bin Laden wasn’t armed

May 3, 2011 • 1:51 pm

UPDATE:  CIA director Leon Panetta, speaking on NBC News, just admitted that some of the information used to capture bin Laden came from what he called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” This was in response to a question by anchor Brian Williams about whether waterboarding had been used to extract information about bin Laden.

__________

According to the New York Times, the White House, trying to correct false reports about Osama bin Laden’s death, now admits that he was not armed:

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, read the narrative in an attempt to correct statements by administration officials who had suggested that Bin Laden was armed during the raid.

Under questioning, Mr. Carney said that the White House stood by its claim on Monday that Bin Laden had resisted capture, but said that “resistance does not require a firearm.” Mr. Carney said that the new narrative was the result of “fresh” information.

Well, many unarmed people resist the police by struggling, striking out, or the like, but they’re not killed.  This suggests that the US simply engaged in murder. And that was obvious from the mission, which was not to capture him but to kill him.

Perhaps this plan was meant to avoid a trial, during which bin Laden could have made statements inciting terrorism, but it’s still not right.  We are supposed to bring people to justice through the courts, not through vigilante justice.  If bin Laden had resisted in a way that endangered his captors, that would have justified killing him.  But if he didn’t, this is simply officially sanctioned murder.

Under our system, criminals—even horrible ones like bin Laden—are supposed to get a trial.  I know it doesn’t always work out that way when war is involved, but it should.

Kitteh contest: Hamlet

May 3, 2011 • 9:52 am

There are millions of tails in this naked world, and this is one of them.  Reader Cale entered Hamlet, an all black rescue cat with huge fangs and mismatched eyes.  His story:

This handsome devil is Hamlet.  We rescued him from the Omaha Animal shelter as a three year old in May 2000.  He’s been an indispensable member of our family since the first day we brought him home.  He has a serene almost Zen personality most of the time. He will coo and trill rather insistently to be picked up. He will also simply headbutt and force his way into sleeping in or on the spot you’ve already chosen on the bed for yourself; without fail he will sleep every night pasted to my wife with his head on her pillow. Some number of years ago his left eye changed color so he now has orange and yellow eyes to go with his vampire fangs. Unlike most cats, he cannot seem to purr but instead does this sort of snore/rattle thing and will knead the air or your arm when he’s happy.

The Louisiana “Science Education Act”: letter to Governor Jindal and request for reader action

May 3, 2011 • 8:24 am

The Louisiana Science Education Act (download it here), passed and signed into law in 2008, is a thinly disguised attempt to foist creationism on the state’s public schools.  It is, as usual, couched as an attempt to promote “critical thinking” in the sciences.  The thing is, though, that the critical- thinking mandate concentrates on only a few areas—and you can guess which ones.  From the bill (my emphasis):

B.(1) The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

(2) Such assistance shall include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied, including those enumerated in Paragraph (1) of this Subsection.

C. A teacher shall teach the material presented in the standard textbook supplied by the school system and thereafter may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, as permitted by the city, parish, or other local public school board.

D. This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.

Yep, we don’t need more critical thinking in areas like physics, chemistry, or medicine—just human cloning, evolution, and global warming.  This agenda is so clearly religious that the “disclaimer” in section D is laughable.  Nevertheless, the Act passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature with near unanimous support, and has been used to support attempts to teach creationism in two of Louisiana’s parishes.

There is an effort underway to repeal this bill, in the form of Senate Bill 70 (pdf at the link).  The effort has been spearheaded by a high school student, Baton Rouge Magnet School senior Zachary Kopplin, an impressive and courageous young man.  There are already many statements supporting repeal of the LSEA on Zack’s site, including one signed by 42 Nobel Laureates.  With Kopplin’s help, and the support of many others (especially biologist Rick Miller of Southeastern Louisiana University), the heads of the major evolution societies in America have put together a letter.  Zachary will be conveying it to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Louisiana legislatures this morning.

