Check Six

…put Bertuzzi on the 2nd line with Lang and Calder, sit Samuelsson, and put Hudler back on the 3rd line.

The Fillpula-Hudler-Franzen line had looked good in the first two games (they scored a goal in each game) and the Calder-Lang-Samuelsson line hasn’t looked good yet (they are scoreless). Lang, especially, looks like he’s just gliding around out there…I’d pay money to see him go into the corner and win a battle for the puck or make a pass that didn’t have at least even-odds of ending up on a Flames’ stick. If he wants space to work then letting him skate with Bertuzzi and Calder should get him that space.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/10459297/detail.html?taf=nash

(H/T Dave Barry’s Blog)

Those of you who have read this blog from the get-go know that my wife and I raise alpacas. We currently have four of them. Our most notable incident with them to date was the escape of one of our females on the third day after we got her. Those interested in reading about that ordeal can click here for the sordid tale.

As livestock go they’re pretty low-maintenance. Occassionally though, they require a bit more and at times it happens at night. Last nigh was such a night. Below the fold you’ll find out why…

(more…)

Digital bubble-wrap.

Since 2002, the last year the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, they have had less than stellar playoff success, but an interesting trend had developed:

2003: Lost first round to the Anahiem Might Ducks; Ducks went on to play for the Stanely Cup and lose in seven games.

2004: Lost second round to the Calgary Flames; Flames went on to play for the Stanley Cup and lose in seven games.

2005: There was no !@#$ing hockey.

2006: Lost first round to the Edmonton Oilers; Oilers went on to play for the Stanley Cup and lose in seven games.

Hmm…

I thought about waiting to write this follow-up on the off chance that I’d get another comment or two on the first post, but since I know this blog has no traffic the odds of another comment coming in are slim. So I’m posting this now.

I received an interesting, and entirely civil, comment from Stan regarding my earlier post on arguments for being a Vegan and animal cruelty. He says:

…it isn’t the slaughter that is the problem, it is their condition of living prior to slaughter. Also, I don’t believe that we are biologically designed to eat them (http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/hunter_gatherer.htm), so we are really just doing it for “fun” which is pretty cruel, and that sort of thing is virtually non-existant in nature. Much plant life, on the other hand, requires consumption by animals in order to propogate.

I won’t get into the health issues or environmental aspects of animal agriculture, which you seem to be aware of, and yes all agriculture has its problems, but we could reduce grain farming by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% if it weren’t required for animal consumption (more 70% of all grains are grown for animal agriculture, which is very inefficient BTW).

I agree with the second half and disagree with the first.

The article linked to in the comment is very interesting, but it only discusses our evolutionary heritage up to, at the latest, 60,000 years ago. The point of the article is that man was not a hunter, as most theories peg us as, but instead we were gatherers, essentially a slightly more bipedal and intelligent version of the apes we’d descended from. Which I don’t necessarily disagree with. The kicker is that we are not Australopithecus afarensis, which is the species the research focues solely on. We’re Home sapiens, descended from Homo erectus, and the biological and fossil and anthropological evidence is convincing that we did indeed evolve, for a multitude of reasons, into hunters and gatherers. And it really doesn’t matter that we were unable to systematically consume animal protein until fire and tools became prevalent, the fact is that we did. We are able to consume, and process, cooked meat and raw meat (at least in some forms) and we have been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. And we did it to supplement our consumption of plants, which we’ d been consuming for far longer.

Which, basically is my point. We’re a predator, whether its on plants or animals, we’re an apex predator that has codified to the exterme the methods by which we attack and consume our prey. And we’ve been doing this for thousands of years. So while I think one can choose to believe that Australopithecus afarensis was a vegetarian, which I think it was, and that that means we aren’t meant to consume meat, you’d be mistaken to do so. The bottom line is that we evolved into ominvores that hunted systematically and consumed animal prey on our way to becoming Home sapiens for a whole host of evolutionary reasons, not the least of which is that animals provided a reservoir of nutrition for man in regions where agriculture was either seasonal or very difficult.

