2 Comments | 
Economics, Government, Iraq, War, War on Terrorism | Tagged: Economics, Government Spending, Iraq, War | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Testimony for the new dinosaur/human footprint specimen:
“This work is suitable for publication in the same journals that carry my work.”
“This rock specimen resembles several other examples found in the V. T. Hamlin collection at the University of Missouri Libraries.”
— Dinosaur reconstruction artist
“We have video of similar dinosaur prints.”
Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Humor | Tagged: Creationism, Humor, Satire | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
No, this is not some philsophical treatise. Nature recently published a paper by a French team that discovered a virus that infects another virus. (You probably don’t have access to Nature either, but keep reading, there is hope.)
Wait a minute: Are viruses alive? They can’t reproduce on their own, so, some scientists argue, they are not really alive. Viruses infect living things. Well, then doesn’t a virus infecting a virus imply the host virus is alive?
What is life? Do we have to redefine it, once again, again?
It’s turtles, all the way down, for some of us — but you, Dear Reader, should probably read a good description of the paper, over at Living the Scientific Life.
Oh — the name of the new thing? It’s a satellite virus, sorta, and it looks right, so the team that discovered it calls it “Sputnik.”
2 Comments | Biology, Research, Science | Tagged: Biology, Research, Science, Virus, What is Life | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Environmentalism is the most politically diverse movement in history. Here in the Kingsnorth climate camp, I have met anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and, mostly, pragmatists. I remember sitting in a campaign meeting during the Newbury bypass protests and marvelling at the weirdness of our coalition. In the front row sat the local squirearchy: brigadiers in tweeds and enormous moustaches, titled women in twin sets and headscarves. In the middle were local burghers of all shapes and sizes. At the back sat the scuzziest collection of grunge-skunks I have ever laid eyes on. The audience disagreed about every other subject under the sun – if someone had asked us to decide what day of the week it was, the meeting would had descended into fisticuffs – but everyone there recognised that our quality of life depends on the quality of our surroundings.
The environment is inseparable from social justice. Climate change, for example, is primarily about food and water. It threatens the fresh water supplies required to support human life. As continental interiors dry out and the glaciers feeding many of the rivers used for irrigation disappear, climate change presents the greatest of all threats to the future prospects of the poor. The rich will survive for a few decades at least, as they can use their money to insulate themselves from the effects. The poor are being hammered already.
British ecologist, journalist and activist, George Monbiot (Wikimedia image)
Leave a Comment » | Climate change, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Politics, Quotes, Science | Tagged: Climate change, Environmental protection, George Monbiot, History, Moral Authority, Politics, quote, Science, Social Movements | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
American President’s Blog has 14 posts indexed to Millard Fillmore, as of today. That’s among the fewest listings of all the presidents (but more than Abigail Adams!).
Millard Fillmore, from Clipart, Etc.
Fillmore lost out on the “hardest name to spell” poll, but he won “most obscure president.”
The blog has a nice summary of sources on Fillmore, but nothing about the bathtub! I get e-mail often from people looking for information about Fillmore — usually junior high and younger kids, the ones who didn’t pick a more famous president quickly when the teacher said “Now choose a president to do a report on.” In reality, there just isn’t a lot available, on the internet, or in print. (I’ve collected a few sources here.)
Fillmore, perhaps more than any other president, put Japan where it is today. Matthew C. Perry usually gets the credit for opening Japan, most historians focusing on the drama of Commodore Perry’s visit rather than the action of the president who sent him there.
Fillmore’s place in history: He’s fallen into one of the cracks.
At least the American President’s Blog didn’t get sucked in by the bathtub hoax.
Image from Clipart, Etc., part of Florida’s Educational Technology Clearing House
Leave a Comment » | History, Japan, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | Tagged: History, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Utah’s canyons have so many pretty spots. Taking visitors through them I always heard about how no one expected such beauty in the desert. So I was excited to see the headline in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News about taking the Alpine Loop.
Autumn aspens in Utah's Alpine Loop - Wikimedia photo
Prettiest drive you can make in a day. Start out in American Fork, head up American Fork Canyon, cross over to the backside of Mt. Timpanogos — you’ll see aspen, pines, fir, some of the prettiest streams you’ve ever seen anywhere. Some years back the Utah Travel Council had a spectacular poster showing the colors in the fall — about five shades each of red, gold and green, aspen and cottonwoods against the balsam and Douglas fir and a few scattered pines. Stop and hike up to Timpanogos Cave National Monument. See where the glacier was on the east side of Timpanogos.
