The Flat-Earth is a Red Car

So there I was, getting my very first cavity cleaned and filled, ‘chatting’ with the dentist. ‘How are you?’ “gerblopflllob…” ‘Oh good, glad to hear that.’ ‘What do you study?’ (Shut up you idiot and fix my tooth!) “Hchemfloptry” ‘Oh, chemistry. (How the hell did he know what I said?) ‘Science is so strange. You think you know something and then more evidence arrives and it was all wrong.’ ‘sthop trup’ (so true) ‘One minute people are being burned at the stake for thinking the world is round and the next people sail around it.’

With educated ignorance like this, who needs stupid people? At least my tooth filling looks good, so good in fact you can’t even tell it’s there. They clean it out and fill it in, sculpting it in and then the set it with UV light… very cool. But the level of ignorance was absurd. So when did the belief that Christian Europe was backward, unscientific, stupid, and killed people for observing the universe start? Well, it is amusing to read the Wikipedia entry about the flat earth concept. Apparently, Europeans have generally believed the earth is round since Pythagoras. In fact the entry becomes more and more amusing as you discover that the idea of a spherical earth came to India in the early AD centuries from exposure to… Greek astronomy, and to the Islamic scientists from the translation of Greek cosmology from Constantinople into Arabic… China was way behind, finding out about the (apparently European) idea of a spherical earth in the 17th century from the Jesuits. So why, for any reason, do so many people believe that the medieval Christians think the earth was flat? And why are so many people willing to ascribe to them the act of killing the people who held the standard belief about the earth.

The mis-characterization of the medieval times and the time following is what I consider to be the most successful, most damaging, most pervasive campaign of lies, slanders, and libels in history. Here it is in a picture:

That’s right, blame the dark ages on Christianity… because they totally happened and they were totally the fault of believing in the Christian God. Despite the fact that the picture graph was obviously made by an ignorant hack without even a tenuous grasp of history of any kind, let alone scientific advancement. The sad state of the matter is that many, maybe even most, people walk around in their lives with this view of history, with this view of Christianity, and this view of the west. Now, I am sure there was some time while Rome was falling, slowly backing out of what is now Western Europe it felt pretty dark, like this:

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

Also, the science of the region fell dramatically: but you try to keep civilization going when being overrun by Vandals, Visigoths, et al. However, the purposefully forgotten piece of history is that the more populous of the Christian world at the time was the Eastern Roman Empire which survived with its science intact. Also, happily expunged are the brave and great people who cobbled civilization back together after Rome receded. Men like Alcuin who were part of this first ‘renaissance’ that only came to an end upon the onset of the little ice age. Alcuin is forgotten, conveniently perhaps, because one of his most important contributions was rebuking Charlemagne for his campaign of forced conversions saying this:

“Faith is a free act of the will, not a forced act. We must appeal to the conscience, not compel it by violence. You can force people to be baptized, but you cannot force them to believe.”

Wikipedia (the lazy blogger’s source… this is a red car (or is it a white rabbit) that I am chasing, no time for anything better than Wiki) goes on to say that in response Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in … 797 AD.

So where does the firmly held belief that Christian Europe was backward, and autocratic? I don’t know, but I suspect an evil cabal of enlightenment thinkers and their ideological descendants. If the medieval ages were not dark, than their argument against God starts crumbling…

Culture Vulture: My review of Dr. Helen's must-read 'Men on Strike'

Reblogged from God's Own Crunk:

Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – And Why it Matters

By Helen Smith, PhD

==

So, here’s some convenient symmetry. A dozen years ago, I entered Oklahoma State University’s Graduate School of Education. Why I did this, I have no recollection beyond being unhappy with my professional life as a reporter, and – on short notice – the school didn’t require the GRE.

Read more… 1,700 more words

Haunting Melissa

I don’t want to say too much, except this: if you have an iPhone, iPad, you should buy Haunting Melissa. Ok, you also have to like ghost stories. There is so much to complement from the outset, but I was waiting until I saw more of the story. First off, in an age full of instant gratification, here, in the Haunting Melissa app, you have to wait. You get doses of the story based off of some kind of timing mechanism from when you download the app, so everyone is on a slightly different schedule. One of the things I definitely believe about art is that it’s very form reflects the beliefs of the artist. In this case, Andrew Klavan and his pals have made something whose form is a unique expression of the truth. Here we have every viewer experiencing truth in their own way, however, there really is only one truth about the story, the viewer doesn’t affect the truth by viewing it, but the viewers do, in fact see it differently.

On a story level, the Haunting Melissa app/movie thing… has so far managed to avoid the number one fatality of suspense/horror ghost stories. As soon as the audience thinks: ‘Why don’t they just leave the cat…?’ or ‘If you know the place is haunted by malevolence, why stay?’ or the very basic ‘Just leave you idiot!’ This, I think is a major accomplishment through effective storytelling, unique pacing, and giving Melissa a compelling reason to stay. The story is almost entirely devoid of classic spooks, yet it spooks the viewer. And I think the more attentive the viewer, the more spooked you will be, yet almost never by the make-you-pay-attention-and-then-have-a-skull-jump-out-at-you kind.

