Archive for July, 2008

Do you like science, wildlife, and Africa? If so, this site is for you! WildCam Africa is a web cam set up near a watering hole in Botswana. It streams live video to the National Geographic website for your viewing pleasure. This unbelievably simple idea can yield some pretty cool footage, and is a must see for anybody fascinated with wildlife. Personally, I’m amazed at the concept of being able to see what’s going on live, thousands of kilometers away.

Ever since I first discovered this site, National Geographic has expanded the program and set up WildCams elsewhere. You can find a full list of them here.

Enjoy.

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• NationalGeographic.com: WildCam Africa
• NationalGeographic.com: WildCam

Privacy advocacy group ‘Privacy International’ in the UK is all up in arms about Google Street View’s recent endeavor to start mapping out the streets of England. The BBC writes about it here.

Privacy debates are always interesting to me, because despite the legitimate points that can be raised on either side of the issue, I find that arguments are always riddled with false analogies and fallacies galore¹. Take this argument, for example:

“In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends,” said Simon Davis of the group.

The problem with this argument is that Google does not intend to use peoples’ faces for commercial ends. If anything, the people (and their faces) are in the way of what the Street View teams are trying to accomplish — the faces are incidental to the purpose of the project. This is an example of a false premise; Privacy International is assuming that the purpose of Street View is to take pictures of people to use commercially, when they are actually taking pictures of streets and buildings to use commercially. Furthermore, you can always ask Google to remove your image if you don’t like all of the fame and wealth associated with being an internet celebrity. I’m fairly certain that the people over at Privacy International are aware of the false premise, but they will continue to make this argument because it’s one that will allow them to challenge Google on a legal basis (if it ever comes to that).

However, what really takes the cake is this next section:
Read the rest of this entry »

I have a problem with this article from over at dailygalaxy.com. It’s not a problem with the content of the article, which is actually quite interesting, but rather with the headline:

Is Aging an Accident of Evolution? Stanford Scientists Say “Yes”

I understand what is meant by the headline, but the fact remains that there are no purposeful or accidental evolutionary developments. Evolution only knows how to measure developments in one way: whether or not it helps the survival of a species… and even then, evolution doesn’t care one way or another. There’s no underlying will, or ultimate goal of evolution; just a continuous weeding out of those organisms that are less adapted to survive (and occasionally even weeding out those who are more adapted that have traits that might otherwise appear to us to be advantageous). Having an evolutionary accident suggests that the opposite can happen: a purposeful evolutionary change.

As long as we continue to think of the purpose of evolutionary traits, or accidents in our evolutionary history, we’ll never truly understand natural selection or evolution.

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• Dailygalaxy.com: Is Aging an Accident of Evolution? Stanford Scientists Say “Yes”

In the past, we’ve blogged about issues such as ISP bandwidth throttling, and net neutrality. According to the CBC, the Canadian government has formed an organization exclusively to deal with issues between telecommunications companies, and consumers/small businesses. Unfortunately, word of the organization still hasn’t gotten around.

The Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services was established a year ago, but few Canadians are even aware there’s an agency where they can take their cell phone and internet gripes.

Science and skepticism thrive on the exchange of information. The whole point of the skeptical movement is to make information available for those who choose to seek it out. Therefore, even though this might seem like a tangentially related issue to the science/skepticism focus of this site, maintaining a free and open internet through combating unfair telecommunications practices is just as important of a battle as fighting mysticism and pseudoscience. In Canada, unlike the United States, we don’t have competition to take care of unfair telecommunications practices; so it’s reassuring to know that our government hasn’t completely abandoned us.

From the CCTS website:

Please feel free to contact us in the following ways:

General Inquiries: info@ccts-cprst.ca
TSP membership inquiries: info@ccts-cprst.ca

Hours of Business: Monday to Friday 09:00 – 17:00 HRS Eastern Standard Time.

Toll Free: 1-888-221-1687
Ottawa local: 613-244-9585
TTY: 1-877-782-2384

Please note: CCTS policy prevents us from accepting complaints over the phone. However, we can provide advice on whether or not you should file a written complaint and how to file a written complaint.

Fax: 1-877-782-2924
Mail: P.O. Box 81088, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 1B1

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• CBC.ca: Telecom complaints agency celebrates birthday in obscurity
• Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services Inc.