2 May 2011

Dear Governor Jindal,

We urge you to support the effort to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act.  This act is one example of the so-called “Academic Freedom” bills, a misleading title for what are widely recognized as Intelligent Design (ID) creationist initiatives.  The bill has opened the door to teaching creationist arguments against evolution – arguments that are wholly unscientific – as part of the science curriculum.

There are no credible “arguments against evolution” that undermine the wealth of empirical evidence that supports evolutionary science.  It is telling that we do not see similar arguments for teaching “critical evidence” against chemistry or physics.  It is evolution that is the unique object of these bills, and that shows they are motivated not by a desire to teach good science but rather to further creationism in Louisiana schools.

The research that the members of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and thousands of other biologists do broadens and deepens our understanding of the evolutionary forces that have shaped and continue to shape the biological world.  The practical benefits of evolutionary science are felt every day in agriculture, fisheries, industry and medicine.

Our country is a world leader in scientific achievement. The achievements of biology in particular rest on the unifying theory of biology – evolution. We must provide a rigorous science curriculum so our children will be well prepared for the future, achieving the scientific goals for their generation and providing a scientifically literate work force to sustain and attract leading businesses. The children and the future of Louisiana will be poorly served by the kind of a sub-standard education that is the inevitable consequence of these “academic freedom” bills.

Because the 2008 Science Education Act undermines the education of Louisiana’s children, it must be repealed.

Please support the repeal of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education and stand behind Zack Kopplin and the other children of Louisiana who deserve the best science education possible.

Sincerely,

Jerry Coyne, President, Society for the Study of Evolution

Scott V. Edwards, President Elect, Society for the Study of Evolution

Thomas Meagher, Chair, SSE Education Committee

David Mindell, President, Society of Systematic Biologists

Robert E. Ricklefs, President, American Society of Naturalists

I ask your support for repealing this nefarious and pro-creationist act.  There is a website where you can email your thoughts to the governor. Select “education” for the topic, and “out of state” for the parish unless you are from Louisiana—and if you are, it’s especially important to weigh in. If you wish, you can simply cut and paste the content of our letter above. 

Given Louisiana politics and Jindal’s signature on the earlier bill, I’m not optimistic that our actions, and those of all the other people who written letters and emails, will have any effect; but it’s worth a try.  I don’t often ask readers to do things (except submit pictures of their cats), but we need to support Zack’s effort to keep religiously-based views out of public school science classes in Louisiana. 

A stealth creationist in Santa Barbara

May 3, 2011 • 6:13 am

Yesterday I got an email from one Tam Hunt, complaining that my popular book on evolution left out what he called “the warts that accompany the Modern synthesis [i.e., modern evolutionary theory developed beginning about 1935].”  He referred me to an article he wrote in the Santa Barbara [California] Independent touting a “middle path” between evolution and creationism.  His particular beef was natural selection, which he sees as “little more than an assumption that evolution has resulted from natural causes rather than supernatural causes. As such, the theory of natural selections explains nothing in itself – it is a very loose framework that needs filling in rather substantially.”

As you might expect, Hunt fills the gap with complete nonsense. If you’d like, have a gander at his essay “On natural selection and the universal Eros” at the Independent.

He begins with a disclaimer,

This essay continues my extended critique of “absent-minded science,” the tendency in modern science to ignore, intentionally or through oversight, the role of mind in nature. I want to be clear up front that I am not a supporter of “intelligent design” or any religiously-motivated critique of natural selection. Rather, I approach these very difficult problems primarily from the point of view of a hard-nosed philosopher and scientist trying to make sense of it all – and finding that many mainstream approaches could be significantly improved. . .

