John DePetro Show. He called her, perhaps somewhat jokingly, "an evil little thing". He also said, "Poor thing. And it’s not her fault. She’s being trained to be like that." When pressed on it, he relented a bit on her, but said that "she's being coerced by evil people." Seriously. An elected official is calling people evil for asking a school to take down a sectarian prayer.

On the petty side, local florist shops are refusing to deliver flowers to Jessica. The organization that was trying to send her the flowers eventually went to an out of state florist. According the the FFRF press release:

FFRF was forced to go to an out of state business, Glimpse of Gaia, in Putnam, Conn., which not only agreed to deliver the flowers but threw in a second bouquet from the shop with its own message, “Glimpse of Gaia fully supports our First Amendment and will not be bullied by those who do not. Here’s to you, Jessica Ahlquist.”

This whole ordeal has revealed quite a bit of hatred and bad behavior over someone simply asking a school to follow the law of the land and respect the Constitution. It's certainly revealed the ugly side of Christianity, and shown Jessica Ahlquist to be a very courageous young woman.

Here are a few sites where you can show your support for Jessica:
jessicaahlquist.com
Support Jessica Ahlquist
Evil Little Shirts

Here's one more link to a news story:
Rhode Island Teen's Battle Against Prayer Banner Has Gone 'Too Far,' Mayor Says

And I'll also note that The Digital Cuttlefish has devoted quite a few blog entries to creating verse about this situation. It's well worth browsing through that site to read them (as well as all the other poems).

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 20 | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a link to an interesting article recently, How many gallons of gasoline would it take to charge an iPhone?. The article was published on ExxonMobil's Perspectives blog. It was an attempt to put into perspective just how much energy there is in gasoline, and why it's so useful as a fuel.

Early on, the article presented a 'fact', without any rationale to back it up:

All of the energy concentrated in one gallon of gasoline is enough to charge an iPhone once a day for almost 20 years.

So, I thought I'd run some numbers to see just how reasonable this was.

First, what's the energy content of a gallon of gas? According to Wikipedia's Energy densities page, the energy density of gasoline is 47.2 megajoules per kilogram. A gallon of gas weighs about 6 lbs, for a mass of about 13.2 kg 2.73 kg. Multiplying by the energy density gives 623.04 MJ 128.73 MJ in a gallon of gas.

Now, for something that took a little more work, what's the energy content of the iPhone battery. According to Wikipedia's iPhone 4 page, the battery is 3.7V at 1420 mAh. (An Ah is the "the electric charge transferred by a steady current of one ampere for one hour" - Wikipedia). So, doing a simple calculation on that, let's figure out the power the battery is putting out, and then how much energy that would be after the one hour for the Ah:

P = IV
P = 1.42A * 3.7V
P = 5.254W

As a sanity check, that's in line with what some random guy on the Internet claimed on Yahoo Answers, according to his kill-a-watt power meter.

And since energy is equal to Power times time:

E = Pt
E = 5.254W * 3600s
E = 18,914.4J

So, if we simply divide the energy content of the gas by the energy content of the battery, we get 32,940 charges 6806 charges. Assuming a charge every day for a year, that's 90.2 years 18.6 years. Now, of course, there are inefficiencies in the systems, so that's not right. Gasoline engines in cars are typically on the order of 25% - 30% efficient (per Wikipedia), and their alternators are typically on the order of 50% - 60% efficient. However, permanent alternators run optimally can have efficiencies in the high 90%'s (again, per Wikipedia).

So, the claim that there's enough energy in a gallon of gas to charge an iPhone every day for 20 years seems pretty reasonable (in reality, when you look at the efficiencies, you won't be able to put all that energy into charging the phone).

An iPhone may not be huge, but 20 years is a pretty long time. It really just goes to show how much energy gasoline contains, and why it's so useful for powering vehicles.

As a side note, this is why I personally think that biofuels offer so much hope. If a way can be found to efficiently convert biomass into a gasoline like fuel (such as some of the studies on algae), we'd have a high density energy source that could take advantage of existing infrastructure. No waiting overnight to charge batteries - just a quick 10 minute stop at the pump to fill up with dead algae.

Update 2012-05-08 As a reader pointed out, I made a boneheaded error in my conversion from pounds to kilograms (stupid metric system). I corrected it, striking through the wrong numbers and replacing them with the correct ones.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jan 9 | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)