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD):

Living so close to the city, I rarely have the opportunity to look up and see a night sky as vibrant as the one captured in this photo. The picture reminds me of one time where I spent the night at a friend’s farm. It wasn’t quite in Northern Ontario, but it was at the Northern end of the South Ontario peninsula (i.e. far away from any major cities). The view wasn’t quite as brilliant as this, but it was close. The night sky has to be one of the worst things about living in, or near, a major city.

These are just small reminders of why you should never listen when somebody tells you that science strips the world of magic and wonder.

It should be common sense that staring into the sun may not be the best of ideas.  Doing so can very well result in damaged or loss of eyesight.  So what would it take to incite dozens of adults to stare into the sun long enough to lose it completely?

Well, religious superstition, of course.

At least 50 people in India have lost or damaged their eyesight after staring into the sun, hoping to see the Virgin Mary…  And that’s only so far.  Despite the obvious dangers and growing number of casualties to this Virgin Mary in the sun folly, believers are reportedly STILL staring into the retina-burning star in the hopes of (ironically) seeing something.

Excerpt:

Forty-eight cases of sight-loss, allegedly caused by photochemical burns on the retina, have been recorded at St Joseph’s ENT and Eye hospital in the region since Friday.

Despite warnings, and the potentially harmful effects of their actions, believers are allegedly still flocking to a hotelier’s house in Erumeli near where the divine image is said to have appeared.

“All our patients have similar history and symptoms… They have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun,” Dr Annamma James Isaac, the hospital’s ophthalmologist said.

Link.

Hearing Jenny McCarthy’s stance on vaccinations sickened me. This was no longer the innocent pseudo-science of UFO sightings and Free Energy, but rather a movement that has resulted in thousands of deaths world-wide, and outbreaks of previously-eradicated diseases in one of the most scientifically advanced countries in the world. Enraged, I decided to do something. I didn’t go out and hold a protest, or write an angry email. Rather, I decided to scour her Wikipedia article and see if I could find and fix any misconceptions. When I did, I found the following paragraph:

On April 2, 2008, she went on the Larry King Live special dedicated to autism, and engaged in a fierce, on-camera spat debating whether premature vaccines have contributed to the incidence of autism in previously unaffected babies. However, this opinion is in stark contrast to the scientific community opinion that no causal association exists between autism and childhood vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine,[15][16] although the US government has recently compensated a family whose child developed autism after receiving vaccines.

I took exception to the last part of that paragraph, and feeling that it was unnecessarily biased towards anti-vaccination sentiments, I modified it to read:

On April 2, 2008, she went on the Larry King Live special dedicated to autism, and engaged in a fierce, on-camera spat debating whether premature vaccines have contributed to the incidence of autism in previously unaffected babies. However, this opinion is in stark contrast to the scientific community opinion that no causal association exists between autism and childhood vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine,[15] although the US government has recently compensated a family whose child developed complications from a previously-existent disease, resulting in autism-like symptoms, after receiving a vaccination.[16] However, this is the only such case where a link has been established between autism and vaccination, and was most likely due to a pre-existing condition.¹

My addition was eventually removed due to the autism debate being deemed tangential to the rest of the article. That being said, I managed to start a process that would culminate in having the offended text removed. The current article now reads:

On April 2, 2008, she went on the Larry King Live special dedicated to autism, arguing that premature vaccines have contributed to the incidence of autism in previously unaffected babies. Her opinion contradicts the scientific consensus that no causal association exists between autism and childhood vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine.[15]

I feel satisfied knowing that I made a small difference. A minor victory, to be sure, but every little bit helps in the fight against medical hysteria — especially on a site like Wikipedia, which has become the go-to site for those unfamiliar with the topics they are researching.

It seems every other day that someone comes up with a way to extract useful chemical energy from water. The fact that it’s physically impossible is less important than the fact that one can always find gullible people to fork over large quantities of money for these so-called “inventions”.

