joe posts

ARS Technica has the story of a feud between a scientist who tracked the evolution of a bacteria culture for twenty years and Conservapedia – a Wikipedia clone, where all the information is pretty much batshit insane. The problem, you see, is that showing how a bacteria evolves over time means that God is Dead.

Clearly, Lenski’s bacteria appear to have evolved a significant new capacity. Fortunately, the residents of Conservapedia found a way out of this logical conundrum: Lenski was either misinterpreting his data, or he faked it. In an open letter to Lenski, Conservapedia’s Andy Schlafly (an attorney with an engineering background) wrote, “skepticism has been expressed on Conservapedia about your claims, and the significance of your claims, that E. Coli [sic] bacteria had an evolutionary beneficial mutation in your study.” Their solution? Show them the data: “Please post the data supporting your remarkable claims so that we can review it, and note where in the data you find justification for your conclusions.”

Lenski replied, noting that the whole purpose of scientific paper is to discuss and display data and to use it to justify conclusions; the data were in the paper itself. He also pointed out he’d placed a copy of the paper on his website for those without subscriptions to PNAS. Lenski also spent some time reexplaining some of his conclusions, and pointing out errors and misconceptions in the letter he had received. This response prompted a second letter from Schlafly, suggesting he wanted to review the data underlying the data presented in the paper, and noting that the work is taxpayer funded, giving him a right to it as a taxpayer.

From here on out, standard Internet drama ensued. By the time of his next reply, Lenski had apparently read the discussion pages attached to the letters, and discovered that Schlafly hadn’t actually bothered to read the paper he was demanding the data for. He has also discovered that some Conservapedia members were simply calling the whole thing a hoax, and accusing him of having engaged in research fraud. As a result, Lenski was apparently very annoyed, and his second letter is far more assertive.

Lenski again notes that the paper actually contained the relevant data, and that Schlafly’s complaints suggested he wouldn’t know what to do with any further data were Lenski to provide it to him. – ARS Technica

Schafly’s just using an ancient conservative thought management technique – when hard evidence contradicts a strong belief… for the love of god, don’t look at the evidence. Because scientific evidence is like opening the Ark of the Covenant to conservatives; look at it and – shlchleshp! – they are melted down into a little puddle of nazi soup.

I wish this wasn’t turning into a rant against conservatives. Really I do.

There’s nothing that I can see in the general conservative worldview that says you have to be an idiot to call yourself conservative – you just have to be cold-hearted, a bit of a sucker, and tremendously short-sighted (that’s why they always wear rose-coloured glasses). But plenty of high ranking Republicans believe in creationism or intelligent design and want it taught “scientifically.” Bush, the Ultimate Conservative if there ever was one, wants to “teach the controversy” with creationism/intelligent-design taught in science courses. Canada’s own Conservative public safety minister favours Flinstonianism; Stockwell Day apparently believes humans walked alongside the dinosaurs, despite just a bit of evidence to the contrary. One would think they’d find a skeleton of a T-Rex with a partially digested human skeleton stuck inside… unless they were our pets? That would be SO COOL!!!

Sigh.. I’m such a tolerant liberal pussy.. I actually feel bad for picking on creationists. People can believe what they want, as far as I’m concerned.

But trying to destroy a scientist’s career by accusing them of fraud simply because their evidence makes it slightly harder to be an ignoramus is worrying, especially as more and more people with anti-science views rise to the top. In Canada, we’re seeing the Conservatives fight against extending the license for Insite, because buying into the scientific evidence (and general public opinion) that supports what those brave science-type people are doing would mean re-examining Conservative beliefs (ie ‘a dead junky is better than a living one’). I would hope that they have the balls to do that. But I doubt it.

At any rate, I hope these conservatives are consistent. Just as many American doctors must push Republican talking points at women whenever they discuss abortion, perhaps doctors should encourage conservative patients to avoid newer antibiotics and vaccines. Any drug that has to change to keep up with the evolution of the organism it’s designed to fight is obviously “fraudulent” or a “hoax.”

