Comfort – Discomfort

Iconic anti-evolutionist Ray Comfort has come forward again. He's written a book entitled, "You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think: Answers to Questions from Angry Skeptics". Plenty of scathing reviews are available. F'rinstance:

His style of writing can barely be called argumentative. He posits no compelling evidence for his beliefs, makes blind assertions, and clearly does not understand natural forces such as evolution by natural selection and by writing a book which mischaracterizes science, is undermining observation, experimentation, rational thought and critical thinking.

or a 5-star review, presuming Poe:

Ray is the master of satire. While reading this fine book I could just picture him sitting around, getting wasted, and dreaming up all of these hilarious proofs. He is a genius!

The reviews discuss how every point made in the book had already been debunked thoroughly on or around Comfort's online publications (blogs, videos, etc). Why, they ask, does he keep shutting down blogs and popping up new ones? Who is this book going to reach that hasn't already made up their minds? Granted, one can also apply that last argument to pro-science books like The God Delusion or The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Meanwhile, Qualia Soup has produced a concise video clearly explaining what evolution is and isn't, in 10 minutes. It implicitly refutes every point we've seen Comfort make, without the discomfort of mentioning Comfort.

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Non-news Travels Fast

I was reading about a couple of meteors (bolides) spotted in the last couple of days. One point made by BadAstronomy is that misinformation spread much faster than fact. We discuss this sort of issue regularly, using terms like "counterknowledge" and "agnotology". In this case, last week's news about two satellites colliding gently about halfway out to geostationary orbit got muddled in with these meteor reports. Note: Gently in astronomical terms means a collision as if only one ton of TNT had been detonated in them. There may be pieces large enough to see if they eventually drift low enough to burn up at night. But not like the fireballs seen in the last couple of days. The entire satellites were not fast or large enough to glow like the recent events. But Twitter was apparently abuzz with discussion of the (non-happened) satellite re-entry. BA clearly explains why this is silly. But the rumor is still propagating. Unfortunately, several news outlets initially reported it as fact. It's like the virus warnings (hoaxes) that well-meaning acquaintances send me about once a month. Most of their dire "this is real!" warnings were documented at Snopes between 3 and 10 years ago! I usually politely respond with the link to the particular case at Snopes, and suggest they add Snopes to their Bookmarks/Favorites.

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Dangerous Intersection is still under construction

We're still tweaking things at Dangerous Intersection, adding new features, looking at them, and sometimes removing them. It reminds me of the quote by Oscar Wilde:

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Instead of commas, though, I'm dealing with WordPress plugins. It's an adventure experimenting with these open-source tweaks. Sometimes they work brilliantly. Sometimes, they don't work at all. Sometimes they cause a "fatal error." The good news is that I have successfully installed WordPress 2.71, which allows lots of new features. I've also updated the design template I'm using (to WP-Vybe 1.1). This combination allows for nested comments. If you want to reply to a comment rather than to the post itself, you now have that option. Just look for "reply" attached to each comment. One of the newer features is "popular posts" (on the left sidebar). I did want to disclose that this list is computer generated based upon relatively recent page-views. I don't tweak that list at all. Regarding the comments sidebar (right site), I realize that it's looking a bit raggedy these days. I'm still working on that. One cool new feature, however, is that I have downloaded a plug-in that groups the recent comments by post. If you find one of the posts to be interesting, you can find all of the recent comments regarding that post grouped together (well, up to five of the most recent posts--I wanted to make sure that I left room for the recent comments of multiple posts, even if one of the posts draws an inordinate number of comments. I've heard quite a few comments that this site is often running slowly. I agree. We're going to make some technical adjustments to address that. I hope to see an improvement over the next couple of weeks.

Continue ReadingDangerous Intersection is still under construction

Reading On The Rise

According to this report, reading is on the rise in America for the first time in a quarter century. It's difficult for me to express how pleased this makes me. Civilization and its discontents have been in the back of my mind since I became aware of how little reading most people do. To go into a house---a nice house,well-furnished, a place of some affluence---and see no books at all has always given me a chill, especially if there are children in the house. Over the last 30 years, since I've been paying attention to the issue, I've found a bewildering array of excuses among people across all walks of life as to why they never read. I can understand fatigue, certainly---it is easier to just flip on the tube and veg out to canned dramas---but in many of these instances, reading has simply never been important. To someone for whom reading has been the great salvation, this is simply baffling. Reading, I believe, is the best way we have to gain access to the world short of physically immersing ourselves in different places and cultures. Even for those who have the opportunity and resource to travel that extensively, reading provides a necessary background for the many places that will be otherwise inaccessibly alien to our sensibilities.

Continue ReadingReading On The Rise