9. september 2003

Opus is back! Berke Breathed, the creator of legendary comic strips Bloom Country and Outland, is creating a new comic strip, called simply "Opus" after the main character. The Washington Post Writers Group, which will syndicate the strip, is expected to officially announce Breathed's return this Sunday. The reclusive Breathed, who rarely gives interviews, could not be reached yesterday for comment. The new strip will appear on Sundays in The Washington Post starting Nov. 23. Heck, where do I get the WaPo here? Will it be put online? I definately don't want to miss this. 11:26:31 PM    comment []  trackback []

Second suicide bomber on Israel A second suicide bomber has struck in Israel, blowing himself up outside a cafe in Jerusalem, killing four and unjuring at least 40 people. Just a few hours ago, another deadly bomber killed and maimed in Tel Aviv. The terrorists' ability to strike twice in one day in Israel itself will demonstrate that Israeli security is not able to sufficiently protect civilians. This is not merely revenge and terror, it is a tactical positioning for new negotiations. The Palestinian leadership is no doubt thinking that if Israel feels seriously under threat from unstoppable suicide bombers, it is more likely to grant concessions. 11:14:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

Dutch ISP wins over $cientologists The Dutch Court of Appeals have handed the Church of Scientology a final, stinging defeat in its long court battle with the web provider Xs4all. The litigious sect had demanded that the site removed material and hyperlinks to material it considered copyright violations (read: the church's dirty laundry made public), but the court ruled in favour of the ISP in both issues.  The court concluded that Spaink's publications which quoted from works of Scientology were completely legal. In this case, the court said, freedom of opinion does not take second place to enforcement of copyright. 'The (...) texts show that, in their doctrine and their organization, Scientology et al. do not hesitate to reject democratic values. From the texts it also follows that one of the objects of the non-disclosure of the contents of OT II and OT III ... is to thwart discussion of the doctrine and practices of the Scientology organization', according to the Court of Appeal. Scientology therefore cannot invoke copyright in these proceedings in order to preclude any discussion of the nature of the sect. This means that there are no grounds for any claim against XS4ALL or other providers. The court has found against Scientology on all points. At least one safe haven for free speech in the world is made even safer. 9:22:16 PM    comment []  trackback []

Ghosts may be infrasound British scientists have done experiments with extreme bass sounds, so-called infrasound, and have concluded it can cause strange sensations in people that may explain some alleged supernatural phenomena. "Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost -- our findings support these ideas," said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England. In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music. The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 percent reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music. Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear. Infrasound may occur naturally, caused by storms, earthquakes and other phenomena. Do horror movies produce infrasound? Will they start doing so after this evidence is out? 8:06:28 PM    comment []  trackback []

Explosion near Israeli army base An explosion has killed at least three and wounded 'dozens' at a bus stop near an army base outside Tel Aviv in Israel. It is not yet confirmed that it was a suicide bomber, but it appears likely.  News just coming in now. 5:36:42 PM    comment []  trackback []

Science vs God Tim Radford ponders why quite a few eminent scientists, who know about the Big Bang and evolution, yet retain a belief in God and even goes to church. In the US, according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10 scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and 14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. Should anybody be surprised? No, we should not. Remember that in the US, unlike the rest of the western world, around 90% of the general population believe in God in some way. A significant amount of them believe in a very different way than intellectuals and scientists who profess to have faith. Religion appeals very much to our sentimental feelings, and it does not surprise me that even scientists sometimes find a corner in their mind for a god-of-the-gaps. Moreover, they often redefine "God" as something much more abstract than the God of Moses, maybe to keep in touch with the beliefs of their fathers and mothers. I am quite convinced the number of believers among scientists would be much lower in a society where fewer people were brought up to believe in the first place. The article also speculates that perhaps rigid unbelief is more common in humanities (where people generally know zilch about the universe, I am sad to agree) than in hard sciences, and though it gives no evidence for this, I just love the way Tom McLeish attributes it to the "postmodern effect": "Our dear friends in the humanities do get themselves awfully confused about whether the world exists, about whether each other exists, about whether words mean anything. Until they have sorted out whether cats and dogs exist or not, or are only figments in the mind of the reader, let alone the writer, then they are going to have problems talking about God." Not only about God, I hasten to add. Yet the article gives the last word to Richard Dawkins, who certainly don't have any sentimental feelings towards religion: Richard Dawkins, however, remains unmoved. Is there a limit to what science can explain? Very possibly. But in that case, what on earth makes anyone think religion can do any better? "I once reached this point when I asked the then professor of astrophysics at Oxford to explain the origin of the universe to me," he says. "He did so, and I posed my supplementary: 'Where did the laws of physics come from in the first place?' He smiled: 'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand over to our good friend the chaplain.' My immediate thought was, 'But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' If science itself cannot say where the laws of physics ultimately come from, there is no reason to expect that religion will do any better and rather good reasons to think it will do worse." Exactly. I wished Christianity generally was as reflective and tolerant as those believing scientists interviewed. However, the quasi-agnostic believing scientists who are able to juggle both gods and molecules comfortably in their minds should be aware that their cherished institutions have a large grassroots component that is deeply hostile to scientific exploration. I cannot help thinking that some naively "give aid and comfort" to the enemy of science. 12:39:55 PM    comment []  trackback []