I’ve been fooling around with a USB gadget – the WinTV-HVR-950, to be exact – that lets me run analog video to my computer. I picked it up because I have a huge VHS collection and I wanted to record some of them onto my machine. Plus I might have free access to cable TV in the near future, so I’ll be able to record all my favourite FOX NETWORK reality shows, on the FOX NETWORK channel. Boy I sure do love that FOX NETWORK. It’s almost as if the FOX NETWORK is paying me to say FOX NETWORK. But, unfortunately, the FOX NETWORK is not paying me anything. FOX.

Anyways. It’s generally used for viewing/recording stuff via coaxial cable. Here’s Fantastic Planet:

The recording quality is surprisingly good and space-efficient. I was kind of irritated that my fancy nvidia graphics card couldn’t do this because it has a bunch of other esoteric features I can’t possibly use, though it’s not bad at sending video to a TV set with an RCA jack, as long as I use ffdshow to resize the video. I realized after a day that I could do something pretty cool – send the video OUT through the video card and into a VCR, and then connect the VCR output to the USB gadget. The computer sends video to itself, in full-screen.

It’s kind of a neat trick and a good way to bypass DRM/copy-protection scams. I don’t think I’m ‘breaking’ a digital lock, so Jim Prentice can’t come to my door and kick me in the balls. (Yes, lets discourage “piracy” by making the penalty for ripping a store-bought DVD higher than the penalty for simply downloading a digital copy! Another blog, maybe…). So any kind of digital video, even Tom Green’s hard-to-edit live feeds, can be easily re-recorded and re-encoded:

I used DownloadHelper to ‘catch’ his show when it goes Live. VLC can play that format of video as it downloads and sends it to the VCR in full-screen, which sends back to the computer video recorder. The black window is actually live video, it just didn’t show up in the screenshot for some reason. Tom Green’s live shows are fun, but the “commercial breaks” (sometimes ten minutes or more.. with no commercials, just… darkness…) are worth editing out, which I can now do.

But here’s the ultimate – When I shut off the video, the graphics card just sends a clone of the monitor/desktop image. Which gets looped back through the system, again and again and again. It’s infinite and beyond!

Ok… back to STUDYING.

This is just weird.

A mother of a student with autism down in Barrie, Ontario, was called into her daughter’s school and told that a child abuse investigation had been launched after a ‘psychic’ claimed that an unnamed young man was molesting her daughter. The ‘psychic’ didn’t even know the girl – an educational assistant (and ESP fan) was told by this ‘psychic’ (the scare quotes mean I don’t believe in ‘psychics,’ btw) that a student with a name starting with the letter “V” was being assaulted. Apparently that’s enough to cause a major freakout.

It’s important to take abuse allegations seriously, even if it comes from kooks. But it’s also important to…. look at the facts?!?!?!?! The student was equipped with a GPS and audio recording device, and there was absolutely no evidence of any kind of abuse!

Now the mother (understandably) won’t send her kid back to school, and the school board won’t foot the bill to get the kid into a more appropriate special education program. She’s a single mom and she can no longer work to support her family and her child can’t go back to school, all because some overzealous twits believed a dumbass EA who put her faith in some sick and twisted charlatan. You couldn’t make this up. You wouldn’t want to.

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard – the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they’d received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse – and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’” – CityNews (Found via boingboing)

If people want a “zero-tolerance” policy when it comes to abuse allegations it has to work both ways. If the authorities are obliged to take all allegations seriously, people who make false allegations of abuse for personal gain, like this ‘psychic,’ really should be punished. Harshly. Like maybe tattoo the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” to their forehead.

I didn’t know Wil Wheaton had a blog! Oh Wesley!

wilwheaton.typepad.com

Fun stuff, definitely written for geeks of all stripes.