Recent Posts
3) I suggest starting a thread (in the basement would be a good bet) to discuss, but FWIW I really dont think it's worth persuing...-tomos (February 09, 2015, 12:39 PM)
In the wake of of a comment like that I hardly feel like discussing this much more either. Later!
-40hz (February 09, 2015, 12:50 PM)
just in case: I didnt mean that personally against you or your views. I just think it's a topic that's with a high probability going to end up in the basement anyways.
(A bit rich of me though, to make those points you quoted, just after having written about the topic myself...)-tomos (February 09, 2015, 01:28 PM)
...We knew this already; we knew it two years ago when Fox published its misguided piece. But our knowledge hasn't stopped Booker from writing two columns using hyped terms like "scandal" and claiming the public's being "tricked by flawed data on global warming.” All of this based on a few posts by a blogger who has gone around cherry picking a handful of temperature stations and claiming the adjustments have led to a warming bias.
Why would Booker latch on to this without first talking to someone with actual expertise in temperature records? A quick look at his Wikipedia entry shows that he has a lot of issues with science in general, claiming that things like asbestos and second-hand smoke are harmless, and arguing against evolution. So, this sort of immunity to well-established evidence seems to be a recurring theme in his writing...
3) I suggest starting a thread (in the basement would be a good bet) to discuss, but FWIW I really dont think it's worth persuing...-tomos (February 09, 2015, 12:39 PM)
What everyone gets wrong about anti-vaccine parents
We told them this would happen.
We told them that it was only a matter of time before a childhood disease that had nearly been eliminated from the US would come roaring back if they failed to vaccinate their children. And that’s precisely what has happened. Measles has come roaring back, but not simply because a child incubating measles visited Disneyland.
Twenty years ago, if the same child had visited Disneyland, the measles would have stopped with him or her. Everyone else was protected — not because everyone was vaccinated — but because of herd immunity. When a high enough proportion of the population is vaccinated, the disease simply can’t spread because the odds of one unvaccinated person coming in contact with another are very low.
Of course, we told them that. We patiently explained herd immunity, debunked claims of an association between vaccines and autism, demolished accusations of “toxins” in vaccines, but they didn’t listen. Why? Because we thought the problem was that anti-vax parents didn’t understand science. That’s undoubtedly true, but the anti-vax movement is NOT about science and never was.
The anti-vax movement has never been about children, and it hasn’t really been about vaccines. It’s about privileged parents and how they wish to view themselves.
1. Privilege
Nothing screams “privilege” louder than ostentatiously refusing something that those less privileged wish to have.
Each and every anti-vax parent is privileged in having easy and inexpensive access to life saving vaccines. It is the sine qua non of the anti-vax movement. In a world where the underprivileged may trudge miles to the nearest clinic, desperate to save their babies from infectious scourges, nothing communicates the unbelievable wealth, ease and selfishness of modern American life like refusing the very same vaccines.
2. Unreflective defiance of authority
There are countless societal ills that stem from the fact that previous generations were raised to unreflective acceptance of authority. It’s not hard to argue that unflective acceptance of authority, whether that authority is the government or industry, is a bad thing. BUT that doesn’t make the converse true. Unreflective defiance is really no different from unreflective acceptance. Oftentimes, the government, or industry, is right about a particular set of claims.
Experts in a particular topic, such as vaccines, really are experts. They really know things that the lay public does not. Moreover, it is not common to get a tremendous consensus among experts from different fields. Experts in immunology, pediatrics, public health and just about everything else you can think of have weighed in on the side of vaccines. Experts in immunology, pediatrics and public health give vaccines to their OWN children, rendering claims that they are engaged in a conspiracy to hide the dangers of vaccines to be nothing short of ludicrous.
Unfortunately, most anti-vax parents consider defiance of authority to be a source of pride, whether that defiance is objectively beneficial or not.
