Not only did this Tasmanian amateurs do something really interesting in establishing voice communications using LED light sources and Fresnel lenses, but they also have a really great website with lots of informative links. Lots of cool ideas here.

[tags]Amateur Radio,Light,LED,Communication[/tags]

Dear Lord, it actually gets worse.

Like most of the stuff on ID The Future, this one lies right out of the gate:

It is no secret that evolution is, at bottom, an idea driven by metaphysical concerns.

In a sense, he’s right. It’s not a secret, it’s an outright lie. Evolution is an idea driven by the desire to explain the diversity of biological organisms and their adaptation to their environments. It continues on….

Even people unfamiliar with the details of evolutionary thinking have a sense that it goes well beyond mere scientific inquiry.

Even those people huh? I think you meant especially those people.

It’s hard to find anything in this useless pile which actually is true. In no particular order,

• The teaching and promotion of evolution is nowhere mandated by law.
• Hume didn’t argue that the existence of evil refutes design (unless of course you actually are willing to admit that ID is just code for religion).
• Darwin didn’t argue that homologies revealed a lack of design. He argued that they were more easily and reasonably described as inherited variations which proved to be advantageous.
• Darwin’s religious beliefs are complicated and like most people, underwent some metamorphosis over his life. To say that his religious beliefs didn’t allow for a design is an absurd simplification if not an outright fabrication.
• Ken Miller’s example of elephants was designed to demonstrate something: that Intelligent Design doesn’t explain the evidence of changes that we see in Indian elephants. Hunter doesn’t even understand the point, and claims that Miller is prejudiced against a conclusion of design. The problem is: there IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT DESIGN. Indeed, looking at the conclusions we’d have to draw from the fossil evidence, the DESIGN HYPOTHESIS IS ABSURD.
• The case in Dover was decided by a decidedly conservative judge who evaluated the own admission of Michael Behe that if we accepted his own definition of science, that astrology would be a science. The fact that the school board clearly had no secular purpose in mind when they initiated their policy. That many of those people proceeded to lie in court. And the textbook Of Pandas and People that they recommended was simply a standard creationist work with the words design substituted for creation.

The fact that this stuff is taken seriously by anyone really makes me think we are all living behind the looking glass.

[tags]Intelligent Design,Pseudoscience,Rants and Raves[/tags]

I read a lot about the conflict between science and pseudoscience, which is to say, I read a great deal about the conflict between biology and so-called “intelligent design”. Intelligent Design The Future is a blog where many of the Discovery Institute “luminaries” post their well thought out criticisms of evolutionary thought.

Or so they seem to think.

No less a celebrity than William Dembski apparently was scanning the reviews of Jonathan Wells’ book Icons of Evolution and had this to say about the author of an unfavorable review:

Isn’t Darwinism wonderful? It empowers someone who has not yet earned a bachelor’s degree to call himself a “medical researcher” and tell Jonathan Wells — with a Ph.D. in biology and twenty years of experience in medical laboratories — that he has “little or no understanding of the subject matter.”

Of course, Dembski doesn’t actually address any of the criticisms actually raised by Peters, notably:

I am pleased to say though that this work is rejected by virtually all of the scientific community. There is a reason for that. If you go to http://www.ncseweb.org/icons/ you can see the full response to this poorly researched work. And it seems like the Discovery Reviewer below has given this book high praise. Well, it only takes a simple google search to see that the Discovery Institute are a group of ideologues who pushed for intelligent design in the infamous Dover School District case in PA.

Much of what Wells says about evolution is wrong. It doesn’t take a PhD to know that.

[tags]Intelligent Design,Pseudoscience[/tags]

Well, Comcast was supposed to come by yesterday and install my digital cable, but they were a no-show. A call back to them this morning resulted in a $20 credit and a reschedule for this morning, so I’m stuck at home again waiting. Any bets on whether they will show this morning?

What is it with companies that view these kinds of appointments as “optional” on their standpoint? It’s not like these are rare: it is pretty much the norm that either they:

• show up in the last five minutes of a four hour slot, or perhaps just as likely…
• miss the appointment entirely.

Oh, and the $20 “inconvenience fee”? Four hours of my free time on a weekend are worth more to me than that. If I have to take time off from work, many times that.

Here I am, poised to give Comcast more money, and they jerk me around. Way to treat your customers, Comcast.

[tags]Comcast,Poor Customer Service[/tags]

Addendum: They promised to show up in the 8:00 AM to 12:00 AM slot this morning. To their credit, they did, at about 8:30. Took them about one half an hour to get everything installed. Review of the new hardware later.

While driving through Gilroy today, I saw something that I just don’t think you see every day. Stapled to a telephone pole was a sign:

LOST: PET TORTOISE
6″ LONG, HAS BEEN MISSING SINCE 6/6

I mean, how does that happen? “I left the door open for just a second, and he bolted out the door before I could stop him.”