But this guy is really taking it to the next level. 25 employees, 60 MILLION dollars in venture capital funding, and a 2000-page book describing his new theory of quantum physics; I’m almost impressed by the amount of effort he’s put into this scam. He even put a new twist on the usual process for getting energy from water. From the article:

Mills’ theory, which he expounds upon in his self-published 2,000 page book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, rests on what he describes as his discovery of the hydrino – an altered version of hydrogen that has an energy level lower than its ground state, or the baseline energy level. These modified atoms, he argues, are the stuff that comprises dark matter, the invisible material that many scientists believe composes more than 90% of the universe. The mechanism that creates hydrinos – a chemical reaction whose released energy can allegedly be harnessed for power – is what Mills calls the BlackLight Process.

What the article doesn’t say is that this is a pretty stardard explanation of zero-point energy – the kind found powering starships and death-rays in science fiction, not the actual scientific concept. The crux of the matter is the supposed “energy level lower than ground state”, which is impossible by definition.

It is true that nobody has ever created a new theory of physics without first questioning the old theories. In fact, scientists are encouraged to look for flaws in established theories in order to better understand the universe. But for a new theory to supplant an old one (for example, relativity superseding Newtonian mechanics), there needs to be quite a body of repeatable experimental evidence, and the theory must bear the closest scrutiny by other scientists. Dr. Randell Mills (note that he is a physician, not a physicist) has only the results from his laboratory, and responds to academic criticism with the same old crap about how science is hostile to anyone who would try to think differently, etc. His exact quote is “As long as you’re in the mainstream, you’re fine. But if you’re doing something paradigm-changing, you’re proving that academics have been going down the wrong path,” which quite frankly makes me angry. He is nothing more than a con artist, and to see him accusing people who are doing real science is infuriating.

As for whoever gave him $60,000,000 to develop a free energy machine, well, I hope they weren’t counting on recovering that investment. (Seriously, where can I find such stupid and naive people with so much money to give out? I’ve got a lovely Brooklyn Bridge here to sell them…)

Surprised stock spot Sasquatch sauntering in Southern Ontario. Yet another Sasquatch sighting, this time in our home province of Ontario. Two women, Helen Pahpasay and her mother, were out driving when they spotted a “hulking figure”.

“It was black, about eight feet long and all black, and the way it walked was upright, human-like, but more — I don’t know how to describe it — more of a husky walk, I guess,” she told CBC News.

Others returned to the area later and found a large, six-toed footprint, Pahpasay said.

The six-toed footprint is a new one. Everything I’ve ever read about Bigfoot describes it as an ‘ape-like creature’, and I’ve never heard mention of a six-toed footprint in relation to Bigfoot, before.

It’s a shame neither of the women managed to get a picture or a video to aid in the identification of the creature… but an 8′ long, black, unidentified creature in Northern Ontario that stands on two legs, walks with a strange gait, and is frightened off by a truck? Sounds like a bear to me.

Of course, we have no proof that it was not Sasquatch, or that it was a bear.  However, in my opinion at least, the latter is far more likely.  In all fairness to Pahpasay, the article quotes her as saying:

“I’ve never believed it before, no. I’m not even quite sure what it still is today, even after what I’ve seen.”

…but the article is still strongly suggestive of the fact that this could have been Sasquatch; the words ‘Sasquatch’ or ‘Bigfoot’ being used a total of 6 times.

I will say one thing for this article: the token skepticism tucked in at the end is more detailed than usual. For once, scientists are not perplexed, baffled, or unavailable for comment:

Skeptics say it’s preposterous that a large mammal could have evaded detection in North America throughout history. Despite numerous alleged sightings, no one has ever produced concrete evidence such as skulls or bones, they argue, while footprints, film or photos can be manufactured.

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• CBC.ca: Berry-pickers report sasquatch sighting in northern Ontario

It’s my sad duty to report that, not very long ago, notorious para-psychological assassin Henk Middelraad, in a confrontation with Randi, launched deadly para-psychological missiles at Randi’s whereabouts.

Transcript:

Randi: Grow up.

Middelraad: [NO U]

Randi: No, I’ve already grown up. I asked YOU to grow up. I’ve no interest in children’s games.

Middelraad: Okay, evidently you like to play games. You are on!!! You will be the target! No agreement needed for this one. You asked for it!  Best wishes and regards, Henk.

(Para-psychological missiles launched)

Randi was 79.  He will be remembered fondly for his-…

Wait, he survived?! Sweet Mary on a Christmas basket!

If you need any more proof of how tough Randi really is, check out the whole nonsense here.