The end of Galileo A fascinating article about the Galileo Orbiter, its troubled history and great discoveries, and why it must die a fiery death as it plunges into Jupiter. 12:03:33 PM    comment []  trackback []

Rumsfeld: Critics encourage terrorists Donald Rumsfeld, the US outspoken Secretary of Defense, has said that critics of the president was encouraging the enemies and complicating the war on terror. He said if Washington's enemies believed Bush might waver or his opponents prevail, that could increase support for their activities. "They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power," he told reporters traveling with him on his plane. "Obviously that does make our task more difficult." "Terrorists studied...instances when the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," he said. "The United States is not going to do that, President (George W.) Bush is not going to do that." I guess in a sense Rumsfeld is right. Terrorist supporters have taken great delight in the massive opposition to war and the criticism of its handling. But that is precisely how freedom and democracy is "untidy," as he himself so accurately put it shortly after the fall of Baghdad. You can't purport to fight for democracy and at the same time deny that it works. 11:47:42 AM    comment []  trackback []

The Guardian debunks Michael Meacher on 9/11 I am pleasantly surprised to see that the Guardian, who printed MP Meacher's infamous conspiracy letter, has given David Aaronovitch the job to write a throrough trashing approproately titled Has Meacher completely lost the plot? He goes over quite a bit of the ground already covered in this blog and elsewhere, and shows exactly where Meacher got his "facts" wrong. Absolutely brilliant. One could be tempted to believe Aaronovitch reads Secular Blasphemy (j/k). I didn't find a link to this article on the front page, though. Perhaps later. 3:51:41 AM    comment []  trackback []

Polls and margin of error, a little explainer Opinion polls are extremely common and important in democracies, but not many people understand them. For example, look at this recent poll from ABC, showing that a declining number of Americans is happy about the situation in Iraq. For example, 54 % (down from 61 % since last month) thinks the war in Iraq was worth fighting. On the bottom of the page, it says: This ABCNEWS poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 4-7 among a random national sample of 1,004 adults. The results have a three-point error margin. Now, you can ask, how on earth can anyone be certain that asking only one thousand people is sufficient to know within an error margin of only 3 percentage points how ~200 million Americans think? It is important to realise that when a poll gives an error margin, it is obviously not absolutely certain that there is no more than 3 % difference between the opinion of the whole population and the people asked (the "sample"). It is at least theoretically possible to imagine that they just happened to ask the 1004 people with a specific opinion, and the vast majority disagreed with them. So what do they mean? Enter level of confidence. Those who conduct a poll require a specific level of confidence. And they set the level of confidence, typically to 95% (or 90%). When the level of confidence is 95%, it means if you asked 1000 different people 1000 times (or whatever), 95% of these samples would fall within the margin of error, in this case 3 %. If you insist, you can calculate the probability that the real error was, say, 10 % (hint: it will not be high). If you have a look at the actual formula and tables for confidence and margin of error, you will find that the intuitive reaction, that 1000 people can't possibly represent 200+ million, is wrong. When the whole population you want to sample reaches a certain size (and actually the size of a small city is sufficient) then you only have to think about what sample size gives which margin of error. Whether your population is a city with 100K people or the entire United States with ~200M adults, the error of margin is essentially the same. Actually, it is more important that the answers hover around 50%, since the numbers get more dodgy when there is only a small minority with specific opinions. The real error margin comes into play if there is any bias in the sampling, but that is beyond this little explanation. We simply have to trust that the pollers in this case know their job and didn't just ask whoever was answering the phone at 2 PM on a given day. So, asking 1004 people what they mean about Bush's policies in Iraq gives no more than 3 percentage points error margin at a 95% level of confidence. Diclaimer: I am not a mathematician or statistician. I studied this in college years ago, and had forgotten most of it, but I still hope I got it right with a little refresher course from the "I feel lucky" course at Google university. 2:57:36 AM    comment []  trackback []

War for oil? Phooey! You could no doubt build a case that US interests in the Gulf states, including Iraq, is closely related to its dependence on oil supplies. I doubt the west would care more about the Middle East than, say, Africa south of Sahara, if the region wasn't home to the largest oil reserves on Earth. That's economic reality for you. Yet, radical leftists have a need to see oil everywhere. Even when the US, immediately after 9/11-01 launched a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, many leftists desperately tried to spin some oil connection into it. Problem is, there is no oil in Afghanistan. The country is sadly lacking in resources that would interest the rest of the world, perhaps excepting opium. That did not stop the conspiracy theorists. The reason for the war, they argue, is that that US wanted a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. The Taliban supposedly refused, so the CIA or the Neocons or the Illuminati or all three staged the terror attacks on WTC and Pentagon, and started a massive military operation to make it possible for Unocal to build a $3bn gas pipeline  (the truly ignorant say "oil pipeline") from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. Does that sound stupid enough? Luckily, if you again meet anyone ignorant and crazy enough to believe this, you can merely point them to Ken Silverstein's brilliant debunking of the whole concept. Thanks to Dave for finding this article for me again. 12:52:37 AM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2003 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.10.2003; 02:24:19.