For the last few years, we’ve experienced a rash of Intelligent Design / Creationism garbage in our local paper, the Akron Beacon Journal. I have to admit that, with the exception of the Sports section, I very seldom read the paper, as I get most of my news off the internet these days. However, Beth still reads the paper daily, including the editorials. Like any of us “sane and rational” people, she gets a bit upset when someone submits a letter to the editor that is - shall we say - a bit light on the truth. This time she figured that she had enough and fired off a reply, which I’ve reproduced below.

I guess I’m a bit more reticent than she is to write letters to the editor - I have my little space on the web here to write in. I get traffic from my friends, family, and the occasional odd passer-by. I just don’t have the energy to engage in a back and forth volley over something like creationism (sorry, Intelligent Design). I abhor illogic and ignorance, and every editorial column, debate, or forum I read on this topic contains both of these in vast quantities. She’s a bit stronger than me - I’ll hold the candle here in my little space, but she’s going to go out and hold it up in Akron.

Just goes to prove that even after all these years she still manages to find new ways to remind me how lucky I am.

My beliefs are right in line with Beth’s on this - I did scribble a few of my thoughts on the copy she brought me to proof before she sent it off. I sent her the link on Talk Origins about the odious practice of quote mining, which she had already found. I sent her some more links from other ID websites on the same quote that bothered her, which she had already found. I then noted that there was a book out there for the ID and creationist minded with a list of quotes to “demolish evolutionist arguments”, but of course she had already found that as well.

At that point I shut up, let her write, and went back to work.

However, I was still thinking about it at work, so I dug through some old notebooks and email and found a SJG quote that I had saved off quite a long time ago.

“Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).” — Stephen Jay Gould

It does a nice job of reminding me to be skeptical of myself and my motivations as well as those of other people. Which, with my OCD, isn’t all that hard to do believe me.

So, without further blathering from me, here is what my lovely wife had to say in her rebuttal this morning:

This rebuttal is in response to the letter submitted by Brian Prong (“Darwin defeats Ohio science”, Voice of the People, March 27th). Where is this supposed “overwhelming evidence refuting evolution” he refers to? Surely there must be peer-reviewed scientific papers published in respected scientific journals that support Mr. Prong and his beliefs. And of course these papers must have been presented to the State Board of Education, no? The truth is that there are no such papers. Just saying there are “thousands of scholars, professors, scientists and researchers who have long published their works” is not proof. I could say that fairies live in my backyard and I could believe it with all my heart, but without proof, my statement means nothing to anyone - except myself and those I can convince to believe me.

I was aware that one favorite tactic of the Intelligent Design/creationists movement is to either misquote or quote respected scientists out of context. Although I had never before investigated this tactic personally, I was not surprised to find many websites devoted to this topic with a couple of quick “google searches” (try “evolutionists misquoted” to start). It is despicable for Mr. Prong to use, out of context, a quote by the late Stephen Jay Gould (paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, author and Harvard professor) in an attempt to lend credibility to his opinions. To distort an author’s intent by trolling for juicy, out of context quotes is dishonest. This quote mining is not just wrong it is also a very poor way to make a viable argument. It is a fact that Stephen Jay Gould was always a leading advocate of evolutionary theory and he strongly lamented when ID supporters/creationists would try to twist his words to further their own agenda:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.”— “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes, New York: W. W. Norton, 1994, p. 260.

Science - correctly identified by Mr. Prong as observation and verification - and religion - faith and opinion - are separate and distinct disciplines and should not be lumped into the same category. Although some belief systems are compatible with evolutionary theory, being compatible does not make them the same thing. If the day arrives when religion manages to scientifically prove creation, a designer, or for that matter multiple designers - we can link the two studies. Until that day, science belongs in the science classroom and the teaching of religion belongs in Sunday schools, churches and theology and/or philosophy classrooms. I am proud to live in the state of Ohio where the “guardians of our educational establishment” are “intelligent” enough to know the difference.

Nice job, wifey. Hopefully we’ll be seeing this in print soon.

I’ve been cleaning up some old files on my computer these last few days, and have come across a few stray pieces of email that I stashed away years ago. It seemed like now was as good a time as any to pull them out, dust them off, and shove them back up on the web.