3. The need to feel “empowered”
This is what is comes down to for most anti-vax parents: it’s a source of self-esteem for them. In their minds, they have “educated” themselves. How do they know they are “educated”? Because they’ve chosen to disregard experts (who appear to them as authority figures) in favor of quacks and charlatans, whom they admire for their own defiance of authority. The combination of self-education and defiance of authority is viewed by anti-vax parents as an empowering form of rugged individualism, marking out their own superiority from those pathetic “sheeple” who aren’t self-educated and who follow authority...
:[They]have built an alternative world of internal legitimacy that mimics all the features of the mainstream research world — the journals, the conferences, the publications, the letters after the names — and some leaders have gained access to policy-making positions. Mixing an environmentally inflected critique of vaccination and Big Pharma with a libertarian individualist account of health has been a resonant formulation for some years now, with support flowing in from both the Left and the Right.
- Anna Kirkland in The Legitimacy of Vaccine Critics: What Is Left after the Autism Hypothesis? published in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - October 2011.
)Samsung's Smart TVs Are Collecting And Storing Your Private Conversations
from the I-hear-the-secrets-that-you-keep/when-you-talk-by-the-TV dept
Guess who's eavesdropping on you now? It's not some nefarious government agency (although, rest assured, there has been no downturn in surveillance). Nope, it's that smart TV you paid good money for and invited into your home.
The "now" is misleading. Smart TVs have been doing this ever since manufacturers decided customers preferred to order their electronics around orally, rather than using the remote they can never find. And that's just the "eavesdropping" part. Most smart TVs are harvesting plenty of data on top of that, including viewing habits, search terms, browsing history… pretty much anything that makes a TV "smart" is collected and transmitted not just to the manufacturer, but to plenty of unknown third parties. Usually, this information is used to send "relevant ads" to TV owners, as if the several hundred dollars spent on the device wasn't enough of a revenue stream.
I have decided to stop developing CrunchBang. This has not been an easy decision to make and I’ve been putting it off for months. It’s hard to let go of something you love.
When I first started working on CrunchBang, the Linux landscape was a very different place and whilst I honestly didn’t know if there was any value to it, I knew there was a place for CrunchBang on my own systems. As it turned out, there seemed to be quite a demand for it on other people’s systems too. I’m not entirely sure why this was the case, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was probably due to the lack of competition/alternatives of the same ilk. If I’m remembering correctly, at the time, there was no LXDE tasksel in Debian and certainly no Lubuntu around. CrunchBang filled a gap and that was nifty.
So, what’s changed?
For anyone who has been involved with Linux for the past ten years or so, I’m sure they’ll agree that things have moved on. Whilst some things have stayed exactly the same, others have changed beyond all recognition. It’s called progress, and for the most part, progress is a good thing. That said, when progress happens, some things get left behind, and for me, CrunchBang is something that I need to leave behind. I’m leaving it behind because I honestly believe that it no longer holds any value, and whilst I could hold on to it for sentimental reasons, I don’t believe that would be in the best interest of its users, who would benefit from using vanilla Debian.
Talking of its users, thank you, you’ve been awesome and you’ve taught me so much, much of which is beyond the scope of this post, but needless to say, I think I’m much wiser now than I was before the existence of CrunchBang and its community of users. I’ve made many friends through the project, which for me, has ultimately been the biggest benefit of the project, and something I’ll be forever grateful for.
I also want to take a few words to thank my wife, Becky, aka bobobex. She has supported me and the project from the outset. Over the years, I’m sure I’ve bored her almost to death with my geeky gobbledygook and she’s never moaned about it once, well, not to me at least. Seriously though, thank you Becky for your support, help and guidance, you’re my rock and I love you.