I think Stan’s point, and the point of the animal cruelty argument in general, is as he says the living conditions “…prior to the slaughter.” As I stated in the my earlier post, factory farming is a nasty business. Obviously animals do not “thrive” in a factory farming situation (hence the use of antibiotics and other medicines/chemicals necessary to keep them healthy), I’m not arguing that. What I’m arguing is that there are plenty of alternatives where the cow you’re about to consume is as happy as, well, a cow can be, thinking life is grand as it chews its cud in an open field, and then “wham” it’s dead. Which is much the same as the gazelle, chewing on some grass when “wham” a lioness explodes from the weeds and crushes its windpipe. It’s the natural state of things. It’s still the same predator/prey relationship that has been exercised since one single-celled bacterium slurped up another way back “in the day.” Being against factory farming does not need to make anyone a vegetarian let alone a vegan because there’s plenty of alternative methods of gaining access to animal protein.

As for the plant life needing to be consumed in order to propogate, some plant life needs certain parts of the plant to be consumed in order to propagate, not the entire plant. That’s how fruit evolved. The fruit was meant to be consumed and then the seeds dropped somewhere away from the parent plant by the animal that consumed it. The plant that bore the fruit wasn’t consumed, i.e. killed, in order for it to propogate. That would be a very risky means of propogation for a plant and I’m not sure I know of one where the entire plant needed to be consumed in order for its offspring to live on somewhere else, but if there’s an example out there I’d love to see it. So while we do consume parts of plants that are menat to be consumed, like fruit, there’s also far more plants that we either consume the roots of the plants, or the parts of the plant that the plant needs to survive. We’re killing a highly evolved organism that differs from animals essentially only by the fact that they aren’t motile, they reproduce differently and we can’t teach them to fetch the paper. If the first thing you learned about a new plant was that it could warn its neighbor plants that it was not only under attack by something, but also what it was attacking it, and that its neighbors responded in such a fashion that when what was attacking the first plant could no longer attack its neighbors, you’d probably surmise that it was intelligent. (And while I’m not arguing that the plant is intelligent, or conscious, I’m simply saying that on the surface one could certainly anthropomorphosize that it was “acting” intelligently.) Would you still consume it if it was edible? Sure you would. And there’s a number of plants that chemically communicate in just that fashion but we either cut them down to make a house, or burn them to keep warm (or cook our recently killed animal prey) or consume them for food. And no one says a word about the cruelty of it all. It’s a double standard, and I’m not trying to be facitious. I just don’t think it’s fair to cry foul about killing and eating animals when we don’t cry foul for the plants. Both end up just as dead.

We don’t cry foul though because as humans, we choose what traits and what organisms we anthropomorphosize and it’s far easier to do that with a sad-eyed cow, or a reasonably smart pig than it is for a corn stalk growing out in the middle of Nebraska (right Jill?). If we’d have done that back when we had to bring the mammoth down or see our family or clan starve in the heart of winter, Stan and I wouldn’t be having this debate today. Or maybe we would, we’d just all be living where there’s lots of trees and it’s warm year round. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t all that bad, except for the 6 - 10% of us that would fall prey to the predators of the region like Australopithecus afarensis did.

Lastly, I agree completely with the second half of Stan’s comment. The grain farming, even the amount of methane gas produced, would be reduced if we reduced the amount that was consumed by the animals we feed it to on the large scale farms. There’s plenty to dislike about the way we do agriculture, but I’m not sure, nor have I done much in the way of researching the alternative methods that we could use to feed the population of the planet. If we replace grains used to feed prey animals isn’t that then replaced by mono-cultured crops of things like rice and soy? Is that necessarily a good thing?

My only point, I guess, in all of this rambling is that you can try and persuade me to be a Vegan on a number of grounds, but being cruel to animals isn’t one of them. You can argue all you want against factory farming, but that doesn’t necessarily have to drive you to Veganism (again, is that even a word?). We’ve developed evolutionarily to be omnivores and there’s lots of ways one can be an omnivore and still be respectul of animals.

And thanks to Stan for the reasonable, intelligent reply. It’s not entirely fair that I get to blather on at length about this while he’s more or less constrained to the comment box. If he or anyone else care to carry-on the conversation via email, I can be reached at orca989ATyahooDOTcom (replace the ‘at’ and ‘dot’ with their respective symbols).

Now I’m goint to go eat a burger — with a whole grain bun, tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and a side of potato fries. An omnivore’s delight.

I like Vegans. I have friends who are Vegans and Vegetarians. I am still an ominvore. I can see why someone would want to be a Vegan/Vegetarian for health reasons. There is plenty of evidence that concentrated animal protein is both hard to digest, can be high in fat and cholesterol, etc., etc. Eating meat, a lot of it, is bad for you.

Fine. That’s where the argument for being a Vegan or a Vegetarian should stop. But it doesn’t. Typically, the argument continues on to include something involving animal cruelty. And that’s where I have my first hang-up with Veganism (if that’s even a word).