For instance, the story takes place in Melissa’s home, while her father is away (so far). Her mother basically went crazy and died there. (I will certainly try to avoid anything that cannot be inferred from the trailers.) In her insanity, Melissa’s mother was obsessed with crosses. They are all over the house, and there are probably around twenty in the room she died in… yet, her tombstone looks like this:

That weirded me out.  Why no cross? I will leave out my speculations, not because they are well informed, but because I am uncannily accurate in predicting plots with very little information. (By the way, the picture’s link will also take you to the Haunting Melissa official website, because I think you should get it, if only to support an innovative entertainment option.)

Also, it is just plain cool to get a piece of the story at unpredictable intervals. That is because the other main problem for ghost stories is that in 2 hours the move is over, and frequently you gag at the ghost at the end it is just too dumb. (The most egregious version of this is Signs, even though that’s an alien.) here, I don’t know how it will turn out, but there is only excitement, no disappointment. And I cannot skip ahead, no matter how much I want to know, and no matter how attention deficit I feel. I get just that one piece at a time. Here watch a trailer:

Anyway, I have always liked Klavan’s idea of a ghost story (see Ghost Story and Agnes Mallory) This just continues the winning streak. I hope both for more ghost stories from Andrew Klavan, and for more entertainment apps like this.

Bill Nye: The Red Car

Introducing red car Friday!
From now on, until I get bored of it, every Friday will feature a red car, like last week’s post on the middle ages. Also, whenever I can there will be other posts too… but here is today’s red car.

Bill Nye… the science guy…. You see him here and there on the news, expounding, pontificating, telling people what they should believe and what they shouldn’t believe. Here he is at Smithsonian magazine where the subtitle is: ‘The famous scientist cuts through the global warming noise and lays out the facts.’

And by the way, if you go watch it (embedding wasn’t working for some reason.) the bottles are absolutely nothing like our atmosphere with its many, barely understood equilibration systems. It is a horrible example.

Anyway, that’s Bill Nye… ‘famous scientist’ here is another situation, at the commencement speech at Lehigh University, where he said that overpopulation is a huge world problem….

And Bill Nye, apparently a real scientist…. Talking about the OK tornado.

Bill Nye is an expert in basically everything!

He also really hates the idea of creationism…

So, Bill Nye is apparently an expert in: Climate science, Evolutionary biology, demographics, basically he’s like a scientist at everything!!!! So I wondered… what, exactly, are his credentials as a scientist (other than, you know, being called ‘the science guy’ which is catchy and cool because it rhymes with his last name…)

Well, according to Wikipedia

‘He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University (where one of his professors was Carl Sagan)[9] and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977.[10] Nye began his career in Seattle at Boeing, where, among other things, he starred in training films and developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor still used in the 747. Later, he worked as a consultant in the aeronautics industry. In 1999 he told the St. Petersburg Times that he applied to be a NASA astronaut every few years, but was always rejected.[11]

I see… he took a class from a real physicist… and… he was repeatedly rejected by NASA so, that makes him a real scientist I guess. I don’t want to deny the possibilities of him being an autodidact, and mechanical engineers are certainly practical and solid thinkers by and large…. But his scientific credentials are remarkably…. thin. For instance in his scientific work, he made a sundial for the Mars rover… which sounds exactly like a project that would be given to a person who was included for the celebrity, rather than for their science…

It seems to me that his scientific credentials are:
1: He has a catchy name with Science in it
2: He endlessly repeats the most popular scientific shibboleths
3: ?????

Am I missing something that would give us good reason to listen to what Bill Nye (Real Scientist) says over someone (anyone) else?

Commencement

This is one of the reasons I am glad Mitch Daniels is president of Purdue now….

I really have nothing to add to that…

Genetically Modified Food Supply

I wasn’t going to write this, because I have work to do. But…. I got hit by another red car this morning. The lunacy of people who absolutely reject genetically modified food. First off, I don’t see the problem, all our food is genetically modified, we just used to do it the long slow way. I don’t think any farmer a hundred years ago would perpetuate a low yielding strain of crop over a higher yielding one. I would suspect that since Gregor Mendel a lot of people took the slow way of genetically modifying our agriculture for improvements. Seriously, that’s the whole point to putting the best racehorses out to stud while the bad ones become glue… To me, the only difference between modern genetic modification and older versions is that we are trying to preemptively modify food to avoid blights and droughts causing famines… and we are better at it.

And one more thing about GM food, it would certainly help African countries feed their own. But with Europe’s shenanigans, the global market is hostile to GM food.