He then characterizes natural selection as tautological, because it’s “survival of the fittest,” and the fittest are defined as “those who survive. ” This, of course, is an old creationist canard, which completely ignores the fact that hundreds of biologists are trying to understand those particular traits that promote survival and reproduction.  Saying that natural selection is tautological is like saying that putting flour through a sieve is tautological, because “only the lumps survive” and the lumps are defined as “those parts of the flour that don’t go through the sieve.” Ergo, we conclude that a sieve can’t work. (For more sophisticated refutations, see this essay by Steve Gould or this discussion at Talk Origins. Does Hunt not know how to Google?)

Hunt goes on to make a criticism familiar to readers of Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s (F & P-P) dreadful critique of Darwinism, What Darwin Got Wrong (it’s no surprise that he praises that book):

Natural selection is, in the final analysis, simply a postulate and not a theory. It is the postulate that evolution has happened naturally, without supernatural influence. “Natural selection” stands as the counter to the long-held view of “supernatural selection,” that is, the various theories of creationism or intelligent design. To be a theory of evolution, however, the theory must say something about how and why historical changes occurred and make meaningful predictions about what kind of changes we may see in the future. And natural selection, a logically empty theory, is clearly not that theory.

As if evolutionary biologists aren’t trying to figure out how selection acts on different traits!  As I pointed out in my review of the F & P-P book, there are now hundreds of studies trying to relate specific features of animals and plants to their differential survival and reproduction in the wild.  These include the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on beak shape in Galápagos finches (documented in Jonathan Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch), historical changes in color of the peppered moth, Biston betularia, and a whole host of more recent studies.  Anyone who makes this argument against natural selection is either completely ignorant of the literature or willfully ignorant in service of an agenda.

The latter seems to be the case for Hunt. He sees the solution as a teleological force driving evolution, a “basic force in all things that leads to greater connection, thus greater complexity, and thus greater awareness of our universe around us.” Listen to this teleological gobbledygook:

The panpsychist solution is to recognize that mind and thus purpose are inherent in all of nature – but extremely rudimentary in most cases. However, as matter complexifies in macromolecules like amino acids (which form spontaneously in many situations), this innate mind and purpose starts to play an increasingly significant role in evolution. It is, thus, a bootstrapping process that has no end in sight. . .

. . . In evolution, then, God is indeed in the details – literally. The “dispersed” God that Margulis and Sagan refer to is the mind contained in each thing, in each organism, that exercises some degree of choice – no matter how small – in how it manifests.

. . . To sum up this series of essays to this point: We cannot adequately explain matter in physics or evolution in biology without re-naturalizing mind. We needn’t appeal to an archaic notion of God as omniscient designer to provide adequate explanations. Rather, we can appeal to the dispersed god of panpsychism, the god manifested in a million million little pushes from each entity making its own choices (though we shall have a role for a non-dispersed God later in this series of essays).

I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of Hunt’s essays.  Before we require an alternative theory to natural selection, we must show how this well-established idea, instantiated in hundreds of cases, is inadequate to explain adaptation.  Hunt hasn’t.  And his alternative—to posit that things like amino acids have minds that actually drive evolution—is not only without evidence (the data show no single “drive” in evolution—certainly not one towards greater complexity and awareness), but is also so mush-headed as to be opaque.  When Hunt tells me in precise detail how amino acids and proteins have minds that drive evolution in ways not encapsulated by natural selection, I’ll start to listen to him.  I don’t anticipate this happening soon.

The Independent describes Hunt as “a philosopher, lawyer and biologist who was lucky enough to land in Santa Barbara and stay.”  The worse luck for Santa Barbara! However, the University of California at Santa Barbara website (where Hunt is a visiting lecturer), describes him as “a renewable energy law and policy expert” who has a law degree from UCLA. I can’t find any evidence that Hunt has any higher degrees, training, or practice as a “biologist.”  Neither can I find any papers by a Tam Hunt in the ISI science citation index.

Indeed, I suspect Hunt isn’t a “biologist,” for no biologist who has absorbed his craft could make statements as idiotic as his.  I only hope he’s not teaching biology at UCSB, and I mourn the fact that the city newspaper has given him a platform to spout anti-evolutionary nonsense.