Oh I’ll admit that the factory farms for beef and poultry are not pretty. Those animals are born and raised to be food and their short existance here on this earth probably does not meet what most average people would consider to be the ideal (which is part of the problem, but more on that later). Once they are “ready” they are euthanized as quickly as possible and then butchered. It’s not pretty, it’s bloody and nasty and ugly. But it ultimately yields food so it’s a brutish means to an end. Many think it cruel and despise it.

But why exactly? Let’s compare the above to the way Nature works. Let’s, for example, look at the way a lioness takes down a gazelle in Africa. The gazelle is stalked, chased, knocked down, clawed, chased again, knocked down again, and then finally has its throat crushed by powerful jaws and sharp teeth and it dies a slow painful death by suffocation. Some, though not too many, are lucky and get their neck snapped and go instantly. But what a way to go! Hunted and pursued, your herd mates fleeing and leaving you to die, your body sliced open and then your throat finally smashed in the jaws of your predator.

Now think about who went in a more “humane” manner. In fact, take any animal who is not an apex predator and compare they way they die to the way an animal is dispatched on a farm when that animal is to be used for food. There is no comparison. In every single instance the animal being killed for food is probably in pain for a lot less time than the prairie dog that just got picked off by a hawk or the field mouse being toyed with by your house cat.

So that’s why the animal cruelty tack doesn’t hold up. It’s logically inconsistent. It’s simply a by-product of our anthropomorphosizing about animals and our misconstrued ideas about what we consider idyllic about Nature and the natural state of things. Nature is not idyllic. It’s anything but. It’s nasty, it’s brutish, it’s “…red in tooth and claw.” The food chain is relentless and if you’re not an apex predator you’re someone else’s potential meal. That can’t be fun. What is idyllic about standing around, munching grass with one eye always on the weeds and one eye on your baby or your herdmates? Everyday you face the potential of death and dismemberment. That is not idyllic, that’s a warzone. And I’m not saying being raised and ultimately slaughtered on a factory farm is idyllic either. What I’m saying is that neither of them are. We, as humans, with our cognitive abilities and our self-awareness and our capacity for empathy are the only ones who care about what might be idyllic or not. The gazelle doesn’t. The cow doesn’t. They don’t know any different. Humans are far more kind to their prey, at least their animal prey, than that animal’s natural predator would ever be. And the end result is the same — they’re food for something, either us or a wolf or a hawk or a lion.

So “saving the animals” from factory farming or from consumption by humans in order to make the animals’ lives better doesn’t work as an argument for Veganism. Any animal subject to becoming an appetizer on a moment’s notice is not looking for you to make thier lives better, they’re looking for you to make them a pet. That would be the only “improvement” they might take notice of, but it’s doubtful they’d ever recognize the favor you did for them. Why? Because they’re animals. They simply don’t know any different. Sending cows back to an undomesticated life would not make them happier, it would make them a meal for something else (and arguably do irrepairable harm to the environment, just take a look at the damage done by feral pigs and you’ll have an idea).

My other hang-up with Veganism has to do with plants. Where’s their advocate in all this? I’m serious. They’re certainly alive. They reproduce. They evolve. They can’t move, so people automatically ascribe to them a certain primitiveness, placing them further back on the evolutionary tree. But’s that’s purely misconception. Plants are among the most sophisticated and highly evolved creatures on this planet. They have been shown to communicate in a rudimentary way amont their own species, they have intimate relationships with the ecosystem around them, arguably more intimate the the animals that we so adore. In fact there is no ecosystem without plants. So where is the advocate for them? Why are they not afforded the same protection or luxuries that the cow is? They are factory farmed, they are sliced and diced and rolled and processed until they aren’t even recognizable any more. A large number of them are eaten alive for crying out loud. I can’t think of anything in the western diet that is eaten alive that isn’t a vegetable. At least the animals are dead before we consume them. Not so for the plants.

So what is the difference between a plant and an animal in the Vegan’s eyes? Why is it any more right to eat a mono-cultured industrially farmed plant (like soy) than it is to eat an indutrially farmed cow? (Or alternatively, what’s the difference between an organically grown plant and an organically fed free-range cow?)

Here’s what the answer to that question should be: nothing. There is no difference. They are both highly evolved, living, breeding organisms. An industrially farmed or organically farmed plant is as much out of it’s natural element, it’s “idyllic” state, as a cow on an industrial farm or walking free-range is.

