In Memory Of My Brother

2 years ago today my brother, my bothers’ brother, my mother’s son and my children’s and nephew’s uncle died.

There’s no way to express my feeling about this so I am going to post the speech I wrote for his funeral.

“Paul Arthur Rocks – An Epitaph
James Rocks
Tuesday 20^th October 2007

Like our Dad Paul had strong views and frequently engaged in “loud discussions” with others over them. Many a Christmas was spent in the local hostelry with Dad, Paul, Sean & Grandad discussing politics and me and Mike making inane quips from the sidelines. Paul always expressed his views strongly, always genuinely believing he was right and would try to persuade others of his views with enthusiasm, throwing at them point after point in an effort to drive his views to the fore, selling his views almost as if he were selling the latest technological innovation.

There were times he would deliberately pick arguments and stances that would challenge so much that he could drive you up the wall, round the corner and down the street. But no one, no one could ever stay mad at Paul for long and, as many have kindly said since his death, he was charming, dynamic, witty, compulsive, wore a genuine smile that is hard to describe and had an infectious laugh best heard just before the punch-line of his latest joke or story. He could (and did) disarm others almost immediately and any issue that person had with him would be forgotten in minutes … I was no exception to that. I often sought his approval and that is something (a talent if you like) I envied about him, something I am at a loss to explain.

One of my fondest memories of him was when we, his brothers, met him in a London hostelry. Paul was last to arrive (as always) and did so with his hair tied back, wearing a long dark mafia-style coat, walked straight up to us stuck out his hand (upon which he wore a ring) and, with a hint of laughter, said, “You may kiss the hand of The Don” … we collapsed in hysterics. My last memory, the one I think I will cherish the most, is after a drink we had a few weeks ago; Paul was last to arrive (as always), the “loud discussion” had started and, for whatever reason, there was more than a hint of acrimony as we parted but for no reason I can remember I called Paul late at night when I was near my home … I sat for about 15 minutes on a wall outside my house chatting to him, him telling me how much he valued me as a brother and how much he loved me.

It would be easy to be sad, it’s hard to imagine never seeing the dynamo that was Paul again but I know he’d want us to remember him as the person he was, to delight in the life he had and not drown ourselves in sorrow at his loss. He would want us to get up and get on with our lives with no more than a hint of wistful regret that he is no longer part of it.

Paul, you were/are my brother and I will miss you, you loved your family so very much and I only have one thing to say to you, “Right back at ya Bruv, right back at ya!”"

Paul, you we’re a major pain in the arse, but you were OUR pain in the arse … I miss you, I remember you with the deepest affection and I and will always love the person you were.

In Memory & With Love.

Your brother, James
Kyuuketsuki, Angry Atheism

Why I Gave Up Donating Via eBay/MissionFish

I’m an enthusiastic eBayer I buy and sell stuff all the time on it … it’s one of the few ways I can keep my computers up-to-date because I don’t earn a great deal and all of that goes to keeping us in a house, food, bills and a daughter in university.  I’m also a humanist and like to donate money to charities I consider worthwhile … one of these is the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (RDF) so you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that eBay had a charity facility awesome, now I could earn money to buy myself AND I could put money into something worthwhile.

Sure like every other seller I resent the fees eBay charges but more than that I get pissed when they screw up or do things badly. So the first problem I had was that when I created my charity account I couldn’t access it … I contacted MissionFish (the company that handled the charity arrangements) and they said it was eBay’s responsibility. So I contacted eBay and they said (you guessed it) it was MissionFish’s responsibility but that wasn’t what really bugged me (though it became relevant). My second problem was that the donation took no account of profit so I was being charged on my total money gained BEFORE eBay took the fees and that meant that in some situations (typically for smaller items) I could end up paying more out that I actually got back.

Being me, wanting to buy computer stuff with my hard earned cash, the first thing I wanted to do once I was sure the buyer was happy was spend it … but MissionFish have a setup rather like Direct Debit and took the money at a time of their choosing sometime in the next 30 days or so, without access to my charity account, I had to keep track of charity donations (which ones had and which ones had not been paid) and this was largely beyond my organisational abilities. It came to a head when I forgot I had a charity payment to be taken and was smacked by eBay bills and I didn’t have sufficient funds in PayPal to cover it so not only did  I no longer have any funds to play with the next thing PayPal dowse is take it from your credit card … so, in my attempt to try and be slightly philanthropic I ended up in debt … result!

So I have given up using eBay/MissionFish as my charity donation mechanism and now directly advertise on eBay sales that I will give a percentage of my profits (once I know them) to RDF … this means I can easily manage when I pay my donations and even means I can donate more to RDF because I know what I am spending is exactly what I am spending and goes exactly when I want it to.

Sorry eBay/MissionFish … nice try but it just didn’t work for me.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

CFI: A Time For Reason

Center For Inquiry have just released this video:

In my opinion this is one of the simplest, most moving and most inspiring videos I have seen for a very, very long time!

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

NY Times: Put A Little Science In Your Life

I saw a link to this article and felt it said what I wanted to say about why I continue to be an atheist much better than I could:

Put a Little Science in Your Life

BRIAN GREENE
June 1, 2008

A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.

But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.

Allow me a moment to explain.

When we consider the ubiquity of cellphones, iPods, personal computers and the Internet, it’s easy to see how science (and the technology to which it leads) is woven into the fabric of our day-to-day activities. When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives. When we assess the state of the world, and identify looming challenges like climate change, global pandemics, security threats and diminishing resources, we don’t hesitate in turning to science to gauge the problems and find solutions.

And when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon — stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, space technology — we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues; there’s simply no other way that as a society we will be prepared to make informed decisions on a range of issues that will shape the future.

These are the standard — and enormously important — reasons many would give in explaining why science matters.

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

[Read The Rest Of The Article Here]

Despite some people’s ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of such things science matters, science not only explains things, it affects social progress, it enables communication and so much more … without science I believe we would still be in dark ages under the dominion of tyrannical religious organisations, more slave than anything else.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

Why Darwin Matters!

I just caught site of this on:The Guardian online!

Richard Dawkins introduces a remarkable 34-page celebration of the book that changed the world, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, FREE with tomorrow’s edition of the Guardian

The Guardian, Friday February 8 2008

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious that although others before him tinkered nearby, nobody thought to look for it in the right place.

Darwin had plenty of other good ideas – for example his ingenious and largely correct theory of how coral reefs form – but it is his big idea of natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense. Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must.

Natural selection’s explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could, even in principle, explain life on any planet. If life exists elsewhere in the universe – and my tentative bet is that it does – some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence. Darwin’s theory works equally well no matter how strange and alien and weird that extraterrestrial life may be – and my tentative bet is that it will be weird beyond imagining.

Explanation ratio

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory “heavy lifting”, while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio – what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining – is large.

If any reader knows of an idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin’s, let’s hear it. Darwin’s big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity. That’s the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin’s own).

You can pare Darwin’s big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin’s): “Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.” I have put “which occasionally miscopy” in brackets because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don’t need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational “bucks” are provided free. “Given sufficient time” is not a problem either – except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time.

[Read More Here]

A free book on evolution written by Dawkins? I think I will be getting my copy of The Guardian tomorrow.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

PETITION: Afghanistan Execution!

So OK … we invaded Afghanistan ostensibly to remove a fundamentalist regime and for what?

From “The Independent”:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. The UN, human rights groups, journalists’ organisations and Western diplomats have urged Mr Karzai’s government to intervene and free him. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence.

You can read more here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-afghan-who-dared-to-read-about-womens-rights-775972.html

You can sign the petition here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/article775954.ece

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

Open Letter To The Commissioner of Education for Texas

Originally posted by Sandy at SJS:

Source: Open Letter To The Commissioner of Education for Texas

To Robert Scott, Commissioner of Education for Texas,

As biology faculty at Texas universities1, we are deeply concerned by the forced resignation of Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Ms. Comer’s ouster was linked to an email that she forwarded announcing a lecture by Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor and distinguished critic of the intelligent design movement. A few days after sending the email, Ms. Comer was told she would be terminated. The memorandum she received from her superiors claimed that evolution and intelligent design are a “subject on which the agency must remain neutral”.

It is inappropriate to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject, any more than astronomy teachers should “remain neutral” about whether the Earth goes around the sun. In the world of science, evolution is equally well supported and accepted as heliocentrism. Far from remaining neutral, it is the clear duty of the science staff at TEA and all other Texas educators to speak out unequivocally: evolution is a central pillar in any modern science education, while “intelligent design” is a religious idea that deserves no place in the science classroom at all.

A massive body of scientific evidence supports evolution. All working scientists agree that publication in top peer-reviewed journals is the scoreboard of modern science. A quick database search of scientific publications since 1975 shows 29,639 peer reviewed scientific papers on evolution in twelve leading journals alone2. To put this in perspective, if you read 5 papers a day, every day, it would take you 16 years to read this body of original research. These tens of thousands of research papers on evolution provide overwhelming support for the common ancestry of living organisms and for the mechanisms of evolution including natural selection. In contrast, a search of the same database for “Intelligent Design” finds a mere 24 articles, every one of which is critical of intelligent design3. Given that evolution currently has a score of 29,639– while “intelligent design” has a score of exactly zero– it is absurd to expect the TEA’s director of science curriculum to “remain neutral” on this subject. In recognition of the overwhelming scientific support for evolution, evolution is taught without qualification– and intelligent design is omitted– at every secular and most sectarian universities in this country, including Baylor (Baptist), Notre Dame (Catholic), Texas Christian (Disciples of Christ) and Brigham Young (Mormon).