End up passing Robert Redford’s Sundance Ski Resort, and down Provo Canyon (when I skied there it was $6.50 for a full-day pass; have the rates gone up?) — finish up with dinner in a good restaurant in Provo (or drive the 36 miles back to Salt Lake City and have world-class sushi at Takashi).
Alas. The article was about Colorado’s Alpine Loop. Who knew Colorado even had one by that name?
I suspect the Colorado version is less-traveled. The author took a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Utah Travel Council photo of the Alpine Loop showing some of the autumn colors -- not the great shot from the long-ago poster, alas.
Utah’s Alpine loop is paved the entire way, closed maybe only during a winter of very heavy snow. If you’re just passing through, you can do the drive in three hours or less, easily. If you have a day, grab a picnic, and spend some time stopping to enjoy the mountains.
(Go see Rich Legg’s photos of the east side of Timpanogos, here.)
Some time I’d like to check out the Colorado version. Odds are that I’ll be back in Utah County before then, however, and odds are you’ll be closer to the Utah version than the Colorado version, too.
You know the old saying about “take time to stop and smell the balsam, and ooh and aah at the aspen?” The Alpine Loop is what the aphorist was thinking about. Theodore Roosevelt would have gone there, had he known about it. You know about it now.
Windley's Google map of Utah's Alpine Loop, around Mt. Timpanogos
3 Comments | Geography - Physical, geology, Natural history, Natural resources, Travel | Tagged: Alpine Loop, Colorado, geography, geology, National Monuments, Natural history, Rocky Mountains, Timpanogos, Tourism, Travel, Utah | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Geology, geography, meteorology, climatology, chemistry — whatever you call it, reality always trumps fiction.
From the headline, “Ventura County hot spot puzzles experts,” I wondered whether a caldera was sending a telegram. Probably not.*
The ground smokes, but there is no fire. Experts’ best guess: Drought causes the ground to dry out, and crack. Petroleum stuff (in gas form) bubbles up from underground, into the cracked earth. Oxygen from the surface mixes deep. Somewhere underground the hydrocarbons meet the oxygen and the resulting combustion heats the ground to 800° Fahrenheit.
It’s a dry land analog of the methane hydrates warming and bubbling up in the ocean. The waste products contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but so would the emissions if they didn’t burn first.
Cause or effect of climate change? Significant?
6 Comments | Climate change, Geography - Physical, geology, Science | Tagged: Climate change, geology, Science, Weird Nature Stories | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Creationists in Texas claim to have found a stone with footprints of a human and a dinosaur.
No, I’m not kidding.
Hoax “dinosaur and human footprints” claimed to be found in the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas.
Could you make this stuff up? Well, yeah, I guess some people think you could. Somebody did make this stuff up.
According to a report in the too-gullible Mineral Wells Index, long-time hoaxster and faux doctorate Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum announced the rock was found just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park. The area has been the site of more than one creationist hoax since 1960, and was an area rife with hoax dinosaur prints dating back to the 1930s. (See these notes on the warning signs of science hoaxes and history hoaxes.)
The estimated 140-pound stone was recovered in July 2000 from the bank of a creek that feeds the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, located about 53 miles south of Fort Worth. The find was made just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park, a popular destination for tourists known for its well-preserved dinosaur tracks and other fossils.
The limestone contains two distinct prints – one of a human footprint and one belonging to a dinosaur. The significance of the cement-hard fossil is that it shows the dinosaur print partially over and intersecting the human print.
In other words, the stone’s impressions indicate that the human stepped first, the dinosaur second. If proven genuine, the artifact would provide evidence that man and dinosaur roamed the Earth at the same time, according to those associated with the find and with its safekeeping. It could potentially toss out the window many commonly held scientific theories on evolution and the history of the world.
Except, as you can see, Dear Reader and Viewer, it’s a hoax. No dinosaur has a footprint exactly resembling the print of Fred Flintstone’s pet Dino, as the rock shows; nor do human footprints left in mud look like the print shown.
Dear God, save us from such tom-foolery, please.
To the newspaper’s credit, they consulted with an expert who knows better. The expert gave a conservative, scientific answer, however, when the rock deserved a chorus of derisive hoots:
However, Dr. Phillip Murry, a vertebrate paleontology instructor in the Geoscience department of Tarleton State University at Stephenville, Texas, stated in his response to an interview request: “There has never been a proven association of dinosaur (prints) with human footprints.”
The longtime amateur archeologist who found the fossil thinks that statement is now proven untrue.
“It is unbelievable, that’s what it is,” Alvis Delk, 72, said of what could be not only the find of a lifetime, but of mankind.
Delk is a current Stephenville and former Mineral Wells resident (1950-69) who said he found the rock eight years ago while on a hunt with a friend, James Bishop, also of Stephenville, and friend and current fiancee Elizabeth Harris.