‘Economist and Political scientist Robert Paarlberg of the Harvard Kennedy Center wrote a book titled “Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is being kept out of Africa.”  In it he documents how post-colonial influence from Europe has driven regulatory decisions in many African countries so that they have a European-like hesitancy about GM crops.  Many don’t even allow any field testing.  Since Africa will be the center of most global population increase over the next several decades, this projection of what Paarlberg terms “rich world preferences” is certainly at odds with Africa’s need to produce as much of its own food as possible. This is particularly unfortunate because biotech crop improvements are “scale neutral.” They work just as easily for a 2,000 acre farm in Iowa as a 1 hectare farm in Africa, and in many cases they would be offered for free.  African farmers would very much like to have that opportunity.  Europe has also reduced its investment in international agricultural research which further compounds the problem.  Europe is also very slow to approve of new biotech events for the GMO crops that it does import,  causing logistical problems in the grain trade and often interfering with the hybrids and varieties New World farmers can utilize. ‘

And again, Japan imports a lot of wheat. In fact (according to the article linked below.) Japan imports 90% of its wheat, 60% of that from the US, and they just suspended an import because they think they detected GM wheat from the US. I find it a bit ridiculous that net importers of food don’t like how us net exporters grow it.

One last thing… the doomsday scenario. One of my hobbies is sitting around (drinking bourbon) and thinking up doomsday situations. Someday, some of them may become books, but unfortunately this one is real. It has happened before and it will happen again. You see, a little known factor in the devastation caused by the Black Death in Europe in 1348 and 1350 is that it was preceded by a series of famines, including one known as the Great Famine in 1315-1317 . The black death killed somewhere around 30% of European population, the great famine before it had killed around 10%. It was a century of catastrophe.

The onset of the Great Famine coincided with the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Between 1310 and 1330 northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers.

Before the Medieval warm period, there was likely a Roman warm period… which ended around 400 AD which oddly enough was also a time of disasters for civilization.

Just my random thought, but  we very well may experience a cooler earth (due to decreased solar activity) and if we do, it is scientific and technological advances like fracking, burning oil rather than trees, and probably genetically modified food that will stand between civilization and starvation.

The Red Car Syndrome

You know, when you buy something and then notice everyone else has one… Well, sometimes this happens to me with ideas –the idea version of the red car syndrome. I have a thought, and then it seems to be everywhere for a little while. I was recently thinking about the medieval times, that so many people erroneously refer to as ‘the dark ages’. Before I point to the related ‘red cars’ that drove by me after thinking about this, I would like to define a new unit of time. You see, whenever thinking about something historical, I generally believe that most people don’t try to put things into a time scale. So, for the purposes of this post (and perhaps to be used later) I would like to define the ‘america’ or am., not to be confused with Am. the abbreviation for Americium.

You see, I do think people have a decent sense for about how long ago America was founded; they have a whisper of an idea of what 237 years is. Other amounts, perhaps not so much. For instance, how long did the Byzantine empire last? Well, from Constantine I until the fall of Byzantium to the Turks was from 330 – 1453 and anyone who takes a moment will see that that is 1123 years, but did you know that that is 4.74 americas?

1123 yrs * (1 am. /237 yrs) = 4.738397 am.

Which rounded to the proper significant figures is 4.74 am. Now to tell about three ideas that passed by.

So, first off: there is a ‘family tree’ of doctorates in the department here. I think it is one of the coolest things in the department. Since every doctorate requires study under another doctor, then you can trace a lineage of sorts. Half of the department traces back through time to a man teaching in 1580 AD in Padua, Giulio Cesare Casseri, who if Wikipedia isn’t lying was an anatomist. So, granted this man lived after what people usually call the dark ages, but did you know that the university in Padua was founded right in the middle of them? It was founded 1222 AD, or 1.51 am. before this grandfather of my chemistry department (22 ‘generations’ ago). Without these universities, usually founded off of cathedral or monastery schools, there would be no western science or medicine at all.

So there I was thinking about this, and lo and behold a video from PJ media.

And again, to reinforce the idea, was this article about the oldest complete Torah found in an Italian university, Bologna university… which is actually even older than Padua, 0.565 am. older in fact. The Torah isn’t that old, but this line is remarkable.

The professor said the scroll came to Bologna university from a Dominican monastery in the city, most likely after Napoleon disbanded religious orders in the country in the 19th century.

It was “completely normal” that Dominican friars would have an ancient Torah as there was close collaboration between Christian and Jewish scholars in the early Middle Ages, Perani said.

The scroll dates to late 12th and early 13th centuries by carbon dating, which, by the way is 3.43 am. old!

Well that’s it, though because I made up a new unit, I figured I would make a little list of ages in that unit

Time Anglo-Saxon England was ruled by Anglo-saxons = 2.18 am.
Time between first heavier than air flight and the moon landing = 0.278 am.
Time I have been alive = 0.105 am.
t ½ of 243Am = 31.1 am.
Time since America was founded…. Exactly 1 am.