Evolution education is more than an academic question. Biotechnology is a key player in our economy, and biotech firms move to places with well trained biologists.

Evolutionary biology has made fundamental contributions to drug synthesis, medical genetics, and our understanding of the origins and dynamics of diseases. Principles of evolution are at the basis of human genomics and personalized medicine and are applied daily by people working in medicine, agriculture, engineering, and pharmaceuticals. In contrast, anti-evolutionary ideas like intelligent design have yet to produce any medical or technological advances.

Even if the scientific evidence were not so one-sided, there remains the fact that intelligent design is a religious concept. In the 2004 court case Kitzmiller vs. Dover, Judge John E. Jones III (an appointee of President Bush) concluded that “not one defence expert was able to explain how the supernatural action suggested by ID [intelligent design] could be anything other than an inherently religious proposition” and that the school board was trying to present “students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory.” Teaching intelligent design in public school science classes clearly violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, as emphasized in the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard. The Texas Education Agency has a constitutional duty to keep intelligent design out of public school science classes, and leave religious instruction of children to their parents.

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Judge Jones concluded that the school board exhibited “breathtaking inanity” when it tried to adopt “an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.” The TEA appears to be flirting with an equally unsupportable policy. There can be no neutrality on an issue that is scientifically and legally clear-cut:

Evolution should be taught at the K-12 level in the same fashion that we teach it in universities, an accepted and rigorous science, not juxtaposed with a religious idea however politically popular. The agency should work to bolster evolution education in Texas rather than undermining it.

Sincerely,

• Dr. Daniel Bolnick, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. David Hillis, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Sahotra Sarkar, Professor of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Dick Richardson, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Hans Hofmann, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Kirk Winemiller, Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M
• Dr. Eric Pianka, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Ken Whitney, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Michael Singer, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Claus Wilke, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Darryl de Ruiter, Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Bill Murphy, Associate Professor of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M
• Dr. Volker Rudolf, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Anja Schulze, Assistant Professor of Marine Biology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Sharon Gursky, Associate Professor of Physical Anthropology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Thom DeWitt, Associate Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M
• Dr. Jennifer Rudgers, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. David Queller, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Gil Rosenthal, Assistant Professor of Biology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Fran Gelwick, Associate Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M
• Dr. Christopher Marshall, Assistant Professor of Marine Biology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Jose Panero, Associate Professor of Botany, UT Austin
• Dr. Bradford Wilcox, Professor of Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M
• Dr. Martin Terry, Assistant Professor of Biology, Sul Ross State U.
• Dr. Caitlin Gabor, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Yousif Shamoo, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Susan Schwinning, Assistant Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Mathew Leibold, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Amy Dunham, Research Faculty of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Dean Hendrickson, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Elizabeth Erhart, Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Kerrie Lewis, Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Claud Bramblett, Professor Emeritus of Physical Anthropology, UT Austin
• Dr. Jim Woolley, Professor of Entomology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Michelle Hamilton, Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Michael Huston, Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Christine Hawkes, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Richard Gomer, Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Andrew Aspbury, Senior Lecturer, Texas State U.
• Dr. Molly Cummings, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Daniel Wagner, Assistant Professor, Rice U.
• Dr. Ronald Parry, Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Ira Greenbaum, Professor of Biology, Texas A&M
• Dr. Robert Edwards, Professor of Biology, UT Pan American
• Dr. David Crews, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Tom Juenger, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Beryl Simpson, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Mike Ryan, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Randy Linder, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Ryan King, Assistant Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. Michael Stern, Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice U.
• Dr. Liza Shapiro, Professor of Physical Anthropology, UT Austin
• Dr. Tony Frankino, Assistant Professor of Biology & Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Ricardo Azevedo, Assistant Professor of Biology & Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Richard Strauss, Professor of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University
• Dr. Steve Pennings, Associate Professor of Biology and Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Diane Wiernasz, Associate Professor of Biology and Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Blaine Cole, Professor of Biology and Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Tom Waller, Regents Professor of Biology, U. North Texas
• Dr. James Grover, Professor of Biology, UT Arlington
• Dr. Owen Lind, Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. Lee Hughes. Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, U. North Texas
• Dr. Brad Keele, Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Baylor U.
• Dr. Rebecca Dickstein, Professor of Biological Sciences, U. North Texas
• Dr. Pamela Padilla, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, U. North Texas
• Dr. Robert Baldridge, Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. Mark McGinley, Associate Professor of Biological Scienes, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Joseph White, Associate Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. Darrel Vodopich, Assistant Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. David Cannatella, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Andy Ellington, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Terry Maxwell, Professor of Biology, Angelo State University
• Dr. Basset Maguire, Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Jill Nugent, Instructor, Biological Sciences, U. North Texas.
• Dr. Nathan Collie, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Deborah Carr, Research Associate, Department of Physiology, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Jim Carr, Professor of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Gad Perry, Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Management, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Frederick Gehlbach, Research Professor of Biology, Baylor U.
• Dr. Bryan Brooks, Associate Professor of Biomedical Studies, Baylor U.
• Dr. Ernest Lundelius, Professor Emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology, UT Austin
• Dr. Denné Reed, Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology, UT Austin
• Dr. Larry Gilbert, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Garland Upchurch, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Rasika Harshey, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Makkuni Jayaram, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Richard Aldrich, Professor of Neurobiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Jackie Dudley, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Harold Zakon, Professor of Neurobiology, UT Austin
• Dr. John Sisson, Associate Professor of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Chris Nice, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Andrew Gore, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, UT Austin
• Dr. Alan Lloyd, Associate Professor of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Edward Marcotte, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UT Austin
• Dr. Arturo De Lozanne, Associate Professor of Molecular Cell & Developmental
• Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Tanya Paull, Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Jeff Gross, Assistant Professor of Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Tigga Kingston, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Robert Krug, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Kenneth Kohnson, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UT Austin
• Dr. Jon Robertus, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UT Austin
• Dr. JoAnn Hunter Johnson, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Cellular and
• Molecular Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Paul. Szaniszlo, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Arlen Johnson, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Nigel Atkinson, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Vichy Iyer, Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Dave Stein, Associate Professor of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Clarence Chan, Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Lauren Meyers, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Marvine Whiteley, Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Julie Westerlund, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas State U.
• Dr. Cornelia Winguth, Faculty Research Associate in Earth and Environmental Science, UT Arlington
• Dr. John Wickham, Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, UT Arlington
• Dr. Arne Winguth, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, UT Arlington
• Dr. Mikhail Matz, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Arjang Hassibi, Assistant Professor, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology UT Austin
• Dr. Rebecca Zufall, Assistant Professor of Biology and Biochemistry, U. Houston
• Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Malcom Brown, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, UT Austin
• Dr. Michael Dini, Associate Professor of Biology, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. Klaus Kalthoff, Professor of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Dennis Sawyer, Faculty Adjunct in Biology, Midland College
• Dr. Diane Post, Professor of Biology, University of Texas – Permian Basin
• Dr. Steve Levene, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Larry Reitzer, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Santosh D’Mello, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Gail Breen, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Robert Marsh, Senior Lecturer in Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Vincent Crillo, Senior Lecturer in Molecular and Cell Biology, UT Dallas
• Dr. Doug Henry, Professor of Physical Anthropology, U. North Texas
• Dr. Homer Montgomery, Associate Professor in Science and Math Education, UT Dallas
• Dr. Sean Rice, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech U.
• Dr. David Ribble, Professor of Biology, Trinity University
• Dr. Frank Bronson, Professor of Integrative Biology, UT Austin
• Dr. Dean Appling, Professor of Biochemistry, UT Austin