Face it, the slaughter is everywhere. It’s just a question of what’s being slaughtered. Which is why the only truly valid argument for being a Vegan is because it might, arguably, be healthier than an omnivorous diet. Of course there’s the people who don’t like the taste of meat or the texture, stuff like that. But my point is that the argument for people being Vegan because they want to save the cows (or other farmed animal) just doesn’t make sense. So please, stop making it.

P.S. This should not be construed as a defense of factory farming, a practice which I’m not a big fan of. Factory farming, especially of livestock, but also of plants, has significant environmental impacts beyond the impact on the organism being farmed. But for nearly every factory farmed product there is an alternative, small farm, organically grown product that can be substituted for it. So even being against factory farming is no reason to not eat meat, it’s only a reason to be against factory farming.

Per your request…

Ugh.

My final thoughts, just for the record…

The puck was kicked into the net.
It should never have come down to whether the puck was kicked into the net.
The better team won.

There’s always next year I suppose. (And at least the Avalanche are down 0-3. That warms my heart.)

So how many more times am I going to see this play-out? The Wings, either having just won the President’s Trophy or finishing as one of the top two or three teams in the league, struggles mightily with a seriously lower-seeded team in the first round of the playoffs.

At least one more apparently. For the Wings are now officially flirting with disaster against the 8th seeded Edmonton Oilers after having lost in double-overtime last night. Had I not seen this particular drama before against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (a series they lost in 4 games straight) and then again against the Nasville Predators (a series they ultimately won in six games) and then finally against the Calgary Flames (a second round series against a 7th seed that they lost in 6 games) I wouldn’t be quite so frustrated. But I can’t help but begin to see a trend here.

The Wings badly outplayed Edmonton in game one only to find themselves down by a goal entering the third period. They tied it up on a garbage goal by Maltby and then Maltby got lucky in OT by firing a quick shot from the boards that was ever-so-slightly re-directed between Roloson’s pads by Roloson’s own defenseman.

I didn’t see game 2, but from what I’ve read, it sounds as though Edmonton played quite well and deserved the win.

I did see game 3 last night, and thought Edmonton out-played Detroit much of the first two periods before coming alive and more or less dominating play through the third and the first overtime. Nice of you guys to show up for periods three and four. Note: it’d be even better to see you guys show up for periods one and two, thus not requiring a fourth or even fifth period to decide the outcome.

So what’s the issue? Well for starters there isn’t just one but I’ll start with goaltending. Legace looks shaky at best. He looks nervous, he’s insanely hard on himself and I think he’s feeling the pressure. He knows he’s their number one goaltender, he knows he’s supposed to be able to help the team win and I think he’s tight. He looked simply lost at times last night, not confident in the crease or out of it. Every move he makes seems to require an instant more of thought than it should and he’s frequently finding himself out of position in the crease. The wrap-around goal by Smyth and the game-winning goal by Stoll are two perfect examples. The first was an over-commitment and slow realization as to what was happening the last was a loss of awareness of where he was and what was happening around him. He made a desparate save with his glove, and apparently he thought he had caught it, instead he flipped it back out into the slot to be banged home for the win.

Second, penalties. There were a ton last night, including the second game in which the Wings were forced to kill a penalty off at the end of regulation that would carry-over into OT. Any concern as to whether the officials, at least in the first round, would go back to swallowing their whistles has been put soundly to rest, at least for this series. And the Wings had better realize it because they need to stay out of the penalty box. Only one of Edmonton’s goals came on the power-play, but when you’re so busy killing penalties, like the Wings were in the first two periods of the game, your offense sits on the bench. Makes it pretty damn hard to score goals, just ask Shanahan, who had a whopping three minutes of ice time in the first period last night. You don’t score 40 goals a season playing three minutes a period.

Third, get to the net. The Oilers have gotten a number of goals off redirections and screens. And I’m talking about a friendly re-direction where someone on your own team intentionally redirects the puck, not hitting someone like a defensmen and having it go in. (Paging Mr. Samsonov, Mr. Samsonov please. Mr. Chelios has a goal for you.) The Wings need to get more garbage, more tips, more anything. They need to be at the net swatting at pucks and making Roloson work for everything. Right now, as in the past series that I mentioned above, the Wings make the opposing goalies look so much better than they are because so many of their shots are perimeter shots. If you can’t stop a 40 foot shot that you see then you don’t belong in the NHL as a goalie. Roloson had to make some good stops last night, but overall I don’t think he’s been taxed that much. I don’t think we really know how good of a goalie he is. Maybe he’s the next Brodeur sitting there in the crease, but while he’s faced a lot of shots only a small percentage of them have been dangerous. He needs to be made to work harder and he needs to see more traffic. (And if he turns out to be the next Brodeur, well then so be it. At least we’ll know.)

And last, Yzerman is now hurt. The Wings have not fared well at all when Yzerman has been hurt in the playoffs. Calgary beat them after he went down with a puck to the eye, they lost to LA when Yzerman was out after leading that series. The real problem is that he’s easily been one of their best players this series and now he’s questionable for game four. That could be a huge loss. And speaking of players who are cornerstones of their teams…just when the bloody hell is Pavel Datsyuk going to step up and deliver anything during the playoffs? He had one good shot last night (a little delay-wrister between the defenseman’s legs that Roloson stopped) and more or less did squat the rest of the night. What is his deal? This is his third NHL playoffs so he should be way beyond the intimidation/fatigue factor of his first season. He stunk in his first two playoffs and he’s showing no signs of changing that. He has an immense amount of talent, now he needs some fire and some grit, both of which he seems to sorely lack. I’d love for him to prove me wrong. Zetterberg has woken up, now it’s time for Datsyuk.

And now McTavish, the Oiler’s coach, is playing mind games with the Wings. His comments regarding the amount of celebration the Wings did when they thought they had won the game in OT not befitting a team of that level of experience were interesting. He’s implying of course that the Wings are desparate when they shouldn’t be, because the Wings are supposed to be such a powerhouse team and now his little underachieving Oilers have the series lead. And honestly, I hope McTavish is right. I hope the Wings are desperate, maybe it’ll get them to the net a little more and wake a few players up.

I also predict that Osgood gets the nod in net for game four. Babcock can’t afford to wait. If he goes back to Detroit down 3-1 without Yzerman they’re in real trouble. A shake-up in net, putting a goalie back in that took the team to a Cup once already, that the team knows and is probably comfortable with, might be the kick in the pants they need.

But then what do I know, I’m just a Wednesday morning coach. Should be interesting to watch Babcock motivate and coach a team that’s supposed to win instead of a team that isn’t (coaching the favored Wings versus coaching the cinderella Mighty Ducks).

There’s so many people out there with an axe to grind against evolution that in order to pick one to try and refute you may as well pull one of their names from a hat. But in this case, we have a nationally syndicted radio host and prominent conservative blogger linking to one of the worst attempts to go after evolution that I’ve seen in a long time.

Doug TenNepal, according to Wikipedia, “…is an American musician, animator, Eisner Award-winning artist and film maker.” Given the list of things he’s worked on, there’s no doubt he’s very, very good at what he does (Earthworm Jim was awesome and I say that with all sincerity). But we can’t all be good at everything, as his post attacking an article about a new fish-to-tetrapod transitional fossil shows.

And really, what better way to discredit science and the evidence for a theory than to attack that paragon of scientific reporting known as the The New York Times. Not Nature. Not Science. Not any of the major scientific journals dedicated to the field in question. Not even the actual paper discussing the discovery. Instead he chooses a poorly reported account in The New York Times. This can be considered the same as me questioning the validity of quantum mechanics by criticizing its representation in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (in which many a quantum concept was batted around).

Doug starts out with a whopper of an opening, one so stunningly wrong it more or less invalidates the remainder of his post.

…wait a minute, you’re telling me that scientists have been preaching Godless evolution all this time without a legit fish-to-tetrapod missing link?! Well what were you using all this time on the fossil tree, science fiction? Luckily, no gap is so great between species that can make some scientists lose their faith in a dogmatic fundamentalist allegience to Materialist Darwinism.

Wow, two slams in one paragraph. Doug plays the canard that most looking to “debunk” evolution try. There are gaps in the fossil records, there are gaps here, there’s a lack of understanding there, ergo evolutionary theory is invalid, or at least major parts of it are. And those that still think the “Materialist Darwinism” is the best explanation for the evidence at hand are operating purely on faith. Kettle meet pot.

His inference is that evolution is more or less a series of hand-waving exercises involving mirrors, smoke, and a big drink of kool-aid. That because we don’t have a fossil showing a clear and distinct transition between each and every species that the theory falls apart, and most certainly should not be taught. And he also has noticed that it’s “Godless.”

Well first, yep, we don’t have a fossil distinctly showing every transition at every stage. But we do have many fossils showing transtions, and as a result the theory of evolution allows for the forumlation of a prediction (as any good theory does) that there should be a fossil, in about this time range, that would show the traits that this one does. And we found one. Now what would have really been a sticker is if the fossil had been found in the wrong time period, either much earlier or much later. That certainly would have given people pause and created more questions than it answered. But that’s not what happened. This fossil butresses the theory and proves the hypothesis. That’s how science works. You would think if Doug were truly looking critically at evolution this would be an example that would begin to go some ways towards addressing his concerns with the theory. It does not.

Second, evolution is a “Godless” theory. Yep, got us again. That’s also the way science works Doug. You cannot make appeals to external, supernatural authorities to explain how the natural world works. So evolution has been and always will be “Godless.” You’d probably also be interested to note that chemistry, physics, cellular biology, oceanography, marine biology and geology, just to name a few other fields of science, are also “Godless.” Any comment on the validity of those disciplines and whether they should be taught in our schools? Evolution is just as valid a theory as the those that underpin physics or chemistry or geology. There are unanswered questions in every field and evolution is no exception. It is, however, ground in the same principles of discovery that those other fields are and it is therefore science. Just because there are gaps does not invalidate the phylogenetic tree. I would concede that science textbooks could do a better job of conveying the uncertainties (depending on grade level and the maturity of the student involved in the study) and we should not tell the students not to look at this part of the tree because “here there be dragons.” The questions should be highlighted, the gaps studied.

That is not, however, any sort of endorsement for ID. When ID starts publishing positive, predictive theories which generate testable hypotheses we’ll talk. ID would be far better suited to switching their energy expenditure to practical research and away from defending themselves and implementing their Wedge Document. There’s always hope I suppose.

Unfortunately, Doug didn’t stop with his opening paragraph. Undaunted, he continues to fisk the NYT article, sometimes a paragraph at a time, sometimes a sentence at a time. I’d fisk his post, but then I’d be fisking a fisk and it really wouldn’t make sense unless I reproduced his entire post here, so I’ll just highlight one more astounding piece of his that must be commented on:

Here’s why this whole fish-thing is gay. You can’t know that the fins are limbs in the making or if the fins are fully functional and perfectly complete as is. It’s also really suspect that an entire arm system would be evolving at the same time. Does a fish fin that has 10% progress in the digits, wrists, elbows and shoulders really have an advantage over his peers to help him get his genes into the next generation? If I have 10% of a shark tail growing out of my butt have I gained a swimming advantage? How about 1% of a shark fin? I’m sorry but this kind of Darwinism is just self-evidently dumb.

Where to start. First, of course the fins aren’t “limbs in the making,” that doesn’t even make sense. The fins are fins, but they have changed via mutation from the fins of the organism’s predecessors in such a way that they begin to resemble what we, as the observing humans, have defined as “limbs” of tetrapods. The only reason we can say that they resemble the limbs of tetrapods is because we’ve seen tetrapods from farther up the phylogenetic tree that show what a “limb” in a tetrapod ultimately ends up looking like. The Tiktaalik wasn’t floating there in some pre-historic swamp thinking that it needed to start working on limbs so that it or its ancestors might someday break the mirror-like surface of its world and explore the great unknown. I mean come on. His question as to whether a fish fin having “10% progress towards digits, wrist…” having an advantage over his peers is answered simply by the fact that because this organism succeeded in successfully reproducing for a very long period of time, having limbs obviously provided a benefit, or at worse, no net deteriment. But since tetrapods become such a prevalent body plan, both in aquatic and terrestrial niches, it is pretty safe to say that those limbs did indeed provide a survival benefit. When he wonders whether having only 10% of a shark tail would give him a swimming advantage is all but pointless. Who knows? The only way it would confer an advantage was if swimming made him more likely in his current environment to survive. Given that he’s a land dwelling mammal who sits at a desk all day, I think it’s safe to say that no, his 10% of a shark tail does him little good. But since it also wouldn’t be more likely to get him eaten by the paper shredder, the odds of him passing along this odd mutation to his children would actually be quite high. Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic Water World (at least as envisioned by Kevin Costner), Doug’s offspring would indeed be handed a survival advantage the rest of us sorely lacked. But then that’s exactly how evolution works. A mutation that seems pointless at some point can become distinctly advantageous at some future point. Doug provided his own example demonstrating the theory he so dislikes. