Dimwits, Denial and Dementia

Einstein's theory of General Relativity has undergone a hundred years of testing and once again its predictions of the way mass interacts everywhere in the Universe has won out over a competing hypothesis that attempted to dismiss the idea of Dark Matter and Dark energy that seems so contrived and ugly but steadfastly resists debunking. Science is about constant questioning and constant refinement of measurements, and so it will continue to be tested and mankind will continue to try to work out a unified theory of how the universe operates on the very large and very small scales -- perhaps forever.

Likewise, the Theory of Evolution has survived all challenges and has steadily explained more and more about how life changes over time through naturally occurring processes and algorithms. The gigantic amount of new geological data argues irrefutably for our planet being billions of years old. In fact, these sciences may be much better understood and documented than the physics we all tend to accept, yet one set of theories has been under attack by people who deny all the data and pretend that it's a hoax perpetrated by scientists for unknown reasons that probably have to do with invisible sentient entities in dubious battle.

Of course quantum mechanics and relativistic theories of space-time, matter, energy and gravity are much harder to comprehend and to demonstrate to the vast majority of people but you don't see anyone building museums and amusement parks or wasting their time lobbying school boards in favor of a Jerusalem centered universe or insisting on the presence of a "firmament" or an invisible kingdom full of invisible but powerful creatures so close to us that one could build a tower and like Jack with his beanstalk, walk right in. The Bible affirms this world view and certain desperate people insist that the Bible proves a 6000 year old universe even though Einstein and the geologists can prove otherwise beyond the shadow of a sane doubt. I imagine a fifth grader could explain to you how few stars would be in the sky in a 6000 year old universe or why a million years of ocean bed lies at the top of the Himalayas.

Confusing isn't it? But then you'd expect the actions of the confused to be that way and you'd expect the people whose lives are filled with the pain of confusion and the ignominy of stupidity to act with anger against a world view that defies their ability to understand. And so they do.

Any fool can think he's putting himself on a par with Ed Witten, not by disproving his math or offering better solutions that M theory, but simply by denying, by insisting without evidence that it's all a hoax. For the idiot, it's like being born again, only this time with a brain. I deny, therefore I'm smart.

Every year, students from Liberty University, a fake educational institution run by deranged liars for the Bible make a trip to Washington to look at a watered down for public consumption display of evidence for the origin of species - and scoff and snicker like George Bush at the Louvre. With wild and wanton ignorance of geology and all the accurate methods we have to date fossils, minerals and rock strata,

Lauren Dunn, 19, a second-year biology student at Ding-Dong Liberty University opined of an early mammilian fossil:

"210 million years, that's arbitrary. They put that time to make up for what they don't know."

She knows only what her mentors teach: irrefutable proof is nothing and if mathematics argues with legend, mathematics is a hoax.

Now here's the lesson in evolution: there is no known mechanism weeding out the genes for such defective brains in our species and in fact they tend to breed and to succeed better at reckless breeding than our Newtons and Einsteins and Feynmans and in ages past they would kill such people and still wish they could. My question is this, will it be our whole species that will look at the rubble of civilization while gnawing on bones and picking lice or will it only be Americans?

Island of lost souls

"Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?"

H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau

Well the jury may still be out, according to George Bush, on matters of science and evolution, but the jury of George's peers; the stupid, the ignorant, the fundamentalist, would be harder to put together in other countries. Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are, according to The Guardian, expected to be approved tomorrow by the British government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The idea is to use one of several techniques to derive human stem cells using only animal eggs, such as inserting a human cell nucleus into an egg from another species. The goal is to be able to have a sufficient supply of these all purpose cells to study treatments for degenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries.

Tomorrows decision comes after a year of argument and lobbying between research scientists and religious groups opposed to blurring the distinction between men and animals; blurry though science shows it to be and of course the untimely release of unredeemed souls from bits of biological matter that may or may not be human. Does a rat-man have a soul or half a soul and does it inherit original sin through its mother if it doesn't have a mother? Demented minds want to know.

Save the bees please

I spent most of this torrid morning up on the roof of my County Emergency Operations Center installing antennas and thinking about bees. No, I didn't see any, but I did see a forest of 800 MHz band and microwave antennas the police, fire, paramedics and other county services use to communicate. These radios put out substantial power in the same band a cell phone uses but at thousands of times the output. It's not a good idea to stand too close to one of those antennas.

Remember those old sci-fi and horror movies where some bearded guy would turn to you and whimper some line about how there were things mankind should not seek to know or dabble in? Americans are a still superstitious lot and even after many years of rapid technological advance that has changed our lives for the better, we're not comfortable with it. We're still afraid that our discoveries are something we steal from an angry god and that we may still be chained to a rock like Prometheus for our effrontery.

Whoever it is that makes up scary stories about everything requiring more intelligence than a Conch fritter to understand must be older than me, since I've seen his work all my life. I remember when you couldn't watch TV unless the lights were on or you'd go blind and you had to sit at the other end of the room so you wouldn't get cancer and the same thing continues: microwaves poison your food, electric blankets give you cancer and on and on.

Cellular phones were a bonanza for hysterical Luddites. They were supposed to give you brain cancer although the evidence is still otherwise and now they're supposed to be killing the bees. Of course the main evidence is that a mysterious disease causing hives to sicken and die has begun some decades after the advent of pocket phones. It's also after the advent of digital cameras, iPods, GPS navigation, satellite radio and hybrid cars, but the target du jour is cell phones and they're going to find something wrong with them if it takes forever. And of course there's a study - there's always a study - and the study says "cell phone frequencies" without telling us which ones, confuse bees. That seems to be enough for the apocalyptophiles and technophobic twits to form unalterable and passionate opinions.

Bill Maher, who likes to tell us, contrary to evidence, that we're all sick because we're eating corn sweetener was amongst the first to swoon over the decadence of cell phone using America causing the end of days and the end of bees. It's us, the sinners who stole UHF from the gods who are being punished and we deserve it. Of course Bill knows nothing about the effects of electromagnetic radiation and absorption rates much less about how cell phones work. Blaming dead bees on your pocket phone is like blaming your suntan on a candle.

You know where this is going. Scientific investigations of dead bees reveals that whatever it is that is killing bees in the US is likely to be a contagious infection or parasite, not confusing signals from Brittney's pink cell phone. Sterilizing the boxes used for hives seems to reduce infection in the next swarm of bees to inhabit it. The exact pathogen has not been found nor has the effects of pesticides been entirely ruled out, but it's not cell phones and it's not the NYFD or your local police either. It may be a virus doing in the busy bee and it certainly is a virus of another sort causing this latest piece of sponsored hysteria about cell phones.