Yes, it’s unbelievable.
For comparison, real hominid footprints look much different — the print below was left in a thin-layer of volcanic ash about 4 million years ago, 61 million years after dinosaurs went extinct, according to timelines corroborated by geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, nuclear physicists and biologists:
Print of a hominid, found at Laetoli, Tanzania, Africa; image from Stanford University. Photo: J. Reader/SPL
With luck, serious scientists will get a chance to analyze the prints soon, and note that they are hoaxes. If history is any guide, however, Baugh and his comrades will keep the rock from scientific analysis, claiming that scientists refuse to analyze it.
The rock is approximately 30 inches by 24 inches. The human footprint, with a deep big toe impression, measures 11 inches in length. Baugh said the theropod track was made by an Acrocanthosaurus. Baugh said this particular track was likely made by a juvenile Acrocanthosaurus, one he said was probably about 20 feet long, stood about 8 feet tall and walked stooped over, weighing a few tons.
Its tracks common in the Glen Rose area, the Acrocanthosaurus is a dinosaur that many experts believe existed primarily in North America during the mid-Cretaceous Period, approximately 125 million to 100 million years ago.
Baugh said Delk’s discovery casts doubts on that theory. Baugh said he believes both sets of prints were made “within minutes, or no more than hours of each other” about 4,500 years ago, around the time of Noah’s Flood. He said the clay-like material that the human and dinosaur stepped in soon hardened, becoming thick, dense limestone common in North Texas.
He said the human print matches seven others found in the same area, stating the museum has performed excavations since 1982 in the area Baugh has dubbed the “Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint” discovery.
This “find” comes as the State Board of Education begins rewriting science standards for Texas schools. The chairman of the SBOE is a committed creationist who publicly says he hopes to get creationism into the standards and textbooks in Texas, miseducating Texas students that creationism has a scientific basis.
Delk’s own daughter, Kristi Delk, is a geology major at Tarleton State University in Stephenville and holds different beliefs from her dad about the creation of Earth and the origins of man.
She said she wants to see data from more tests before jumping to any conclusions.
“I haven’t come to terms with it,” she said. “I am skeptical, actually.”
Listen to your daughter, Mr. Delk.
In a story Texas educators hope to keep completely unrelated to the foot prints hoax, Mineral Wells area schools showed gains in academic achievement on the Texas state test program.
Additional resources:
________________________
Gary Hurd at Stones and Bones, who Is a bit of an expert in this stuff, calls “fake.“
Here is how to fake a patina that will look like this fake fossil: Brush the surface with vinegar, and then sprinkle with baking powder followed by baking soda, and let dry. Repeat until you are happy with the results. This is not the only way, or even the best way. But it is simple, and will fool the average fool. Especially easy if they want to be fooled.
So, having spent a little bit more time on the photo of this fake, I feel that I understand a bit more about how it was produced. A legitimate dinosaur track was found and removed. Incompetent, unprofessional “Cleaning” damaged it. An parital overprint, or simple erosion depression was “improved” by adding “toes.” The faked surfaces were smothed over with a simple kitchen concoction to make a “patina.” Artifact fabricators next bury the fake for a year or two, or they smear it with fertilizer and leave it exposed. This helps weather the object and obscure tool marks.
Help stamp out hoaxes; run with the word:
37 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Education, History, Hoaxes, Public education, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science | Tagged: bogus science, Creationism, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Dinosaurs, Glen Rose, History, Hoaxes, human evolution, Paleontology, Paluxy River, Religion, Science, Texas, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
George Santayana is best known as a historian. He’s famous for his observation on the importance of studying history to understand it, and getting it right: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (See citation in right column of the blog.)
Steve Greenberg is a historian cartoonist whose work is published in the Ventura County (California) Star. He offers a Santayana-esque analysis of economics positions of presidential candidates.
Steve Greenberg, published in the Ventura County Star
Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
Steve Greenberg, Ventura County Star, via Cagle Comics
Greenberg has compressed into 33 words and 5 images a rather complex argument in this year’s presidential campaign.
Is Greenberg right? Do you see why Boss Tweed feared Thomas Nast’s cartoons more than he feared the reporters and editorial writers?
This election campaign we may be able to get the best analysis and commentary from cartoonists. Same as always. Teachers: Are you stockpiling cartoons for use through the year in government, economics, and history?
Other resources:
Note to Cagle cartoons: I think I’m in fair use bounds on this. In any case, I wish you would create an option for bloggers, and an option for teachers who may reuse cartoons year after year. I’ve tried to contact you to secure rights for cartoons in the past, and I don’t get responses. Complain away in comments if you have a complaint, but let us know how we can expose cartoonists to broader audiences and use these materials in our classrooms for less than our entire teacher salary.
33 Comments | Campaigns, Cartoons, Economics, Elections, History, Political cartoons, Presidents | Tagged: Cartoons, Economics, History, John McCain, Political cartoons, presidential campaign, Steve Greenberg | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
In the old, old movie, from the H. G. Wells story, “Things to Come,” the forces of scientific good (led by Raymond Massey) use a gas to knock out warring parties, to stop the shooting, and to give the good guys a chance to disarm disputants and set things right.
1936 movie poster for "Things to Come" - WikiMedia image
That was fictional. The “Gas of Peace” doesn’t exist.
The sniping will continue about P. Z. Myers’ complaint that some Catholics grossly over reacted when they threatened death to a fellow who didn’t swallow his wafer at communion, and then kept the wafer (not a hostage — the wafer has been returned), and a lot of the sniping will come from Rod Dreher at the Dallas Morning News.
Did anyone else note the irony of Dreher’s comments commending the ideas of the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who campaigned his entire life against authoritative oppression of freedom and enforcement of ideas against all good and common sense, while at the same time railing against Myers’ similar campaign?
Santayana’s Ghost needs to do more active haunting. We can’t excuse tyranny from a church, nor tyranny from any government in the United States of America, either. Freedom typically works better when the freedom to offend is greater than the privilege of being free from being offended. Why doesn’t Dreher see that?
More resources:
1 Comment | Free market economics, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History, Newspapers, Politics, Religion, Santayana's ghost, Texas, Totalitarianism | Tagged: bullying, Dallas Morning News, freedom, History, Politics, Religion, Rod Dreher, Totalitarianism, Tyranny | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology did the scientific work any RKSI person ought to do, and identified the carcass that washed up on a beach in Montauk, New York, as a poor old raccoon. (“RKSI?” Road Kill Scene Investigator — though maybe this should be “Beach Kill.”)
Raccoon, Procyon lotor, Tennessee Department of Health photo
Beaches of Montauk, New York, appear to be safe.
Religionists often accuse me of having “faith” in science, and to a small degree that is accurate. I do have faith that, much of the time, there is a rational explanation for things that at first appear magical, or to verify stories of monsters, goblins, or Republican platform planks. Naish uses his experience in watching decomposing critters on the beach to show how to identify the creature in Montauk. This is a powerful demonstration of the power of scientific methods: Naish worked the issue from 3,470 miles away (about 5,585 km).
With a bit of luck the popularity of this monster story, and the resolution of the mysteries by Naish and other like-minded scientists, might inspire a few people to do the CSI-style thing, to actually study science. One might study animal anatomy, as Naish has done, or one might apply to the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology program at the Knoxville campus.
Like all of these sorts of mysteries, this one was fun while it lasted, but the photos that really clinched it for a lot of people weren’t (so far as I can tell) released on the same day as the initial, tantalizing mystery photo (the one shown at the very top). And I don’t mind this sort of thing too much: we get to see a lot of dumbass speculation, sure, but the immense interest that these stories generate show that people – even those not particularly interested in zoology or natural history – have a boundless appetite for mystery animals. If only there were some clever way of better utilizing this fascination.
The truth is out there. Sometimes it helps to have a good university library and some scientific knowledge to flush it out, and flesh it out. Students, you can become the bearer of answers you seek.
Word of the day: Taphonomy (beyond the usual, “one more science creationists don’t do”)
Other resources:
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, once again (so many tips there, it’s probably soaked).
6 Comments | Accuracy, Geography - Physical, History, Science, Travel | Tagged: Cryptozoology, Forensic Zoology, geography, Montauk Monster, Mysteries, Science, Taphonomy, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Blue Collar Scientist burst on the blogosphere last December. News from Pharyngula is that Jeff Medkeff’s liver cancer took him — he died last night.
With luck, someone will be sure his on-line and in-print work is archived. His voice, his activism, his enthusiasm, his patience and deep knowledge seem irreplaceable. Scientists and other rational people will have to work much harder to fill in the gaps.
So long, Jeff.
Leave a Comment » | Health care, Point of personal privilege, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: blogs, health, Personal, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
No, I’m not talking about actual poisoning by the chemical, an organochloride insecticide. I’m talking again about people driven to madness by false claims that DDT will cure malaria, that DDT is banned for use against malaria, and that some few super powerful people, all of them evil environmentalists, are forcing governments, all health workers, and the world’s tobacco companies to stop the use of DDT — ergo, they say, everyone who has died from malaria since [some point in the past that is surely the fault of environmentalists] died due to lack of DDT.
Which makes those people worse murderers than Stalin at least, so the crazies claim.
Here’s the latest fuse that set me off. I’ll analyze it below the fold, after the lecture.
Is it a virus that spreads in late summer? I’ve noted here earlier the tendency of the pro-DDT wackoes to surge out of the woodwork in summer to claim, against the facts, that West Nile virus would be no problem if there were DDT. Mosquitoes that carry West Nile are best killed in as larva, living in water; DDT is not as efficient as other larvacides, particularly when weighed against DDT’s tendency to kill everything that comes in contact with the water and the plants and animals living in and around it.
But watch: Any mention of malaria in the news, and they drop letters to the editors of every weekly newspaper in America, blaming unnamed environmentalists for killing millions in Africa, or Asia, or both. In the Bizarro™ World of DDT advocates, all insect-borne diseases were on the run until Rachel Carson personally padlocked every DDT manufacturer in the world. I have news browsers set to pick up mentions of DDT, and except for the recent surge in news about the band DDT from Russia, every day brings another internet mention of how DDT could have saved the world, if only.
Dear Reader, Dear God, there are several inaccuracies there. It’s curious that some people can get ideas so exactly contrary to the facts, contrary to reality, so often.
Arnold Kling, economist blogging at the Freedom Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty — in this case, misblogging against science and medicine.
Wait. What’s this? There’s a trail of misinformation and disinformation we can follow. This livejournal poster links to this Wikipedia article on “seasteading,” and from there to this blog on the value of seasteading, which bases the pie-in-the-sea philosophy on the common, occasionally-but-randomly correct rant against government, based on Arnold Kling’s rant at EconLog.
Have we seen this before? Yes, Dear Reader, we have — and if you look in the comments to Kling’s rant, you’ll see Tim Lambert fiercely shoveling facts to try to put out the fires of ignorance. I even posted there — back in April. The facts, the links, the arguments, are all there, for anyone with half a brain and half a desire to do the right thing and get the facts right.
April to August (misdated September). The nutty DDT advocates are working on a four month cycle. Repeat the falsehoods every four months, three times a year (intentionally or not; some viral marketing works better if it’s not intentional, like the innocent carriers of typhoid who are unaffected by it, don’t mean to spread it around, but breath the pathogen out with every breath).
Blather, don’t bother to rinse, repeat.
It’s time someone wrote a new book on propaganda, warning of its evils.
2 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Accuracy, DDT, Economics, Politics, Propaganda, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Scrappleface has a feature on global warming hampering the efforts of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I’ll wager it was U.S.-caused warming, too.
(/hoax mode)
Scrappleface makes a good case for the satire abilities of the right-wing. Alas, where satire is inappropriate, they can’t turn it off. It’s almost impossible to distinguish between the satire of Scrappleface and the press releases from John McCain, or policy arguments from the Heritage Foundation. Can we get someone to repeal Poe’s Law?
2 Comments | Accuracy, Afghanistan, Global warming, Humor | Tagged: Accuracy, Global warming, Humor, Taliban | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Context means a lot.
At a religious service on a state college campus, a congregant violated etiquette at communion. Some reports noted that sect members bullied the congregant on the spot. The congregant fled the service, according to some reports. An advocacy group for the religious sect demanded apologies, legal action, and ostracism for the congregant. Threats of violence against the congregant started rolling in. The congregent was told he will be murdered.
A professor at a good, small midwestern state college used his pen to urge calm among the sect’s members. Threats of violence are foolish, he says. Calm down, he said.
The professor tried to put things in perspective: Threatening murder for a violation of communion etiquette is beyond the pale, one of the dangers of violent religious sects. Such actions are the opposite of American tradition.
But then the prof took a step farther: This religious sect is functioning on superstition, he said. He said the superstition can be exposed, and he would use his skeptical powers to expose the superstition, to show everyone that threats of death on such issues are unwise, unnecessary, and to be avoided.
Rod Dreher, who last week complained in his column about the lasting damage that bullies can do to kids in schools, weighed in on the communion/death threats matter with a column this week in the Dallas Morning News.
How did Dreher weigh in?
A. He calls for an end to bullying, and urges calm.
B. He says religious wars started this way, and he urges calm.
C. He calls for an end to bullying, but urges the professor to lay off debunking the religion.
D. He calls the professor hateful, and supports the side that issued the death threats.
See below the fold.
13 Comments | Rampant stupidity, Reason, Religion, Religious Freedom, Violence | Tagged: Reason, Religion, Religious Freedom, Religious Violence, Superstition, Violence | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for August, 2008.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