September 11, 2001 became one of those days that became an instant part of our culture - much like the shooting of JFK years earlier, everyone remembers where they were that day.

Of course, much like JFK the actions and events of September 11th also spawned a number of conspiracy theories - variously involving our government, other governments, aliens, etc, etc. Not to miss out, the paranormal also was able to get in on the show.

Unlike JFK however, September 11th theories were not passed as much by phone or word of mouth, but through the web and email.

The Twin Towers and the Pentagon were still in flames when I received the email below from one of my mailing lists. I’ve stripped the email headers and X’d out the name to protect the gullible.

On Wed, 12 Sep 2001, XXXXXXX wrote:

I just received the email below from a friend:

“In the year of the new century and nine months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror…
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees.
Fire approaches the great new city…”
“In the city of york there will be a great collapse,
2 twin brothers torn apart by chaos
while the fortress falls the great leader will succumb
third big war will begin when the big city is burning”

NOSTRADAMUS, 1654

Think of it what you will……………….

This isn’t the only email I received with this little gem in it. No fewer than 5 of my friends and co-workers also forwarded this to me. Of course it wasn’t just me - these emails featured distribution lists that in some cases contained 50 or 60 people, not to mention the email lists that would go out to hundreds or thousands. Nostradamus experienced quite the resurgence in popularity in the days and weeks that followed September 11th, a popularity which seems to persist even today.

Now - in the spirit of full disclosure - I think that Nostradamus’ prophecies are all a bunch of - to use the name of an excellent Penn&Teller series here - Bullshit!

Oh, I’ve seen “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” a few times. I’ve actually - in my wasteful and not very critical teendage years - read through various books on Nostradamus and other similar topics, like the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Ancient Astronauts, etc. I owned a copy of the Necronomicon, for Ra’s sake! I had books on Ninja mind control, and a complete set of Tarot cards (Golden Dawn set, if you’re curious).

But then I grew up, and acquired the tools to logically examine a given position, assertion, or argument. I read Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World“, Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things”, and James Randi’s “Flim-Flam!“. These materials caused me to start questioning my beliefs with a very critical eye. I discovered that - to put it quite frankly - I believed as true quite a bit of garbage. More frightening, I realized that I accepted certain things as true with out giving it any real thought, let alone actually trying to verify or prove it on my own.

With Nostradamous and other psychics, I finally realized that that the approach was simply counting the hits and ignoring the misses. This is the same approach that some of those odious reptilian “psychics” that prey on vulnerable people. “Oh yes, your father is well on the other side and misses you”. Again, what incredible bullshit.

So back to the initial point of this typically long and rambling post. At first, I wasn’t going to do anything about these emails other than delete them. But then I started seeing replies from the people on the distribution lists. People just blindly agreeing with the original post. People saying that they were passing it on to their friends. People worrying about other parts of this supposedly “true” prophecy.

Finally I had enough and decided to do a bit of research. I went online and searched for actual words of Nostradamus as a starting point. I found a site that looked to have a decent translation, and guess what - the “true” prophecy was merely a conglomeration of a number of quatrains (verses), with some additional editing to make it more - well, I guess the correct word here is topical.

So, playing the spoiler, I sent off the email below - one email for each time I received the email above or some variant thereof.

From jschmidt Wed Sep 12 12:48:26 2001
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 10:04:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jason A. Schmidt
To: XXXXXX
Subject: Re: XXXXXX

Hi XXXX,

I’m not an expert on Nostradamus by any means, but the quote below
appears to contain parts of several different quatrains, which I’ve
included below. Just wanted to follow up in the interest of accuracy.

I’m pulling my information from
http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/nosproph.htm.

Jason

Century 10, Quatrain 72
In the year 1999 and seven months
The Great King of Terror will come from the sky,
He will bring back to life the great king of the Mongols.
Before and after Mars [the God of war] reigns happily.

Century 9, Quatrain 83
The Sun in 20 degrees Taurus [May 1-10, 2000?]
There will be a great earthquake; the great theater full up will be ruined.
Darkness and trouble in the air, on the sky and land,
When the infidel calls upon God and the Saints.