135 Signatures as of Dec 14, 2007

1. The opinions expressed in this letter are not necessarily those of our Universities, but rather our own professional opinions as Ph.D. biologists.
2. Counting all articles in the following journals devoted exclusively to evolutionary topics: Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Systematic Biology, Evolutionary Ecology Research, Evolutionary Ecology, American Naturalist, and counting articles in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the Royal Society, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that have ‘Evolution’ in the title or abstract. By restricting the search to these few journals and the short time-span (since 1975), we are likely to vastly underestimate the number of research papers on evolution, which is probably several times higher than what we found here.
3. A search for “Intelligent Design” in the same journals listed above finds one article, which is critical of intelligent design. Opening the search to all indexed scientific journals (to be generous to ID), one finds 410 articles in all, most of which are irrelevant to biology, focusing on engineering or computer science. Restricting the search to “Biology and Intelligent Design” yields 24 papers, all critical of intelligent design.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

Science Strikes Back At The Newspaper That Kills Children

I have to say I have, for a very long time, despised the Daily Mail, viewing it as a cheap-arsed right-wing Tory rag.

This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations
Johann Hari

It’s rare a newspaper actually manages to kill people, but Sir David King believes the Daily Mail may pull it off.

I want to tell you three interconnected stories. The first is some of the best news you will hear all year; the last two are some of the saddest. But they are all about how science saves tens of millions of lives, and how the persistence of faith-based thinking kills – not just in the distant witch-burning past, but today, across the world and, yes, even in Britain.

When I first went to central Africa, I met a woman exactly the same age as me called Marie Abawede who had given birth to four children out in the rainforests. The first three had all died – of measles. Her last baby was sick, and she was convinced he had “the killer” too. “If he dies, I will die,” she said, plainly, without tears. In the year 2000, there were 396,000 women like this in Africa, watching their babies waste away pointlessly. Today, the figure has fallen by an incredible 90 percent. There are only 36,000 such women today, and there will be fewer next year, and the next year, and the next year.

This is because of pure science, combined with political will. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has used funds donated by governments across the world – including ours – to massively ramp up measles vaccinations across Africa, which cost just $1 a dose. It has worked. Vaccinations are perhaps the greatest achievement of humanity: using this scientific tool, we have literally eradicated Smallpox – a disease that caused hundreds of millions of people to die in howling agony – from the human condition. It will never kill another person, ever. That’s why the economist Jeffrey Sachs has called vaccines “Weapons of Mass Salvation”.

So whenever somebody tells you science is “cold” or “soulless”, and needs the “meaning” offered in religious texts, think of Marie. All the major religious texts say explicitly that disease is caused by demons and devils. Following this mentality left her babies to die. But using science instead – sticking to empirical observation of the world, and inferences from it based on reason – is saving millions of children, and giving them a chance at life once more. I can’t think of anything less “cold” or “soulless” than that.

But today, some of the followers of faith-based thinking are waging a global war on vaccinations. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the WHO’s vaccination programme was on the brink of sending polio to the graveyard of dead diseases. The disease leaves its victims permanently paralysed in various parts of their body: there is a brilliant account of what it is like in my colleague Patrick Cockburn’s autobiographical book ‘The Broken Boy.’ But it had been chased down to a handful of remaining areas, which were being rapidly vaccinated. It was almost over, forever.

And then the local Mullahs heard about it. The Islamic clerical elite in northern Nigeria announced that God had revealed to them that the vaccine was “un-Islamic”, part of an evil plot by the godless West to sterilise Muslim children. The local population, with no alternative sources of information, stopped sending their kids. Now polio is back with a vengeance, and we may never wipe it out. In a clash between reason and revelation, revelation won out – and as a direct result, millions of innocent people will be horribly paralysed and die.

But before we get smug and conclude this is a cultural gap between us and Those Damn Muslims, remember – in Britain, over the past five years, there has been a smaller but strikingly similar home-grown jihad against vaccinations. It has been waged by none other than the Daily Mail.

In 2000, the Daily Mail decided – in the absence of any reliable scientific evidence whatsoever – to give wildly undue prominence to the idea that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism. Every reputable scientist in the country explained, patiently, that the sole scientist making these claims – Dr Andrew Wakefield – didn’t have any reliable evidence at all to back him up. He had looked at only twelve autistic children whose parents all fervently blamed MMR – thus skewing his results irreparably. Instead, Britain’s scientific community pointed to reams of studies showing conclusively that MMR is not to blame: a study of 1.8 million randomly-chosen children in Finland (as opposed to Wakefield’s hand-picked 12) found that autism rates remained the same after the introduction of MMR.

But the Mail continued anyway, even after Wakefield was indicted before the General Medical Council, and it was – disgracefully – mimicked by other newspapers and by the BBC. Panicked parents assumed that, since it was on the news, there must some evidence for it, and in several areas vaccination rates have fallen by 30 percent. The result? Britain’s chief scientist, Sir David King, warned last week that it is now probable fifty to one hundred kids will die of measles because of the disinformation campaign spearheaded by the Mail. It’s rare a newspaper actually manages to kill people, but Sir David King believes they may pull it off.

Was the Mail’s campaign based on faith-based thinking, like the campaign in Northern Nigeria? I think it can be shown that it was. Let’s look at the figure within the newspaper who spearheaded the MMR campaign: Melanie Phillips. Despite having no scientific qualifications, and despite making the most elementary scientific howlers time and again in her articles, she feels free to announce that virtually all the world’s scientists are wrong, on everything from global warming to MMR.

But why was she so certain the MMR campaign should be stopped? Phillips presented her argument as if she was simply siding with one scientist against another. But in reality, she disputes on religious grounds the very basis of vaccinations: evolution. She says that creationism should be taught in schools, and that evolution is “only a theory.” So it’s no wonder she is so hostile to (and ignorant of) vaccination science. Vaccines only work because we can observe evolution, live, as it happens. Take the flu virus. It is constantly changing – you can watch it under a microscope. That’s why you need a booster shot every year: because the virus has evolved. That’s why a vaccine against the 1918 flu virus would be radically different to a vaccine the 2007 flu virus: it has evolved. Yet when Professor Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, pointed out this elementary scientific truth, she accused him of seizing any sneaky opportunity to “beat the drum for Darwin” and for claiming “there was no intelligent design in a virus, only the mindless force of natural selection.”

Let me get this right: Phillips actually believes God personally tweaks the flu virus every year, just to keep it ahead of the vaccinators? What sort of sadist-deity does she follow? And why did newspapers and the BBC mimic her anti-scientific ravings? From this species of ignorance has flowed the serious risk of children dying, according to – remember – our chief scientist.

There have always been people who responded to life-saving scientific advances with peasant superstition and mutterings about the Almighty. For the sake of all that is good and un-Holy, it seems they still need to be resisted – from the deserts of Northern Nigeria to the hills of North London

Source: RichardDawkins.Net: This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Unfortunately my mother reads the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Daily Mail (or at least it’s Sunday equivalent)!

EDIT: More about this frankly appalling Daily Mail columnist here:

Buying Complacency
The trade in “carbon offsets” is based on bogus accounting
George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 17th January 2006

Sometimes I envy the self-belief of the Daily Mail’s columnist Melanie Phillips. When Andrew Wakefield, a researcher at the Royal Free Hospital, suggested that there might be a link between autism and the MMR injection, she decided he was right. Despite the failure of further studies to find any evidence, despite the fact that Wakefield’s co-researchers have dissociated themselves from his allegation, though the medical profession, almost without exception, is persuaded that his claim has no merit, she persists. The epidemiologists are guilty of “category confusion”; the scientific reviewers are throwing up “clouds of obfuscation”; her critics are peddlers of “ignorance, misrepresentation and smear.”

She’s just as sure of her position on climate change. Last year she told listeners to the Moral Maze that manmade climate change “is a massive scam based on flawed computer modelling, bad science and an anti-western ideology … a pack of lies and propaganda.” Soon afterwards, the Royal Society published a “guide to facts and fictions about climate change”, whose purpose was to address the arguments made by people like her. It destroyed all the claims she had been making. A few months later, the deniers’ last argument fell away, as three studies showed that satellite data suggesting the atmosphere had cooled were faulty. New Scientist reported that “as nails in the coffin go, they don’t get much bigger”.

But nothing can stop her. Last week she resumed the attack. Man-made climate change is “one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern age”, an artefact of “ideology, irrationality and pseudoscientific sloppiness.” “The rate of warming over the past century,” she claimed, “is nothing out of the historical ordinary.” We also learnt that “most of [the atmosphere] consists of water vapour”: the climatologists must have been lying about that too.

As usual, the scientists have the science wrong, and only Melanie Phillips, autodidact professor of epidemiology, gastroenterology, meteorology and atmospheric physics, can put them right. Where does she get it from? How do you acquire such confidence in your own rectitude that neither the evidence itself, nor the Royal Society, nor the combined weight of the major scientific journals can alter by a whisker the line you have taken? Are you born knowing you have prophetic powers: that everything you believe is and will forever be true? Or does it come with experience? If so, what might that experience be?

The occasion for her latest outburst was a study published last week in Nature, which showed, to everyone’s astonishment, that plants produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Phillips used the findings to suggest that the entire science of global warming has been disproved, and that there is no need to worry about the biosphere. Nature came to the opposite conclusion: as methane emissions from plants rise with temperature, climate change will cause further climate change.[/quote]

Read the entire article here: Buying Complacency

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

SHOUTWIRE: Religious Rant

A fun read

Religion Rears Its Foul Head Yet Again…
Xxoozero (Shoutwire)

I believe religion is nothing but a crock of shit. It has monkey-wrenched its way into every facet of society and mocks common sense with its evil, unyielding, strangely homosexual looking grin. I have to see it everywhere I go. I’m sick of it and I want it to die.

I’m not saying I hate religious people. I have no problem with people believing whatever they want to. My beef is having it pushed on me. I hate being approached on the street and asked “Have you heard about Jesus?” Man… who hasn’t heard about Jesus? He has been saturating the “holy prophet” market with his propaganda for the last 2,000 years. I’m pretty sure I already know the story.

No… but they insist upon telling it again. The son of god gets owned by the Romans… blah… blah… blah… Then out of nowhere I’m told I’m going to hell if I don’t close my eyes and hope really hard that this dude forgives me for some shit I did that I didn’t even know about.

This Jesus fellow demands my allegiance. He wants nothing less than my very soul. I begin to think to myself “What the fuck did I do to this Jesus guy to make him want to fuck with me?” I start to think back… nothing comes to mind. My hands start sweating and I grab the guy by his collar… “What the fuck did I do, man?! Why?!”

“You were born.” He replies. I was what? Born? Wow. I never thought that would be the thing that did me in. Of all the things to get fucked over by… being born. Shit, I didn’t even get to choose that one. Then I begin to think about it and realize that is a bullshit excuse and this guy wants something from me.

“What are you selling?” I demand in a strict tone. “I’ll buy it if you promise to go away and call off this Jesus fellow.” Despite my offer he refuses to produce a product. He doesn’t want my money. Instead, he wants me to be saved by Jesus.

I regrettably decline his offer, explaining my memory card is already full with my other saved games. I really don’t want to buy another memory card because the platform is becoming outdated, so this just really isn’t the right time for me to commit to such a purchase.

Ah… but he is clever! “Jesus doesn’t need a memory card,” he claims. “Bullshit!” I cry! “Does he have a pre installed hard drive?”

The guy looks at me like I’m shit nuts. “Jesus… doesn’t need a… um… pre installed hard drive?”

This is purely and simply crazy talk. Everyone needs a preinstalled hard drive or you can not get on the internet. I mean, sure, you do need a lot of other stuff. A monitor, keyboard, mouse, and everything in the box… but I’m sure he could get that cheap at newegg.com.

Surely this Jesus fellow isn’t too good for Newegg. “Bullshit!” I cry again and punch the guy in the arm. He looked startled at first but then he turned and said “Punch me in the other arm.”

“Why… did you not learn your lesson?” I replied. He proceeded to explain that this Jesus fellow taught that if someone punched you in your right cheek, you should turn and let him hit your left as well.

I was confused. I had punched him in the arm, not the cheek. Did he want me to punch him in the cheek? I had no choice but to swing, just as he had no choice but to run away afterwards. Frankly, he was starting to scare me anyways.

It is not just the Christians. Islam is a pretty wicked religion in itself. They will punch you back. Not only that, but any writer who speaks ill of them risks a torturous murder. Well… take aim, extremist scum, because there is no way I am leaving you out of this one…

First of all, what kind of a religion doesn’t eat pork? That’s just missing out on the goodness. Why would a person do that to themselves? The best meat I have ever tasted was a slow roasted pig. To chew it was to know true love…

Now… I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. I’m going to let them off on the whole terrorist thing. To be fair, Islam doesn’t teach terrorism or suicide bombings or any of the other rhetoric you hear on the idiot box. Sick fucks teach that stuff, not religious people. (Authors Note: maybe an oxymoron?)

But I digress… back to bashing Islam. The problem with the majority of the followers is they make it publicly known they are Muslims. They always want some special type of shit everywhere they go to accommodate their religious beliefs. Asking for special time off to pray, which strangely looks like napping…? I wish atheists had it so good…

Speaking of religions who tend to impose their beliefs on others, Judaism is no better. What they are doing to the Palestinians is criminal. Of course there is going to be tension. They have absolutely no reason to wonder why random attacks are so prevalent. The civil thing to do would be to provide the Palestinians with their own land and help them form a proper government. It seems Israel would rather blow them to pieces than show a little neighbourly support.

Before you start to bitch that Israel is a country and not a religion, they are the only Jewish state in the world; there actions reflect their beliefs just as much as the Vatican represents Catholicism.

Speaking of the largest undercover gang of hoodlums in history, what the hell is up with so many of them touching little boys? A small number of instances could have been written off as a coincidence… but the volume such as we have seen cannot be explained off so simply. Maybe it’s all the half naked statues of Jesus combined with children following him around everywhere and the central idea of being more “Christ-like”.

Also, why do they worship in such scary places? In my book, nothing is more frightening than a Catholic church after sunset. Fucking dead Jesus’s everywhere all bloody stuck forever crying out for help that will never come… those places are downright morbid. It seems a priest is always hiding in the shadows watching your every move. After the previous paragraph, that is one fucking scary thought.

Now, before I even start on Buddhists, let me just say I respect their religion. They seem to be the most peaceful of the bunch. That doesn’t mean they aren’t condescending and sarcastic bastards though.

All the Buddhist parables I have read centre around one concept: owning the other guy with your superior knowledge of the art of sarcasm. Someone always has to be made out as the dumbass. Plus, how did the Buddha get so fat if he was fasting all the damn time? Something about that whole story is mighty fishy…

Hindus don’t eat beef. What the fuck? That is all I have to say about that. I refuse to dignify such a heinous act with any more words.

Scientology can suck a big fat cock. It is not a religion; it is a bunch of swindlers involved in a dead science fiction writers shoddily put together pyramid scheme. Guys like John Travolta and Tom Cruise should be ashamed of their idiocy and outright dishonour in involving themselves in such a fraud. They are already rich; they should have no need to prey on the limited funds of others. The rottenest of the rotten those two are…

Scientology does have one thing going for it though; they have yet to cause a war. Not on Earth. They are waiting for some kind of intergalactic fire fight to start; aiming mighty high. Fucking geniuses, those guys are. I bet they dress up in Star Trek uniforms and rape teddy bears when no one is looking…

You may think I am being harsh on them because they are famous… no. I really think these people are shit nuts. What the fuck is a Xenu? Why do they stress that they can help make you a better person? I am satisfied being a jackass. More people should be like me. Fuck scientology for working against my kind!

On the other hand, you have the far eastern religions of Confucism and Taoism. These seem to be the most level headed on the surface. However, when you look at the history of the regions represented by them, you find thousands of years of warfare. These days you also find communism. As communism is an atheist-based government, could atheism be the ultimate product of the most sensible religions?

No. Atheism is fucking stupid too. Boring as well. At least the others give you something to look forward to… some kind of afterlife. It is almost like a jip. This is all you get or will ever know, life sucks, there is no meaning, and when you perish you are gone forever. That’s it. No real selling points at all; except it is the most logical solution.

On the upside, atheists do have the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It started as a way to mock religions over their wild and fantastic beliefs. I believe this is most likely the way all religions started and one day people will totally take the joke seriously. It is scary to think that 2,000 years from now Vatican City may be populated by the secret alliance of the Spaghetti counsel. Though I doubt they could do a worse job than the Nazi who lives there now…

I have come to the conclusion that any and all talk of what happens after you die is a waste of time. We will all find out eventually, there is no need to argue about it until we are all a bit more well-informed on the subject. In other words… to die is the only way to find out for sure. I’m sure after reading these last few paragraphs there are some folks out there who would like to help me along on my own journey upon this earth. Before you load up your M-16 and kiss your family goodbye one last time, hear me out…

All religions have good points and bad points. The belief part ruins everything. It turns humans against each other. The perfect idea of religion would be to let folks study them all and take out of each what they like without adhering to one doctrine. A mix and match sort of thing so everyone is different. That way everyone gets what they want and no one fights.

Abolishing religion, while a nice idea, would never work. Some people need it so as to not be threats to society. It keeps them on track and not out killing folks. Don’t get me wrong; if we would have done it in the beginning it might have worked. But religion has its clutches too deep in society’s skin. It couldn’t be removed now without a lot of bleeding. It is a curse we just can’t get rid of. All we can do is sit back, sigh, and let the prerequisite “dammit” flow from between our lips as we realize we have been screwed by our ancestors and there is not a thing we can do about it.

Religion should be marginalized. It should be treated as importantly as a clan affiliation in that damn World of WarCrack video game everyone plays these days. It should never be brought up amongst public conversations with decent people in real life. Have your religion, I say, as long as you recognize the fact that no one cares what your cockamamie ideas are and you have the good sense to keep them locked behind the closed doors of your house and not posted on billboards all over the motherfucking god damn place.

Still want to shoot me? Yeah… those last few paragraphs didn’t exactly exonerate me. I’m not really good at that sort of thing. I’m more of a provoking type.

What I wrote above does not include everyone who is religious. The majority of people involved in all the aforementioned religions (except Scientology) are generally good folks who only have the best of intentions in mind. They don’t take their texts literally and just resolve to live a nice and decent life. This is nice, because they aren’t out trying to steal my car stereo. Or sending me shoddily written emails claiming to be the prince of Uganda offering me a fortune for my personal information and $40 in transfer fees.

Fuck you Ali Ibrahim. One day I will find you and piss in your fridge.

I’ll bet he is a god damn Scientologist…

[Read The Full Article Here]

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

Why Real Scientists Scoff At William Dembski

This is so, so true!

Why real scientists scoff at William Dembski
Daniel Dickson-LaPrade

I first heard of Philip Gingerich while looking up “Whale Evolution” on Wikipedia. Gingerich is a professor at the University of Michigan, and he directs its Museum of Paleontology.

Anti-evolutionists like William Dembski contend that there are few if any “transitional fossils” which show evolution in action.

Thanks in part to Gingerich’s work, whale evolution provides one excellent refutation of this claim.

There are, in fact, over half a dozen species of extinct whale ancestors — many with their own Wikipedia entries — showing a clear development from prehistoric land-dwelling carnivores to today’s whales and dolphins. Two of these were co-discovered by Gingerich.

Don’t take my word for it, of course. Just look up “Whale Evolution” yourself, but don’t bother looking up “Philip Gingerich.”

You see, unlike the extinct animals which he discovered, Gingerich does not have his own Wikipedia entry.

William Dembski, on the other hand, does.

Do you know why real scientists scoff at intelligent design advocates like Dembski? He and his cronies want the scientific prestige, the awards and the Wikipedia entries without doing the necessary hard work.

For example, add up all the articles supporting intelligent design that have ever been published in peer-reviewed science journals.

Even according to the most bloated and unlikely estimates of this total, Philip Gingerich alone has published more peer-reviewed journal articles within the same time period.

While Dembski was still in college, Philip Gingerich was digging fossils out of the ground in Pakistan.

While Dembski was helping Ann Coulter write a book arguing there are no transitional fossils, Gingerich was painstakingly measuring those fossils bone-by-bone.

The theory of evolution is complicated and superficially taught in public schools.

Doubts are reasonable.

Before running to slackers like William Dembski for an alternative, however, look at the evidence of evolution for yourself, either online at Web sites like Talkorigins.org or in person at our excellent natural history museum.

Given the toil that went into amassing this evidence, the least we can do is examine it impartially.

You can read the whole article here: Why Real Scientists Scoff At William Dembski

Well said that man!

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)