Regarding what will happen to the CrunchBang forums, they will remain online. Ultimately, they belong to the community and so it will be for the community to decide what happens to them. I’m happy to continue supporting them for as long as need be. I have already expressed my thanks to the forum moderators, privately, but I would like to do so publicly too. Unless you’ve been involved with a project like CrunchBang, I’m not sure you can entirely appreciate the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. The forum moderators have effectively kept the community running and without them, I’m sure there would not have been a community at all. Over the years, they’ve had to deal with some truly bonkers and poisonous people (seriously, there are some bat-fucking-crazy nutters out there with far too much time on their hands) and they’ve done so with enormous tact, diplomacy and decorum. All the forum mods have my utmost respect, they are an incredible bunch of people.
As for me, while I’m deeply sad to let go of a project that in many ways has defined my existence for many years, but I’m also excited to see what happens next. I’ve got a few little pet projects I want to work on, and I’ve also got a day job that I want to excel at. It’s going to be interesting to see what the future brings.
See you around
Ex-developer of #! CrunchBang.
I really wish they'd push out what was specified a couple of months ago ... then think about better hardware.-4wd (February 08, 2015, 07:05 PM)
That, in a nutshell, is exactly where I stand too.
But like I said, if true, their inner geek seems to be drowning out the business realities. Three of the most important of which are to: (1) deliver on time; (2) deliver what was promised; and (3) deliver on budget.Never mind the New Age movement, astrology, or ectoplasmic production, peer review of alchemy gets you no further, even if Sir Isaac Newton is doing the review. Peer review of Isaac Newton’s physics was rather hard as he was, and remains, peerless in that field.-IainB (February 08, 2015, 06:43 AM)
)The Crackpot Index
John Baez
A simple method for rating potentially "revolutionary" contributions to physics:
- Take an automatic 5 point starting credit. Add:
- 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
- 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
- 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
- 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
- 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
- 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).
- 5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann".
- 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
- 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.
- 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)
- 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen.
- 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.
- 10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.
- 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations".
- 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
- 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism".
- 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
- 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".
- 20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it "suppresses original thinkers" or saying that I misspelled "Einstein" in item 8.)
- 20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.
- 20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
- 20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.
- 20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.
- 20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)
- 20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.
- 20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary".
- 20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy".
- 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)
- 30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
- 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).
- 30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.
- 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
- 40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
- 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
- 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)
- 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.
© 1998 John Baez
[email protected]
Rupert Sheldrake
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake is an English scientist,[3][4] author,[3] public speaker,[5] and researcher in the field of parapsychology,[6] known for his "morphic resonance" concept.[7] He worked as a biochemist and cell biologist at Cambridge University from 1967 to 1973[3] and as principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics until 1978.[8]
Conceived during Sheldrake's time at Cambridge, morphic resonance posits that "memory is inherent in nature"[3][9] and "natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules, inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind".[9] Sheldrake proposes that it is also responsible for "telepathy-type interconnections between organisms".[4] His advocacy of the idea encompasses paranormal subjects such as precognition, telepathy and the psychic staring effect[10][11] as well as unconventional explanations of standard subjects in biology such as development, inheritance, and memory.[12]
Morphic resonance is not accepted by the scientific community as a real phenomenon and Sheldrake's proposals relating to it have been characterized as pseudoscience. Critics cite a lack of evidence for morphic resonance and an inconsistency of the idea with data from genetics and embryology, and also express concern that popular attention from Sheldrake's books and public appearances undermines the public's understanding of science.[a]
Despite the negative reception Sheldrake's ideas have received from the scientific community, they have found support in the New Age movement,[26] such as from Deepak Chopra.[27][28] Sheldrake argues that science should incorporate alternative medicine, psychic phenomena, and a greater focus on holistic thinking...
I understand delays, and I always thought their February promise was optimistic. But it really sucks that they'd wait until three weeks before it's promised in our hands to announce a 6-month delay. With a delay of this scope, it had to be something they've known about for quite a while; why wait so long to tell those of us who financed the project from the start?-CWuestefeld (February 07, 2015, 10:01 AM)