Century 6, Quatrain 97
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude,
Fire approaches the great new city [New York City lies between 40-45 degrees]
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up
When they want to have verification from the Normans [French].

Century 1, Quatrain 87
Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth
Will cause the towers around the New City to shake:
Two great rocks will war for a long time,
And then Arethusa shall color a new river red.

Take a look at the quatrains above, then at the original email. Maybe as a fun exercise take these and make up your own prophecies to dovetail with current events - slice, dice, modify. Then release. Viola! Instant credibility for whatever you are arguing for or want to prove from a long-dead french guy.

Would you believe I got a number of nasty replies to this mission of mercy? People told me that I was too skeptical and that I didn’t have an open mind. One of my friends griped at me for replying to all the people on his original distribution. To hear him talk, it seemed he felt that he was doing a public service sending this out. I really wish that I had kept some of them around - they would make for interesting reading - but I must have lost most of those in the Great Email Failure of ‘03.

I really didn’t mind the bitching - I was fighting the good fight. I felt that the battle was going well when my refutation came back to me in the form of yet another email with a few dozen people on the TO line that was forwarded to me by someone I knew - who had absolutely no direct connection to the people or groups I had originally sent my reply to.

The internet sure works in mysterious ways, man.

Final vindication came in a post to my one mailing list - I’ve only reproduced the key bit below - but it made me feel like I actually accomplished something.

On a final point, my thanks to the person who went to the trouble to nail the Nostradamus bollocks that has been circulating for most of the day by pointing out that the quatrain being circulated doesn’t actually exist. Not that I’ve been convinced about these prophecies for quite some time given their vagueness and regular re-interpretation every time the last set of predictions don’t happen when exptected. About the only thing I haven’t seen them allegedly telling us is whether England’s third goal did cross the line in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Pushing back ignorance a notch or two and spreading some knowledge sure feels good. Getting a little credit makes it even sweeter.

For further reference - the excellent Skeptic’s Dictionary has a page on Nostradamus. Oddly enough, it’s very similar to what I have here - down to the post-September 11th hoax passages. They even echo my feelings on psychics. Of course, they write a lot better than I do.

I’m writing this during a trip to Long Beach for a project. The project has gone so well that I was able to take some time over the weekend and visit the RMS Queen Mary and the Russian Scorpion Submarine. Quite a few times I found myself thinking that I had to remember to tell my Grandfather about something I saw. Or to remember to ask him a question about his time on the ocean or the great lakes.

The only problem is, I can’t do that anymore. Over the last few months I’ve got used to this pain, but sometimes - like the other day - it hits hard.

My mother called me the the night after my Grandfather died. My father wanted a poem read at the funeral service - I think he wanted to read it himself, but he didn’t think he could do it. The poem was written by another man grieving the imminent passing of his father - someone who also shared a relationship that could be rough at times.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

– Dylan Thomas

The day of my Grandfather’s funeral, I was able to do it. I was able to stand in front of my family, and my families’ friends and read through these words in eulogy. I was able to do it then, but don’t know if I could do it today. In the months since November, I’ve seen this poem in the words of my father when I’ve talked to him about my Grandfather. It’s taken on a new meaning - or, perhaps, it’s taken on the meaning that Dylan Thomas meant it to have. The words have a strange weight when I read them now.

I fought writing this today - I didn’t want to write another maudlin and sentimental post. I feel like I’ve done more than my share of this type of writing lately, especially on this subject. My emotions are still raw and scarred - but, more than anything, this scarring was that reason that made me decide to just write. In a bizarre way, it was over this weekend that I was able to forge in my mind a link between four generations - great one, grandfather, father, and son.

I was only out on the water with my Grandfather a few times when I was a child, yet I always have and will identify him with the sea, with sailing ships. Out on the bridge wing of the QM I thought of the pictures of him as a young and hale man sitting perched on the side of a ship, a smile on his face. That smile is a constant through so many pictures - a faded photo I once saw of him in his Army uniform with my grandmother, a black and white picture of him and my father and my Uncles playing in the back yard. Finally, that smile on the last picture I have of him with Alex.