Uncle Karl departs Biologos

May 3, 2011 • 4:38 am

I am informed that Karl Giberson, formerly Executive Vice President of The BioLogos Foundation, has left the organization.  He has disappeared from their posted list of “team members,” hasn’t yet been replaced, and confirmed to me by email that he resigned.

If you’ve followed this site, you’ll know that I often crossed swords with Karl, including an online debate for USA Today and many writtten exchanges on this site, BioLogos, and PuffHo.  Despite our very strong disagreements about science and faith, I grew to like the guy, bestowing on him the affectionate title of “Uncle Karl.”  I wish him luck.

The fact that he’s gone makes me think that there’s big trouble at BioLogos.  In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict the ultimate demise of the Foundation—and good riddance to their science-polluting ways!  BioLogos seems to be increasingly courting evangelical Christians, becoming obsessed with futile and nonsensical tasks like reconciling Adam and Eve with modern knowledge of genetics.   If I know the Templeton Foundation, which is committed to supporting BioLogos until 2012, they’re going to see this as a losing proposition and not renew their support.

Cats can’t vote

May 3, 2011 • 1:01 am

by Matthew Cobb

The UK is currently in the midst of its second referendum (the first, in 1974, was over membership of what is now called the EU). This video explains the situation, using cats. Personally, I say bring on Reform Cat (350 ft tall, ginger, and shoots laser beams out of his eyes. See the end of the video).

If you want the background, or can’t understand the deliberately silly 1940s accent used on the video, here’s my take on it. Please feel free to dis/agree in the comments!

Currently British MPs are elected by ‘first past the post’ – the candidate with the most votes wins. This is the system used in many countries, and if there are only two parties, it’s obviously fair. But if there are several candidates, this can mean that the winner in fact enjoys the support of a small minority of voters. At a national level, it can equally mean that the government in fact enjoys the support of a minority of voters (indeed this is generally the case).

Last year, the parliamentary election led to a ‘hung’ parliament with no single party having an absolute majority. As a result, two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats, went into coalition. One price for this deal was the calling of a referendum on the electoral system – the Conservatives are traditionally extremely hostile to this, so this was a concession from them. In the past, the Lib-Dems have favoured full proportional representation, whereby the proportion of votes cast for a particular party is directly reflected in the proportion of elected representatives.

On Thursday, the referendum will take place. The proposal is not proportional representation but rather an ‘Alternative Vote’ system, where each elector lists the candidates they want to vote for in order of preference (1, 2, 3…). 1 is your top preference.

The count takes place like this: all the “1”s are counted up; if a candidate has >50 % of the votes, they are elected. End of. If there is no clear winner on the first count, then the candidate with the lowest vote is eliminated, and all her “2” votes are then added to each candidate, as appropriate. If this produces a candidate with > 50%, they’re elected. If not, the procedure continues. In the UK, all three main political parties use a version of this system to elect their leaders (including David Cameron).

The campaign has been particularly nasty, with the two component parts of the coalition making inflammatory allegations about each other. The third party, the Labour Party, is split on the issue. I think I will probably abstain – I think we should have proper PR, and this AV business will not provide this. I have been tempted to give a bloody nose to Nick Clegg (Lib-Dem leader) by voting No, but that would then give succour to David Cameron. And vice versa for voting Yes. So, as I said at the top, bring on Reform Cat!

Our eagles: artificial-nest cam

May 2, 2011 • 2:14 pm

Our three eaglets are thriving at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, and there is now a webcam installed by their awesome artificial nest.  Go have a look.

Also, Phoebe, the Allen’s hummingbird, has produced another two eggs; both hatched but one chick, following a mishap (it stuck to mom after hatching and fell to the ground as she flew out of the nest!) has been removed for rehab.  You can watch her and the young ‘un here.