brightMystery: The latest on liberal bias in the university

The idea of "knowledge and art" for it's own sake struck me. Art used to be exclusively used to communicate. In it's broadest use, art includes writing (including plays), movies/video, music, in addition to painting and sculpture. All art used to be used to communicate an idea, not just a feeling. Now many ideas, maybe the best ideas, have lots of feelings wrapped up in them (the Crucifixion for example, or John-Paul's recent death), but it is the idea that is important.

Now we seem to have much art just for its own sake, and I don't think that we're better for it. Can the same be said about science? Perhaps. Your recent article on computer generated conference papers may prove the point. For example, computer programs can (and do) derive mathematical theorems. They can derive lot's of them. The problem is, they are usually uninteresting. Why? Because they aren't useful to us.

So, it seems, science, for its own sake, is useless. Unless we can harness it do good.

There's the rub with the liberals. They don't believe in a definition of good (or truth) that is universal.

Respected Academic Admits Significant Development in the Womb

This article is mainly about the debate on women in science, but check out this quote near the end:

"...she said, there is "nothing special" about birth as a line of demarcation in development, since even in the womb environment affects how genes are expressed."

We'll have to agree, there really is "nothing special" about birth. Except in the United States, where birth marks the moment at which you can no longer be killed.

One more thing to worry about...

Sea life 'killed by exploding star'

If a star explodes within 6,000 light-years of Earth, its Gamma ray emissions could strip the ozone layer and cause a mass extinction. There are some 18 or so of these occuring in the universe every week, and we even observe one a month, but all have been in distant galaxies -- far too far away to have any effect on Earth.

What are you going to do?

College presidents, Intel CEO challenged on Darwinism and the teaching of science at a media roundtable

This story expresses some of my frustration with the way the press deals with the evolution debate. Here's a quote from the article:

In a wide-ranging and sometimes heated dinner discussion among media representatives, Intel chief executive Craig Barrett and the presidents of eight
major research universities, nearly everyone agreed that science in the United
States is losing ground to foreign competitors. Many in attendance at the
Science Coalition's yearly media roundtable, held at The Penn Club in Manhattan on Monday, cited fast-charging China and India as important new players, and bemoaned a lack of funding for basic research at home. And several attendees blasted the nation's K-12 science education as woefully inadequate.

"It stinks," Barrett said. He and several university presidents, however, dismissed suggestions that efforts to push evolution out of high school classrooms or to label it unproven may be linked to science's declining fortunes. And a question asking whether the presidents would affirm their support of the scientific theory produced evident discomfort.

National Public Radio correspondent Ira Flatow told the group it was "the elephant in the room," but University of Kentucky president Lee T. Todd Jr. said the evolution question was a "red herring," a sentiment Barrett echoed.

Note that Flatlow thought this was the most important issue in corporate America today. As if Intel's fortunes fell and rose with whether or note we teach evolution. I could see math, physics, biology, even the biological evidence for evolution, but not evolution itself.

This article does attempt to be unbiased, but the following quote gives it away:

Eugenie Scott, of the pro- evolution National Center for Science Education, said in a phone interview that university presidents, like many politicians, often step gingerly in an area that crystallizes tension between religion and science.

Innocent enough, but it didn't happen in the conference. The reported had to go get this quote to balance the other comments made at the conference.

Whatever You Do, Don't Read This...

Things that make you say "Hmmm..."

If suffering is so good, why not do it in a way which helps someone? No, that won't do, because we won't be in control. At least that's my guess.

Pacific Northwest Medical Journal - Disclaimer

Oh well. This looked real, but we were easily fooled.

IMAX Film 'Volcanoes' Gets Cold Shoulder

Here is another example of casting the debate over evolution into the two categories of "Enlightened Science" or "Superstitious Rube". The IMAX film in question (which I haven't seen yet) is about Volcanoes, and is being rejected in bible-belt states because of creation/evolution concerns. Where does the creation/evolution debate enter the picture? There are microbes that exist and live from the heat and chemicals of undersea volcano vents. This is truly exciting biology (even for an electrical engineer) worthy of study, and excellent knowledge to present to the general public. One may also reasonably extrapolate that, based on current knowledge of the how the planet Earth was formed geologically, that conditions existed similar to those found by undersea volcano vents.

The movie undoubtedly then makes the unsupported statement that from there (the vent) is where all life evolved*. The issue is, of course, on both sides of the debate. Creationists don't want to hear the word "evolution", at least not as a fact. Evolutionists (is this the first use of that word?) don't want to hear doubt about evolution. Surely, if all life really did evolve from volcano-vent microbes, then there ought to be reams of evidence available there. Or there might be evidence that that was not the source. Either way, that question is the scientific one, and belief, on either side of the debate, can obscure the truth.

Faith, on the other hand, says the following: let us examine the truth. If the truth is that there is direct evidence that all life evolved from volcano-vent microbes, then we must have faith that such evidence is part of God's plan, as is our discovering that fact. If the truth is that life on Earth is unrelated to these microbes, then we have learned a remarkable scientific fact.

*Please remember I haven't seen the film; such science films usually take evolution for granted, and thus statements like that are usually unsupported.