My father chose Dylan Thomas above to express his feelings. Dylan is a bit too intense for me, so I’m going to fall back to Jimmy Buffet here.

I’m just a son of a son, son of a son
Son of a son of a sailor
The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains
I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer

Phil Plait posted this letter a few weeks back over on the Bad Astronomy Blog, and I have to admit that I’m incredibly jealous. This is the letter I wish I had written! Because, almost uncannily, Dr. Plait manages to exactly echo my thoughts on the matter in his letter to current NASA head Mike Griffith.

Or maybe it’s not all that uncanny. From reading his weblog, his website, his book, and listening to podcasts where he has been a guest I’ve discovered that Phil and I have very similar views. The prevailing theme (at least to me) is that science is important, science education is even more important, and that you need to be logical and skeptical about things. I liken that last point to saying “get up and do a bit of work, will you? Don’t sit on the couch and let Fox tell you that the Apollo missions were faked - go out and find the facts and decide on your own.”

Or, as George Hrab would say, “think for yourself little man”.

As you may have guessed by the bit above, I’m a big fan of Phil and his work. His site, Bad Astronomy and the companion book “Bad Astronomy” - are two of my favorite resources for debunking bullshit like “Planet X” and the “Moon Landing Hoax”. His blog is always informative, and often alerts me to some new space science related fact that I’m not aware of. He regularly gives interviews (there is a good bit in his interview podcast with Slacker Astronomy where he gives two suggestions as to what that makes him - but I’ll let you find that out for yourself), debates nutcases (which I quite frankly wouldn’t have the stomach to do), and basically holds up the candle of science for all to see. Probably more importantly, he’s not afraid to shove it in someone’s face if it’s required.

Phil has been a part of James Randi’s Amazing Meeting for the past few years (and while I’m thinking of it, I’d like to send out a bit of an electronic “get well soon” to Mr. Randi, who recently suffered a heart attack and is in the process of recovering) - but unfortunately, Beth and I haven’t been able to go due to our family vacation schedule. We’ve been talking about how much this sucks, and are thinking of trying to juggle things next year so we can do our normal vacation while still having time to head off to Vegas for a week with our skeptical heroes. Hopefully, the Bad Astronomer will be speaking and we can buy him a drink to thank him for fighting the good fight.

One closing note. One of my favorite geeky/sciency quotes occurred during the Apollo 15 mission when Mission Commander Dave Scott stepped onto the surface of Hadley Plain:

As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.

Above my desk, I have a picture of the Apollo 15’s Lunar Module Falcon on the plain at Hadley. Jim Irwin, LM Pilot, stands at the left, saluting the American Flag. At the right, the Lunar Rover sits idle - waiting to explore. The Apollo missions opened great horizons for humanity - for untold generations humans gazed up at the moon. Apollo orbited the moon; they landed on the moon; they explored the moon. Every now and then I look at the picture - really look, and think to myself that I’m looking at the surface of the moon. With people on it. The moon. Wow.

But exploration is not just about manned missions - it’s missions such as Deep Impact, which we watched launch on vacation two years ago. It’s the Voyager (or Vger for the more Star Trek inclinded) missions that took pictures of Saturn and Jupiter when I was a child (and which now, year after year, scramble for funding lest they be shut off). It’s Hubble, the mission that brought the wonder and majesty of the universe to the ordinary person.

Dave Scott’s words resonate with me - I want my children to explore, to learn. It’s innocuous things like Steven learning to be a father with Kai, Malinda attending classes in Chemical Engineering, or Alex learning how to test a theory on Myth Busters. I want to learn as well - a day where I go to bed knowing a bit more than I did when I woke up is a good day.

Now the confessional part of the post. I unfortunately read this too late to send my own letter along to NASA - I’m aggregating this feed through bloglines, and with everything going on at work and home I haven’t had time to keep on my reading as I like to. However, I do urge everyone to visit the sites linked in here to learn a little, and maybe to take an active interest in this debate - NASA is paid for by our taxes, so we should make sure that their actions and direction are in line with what we want.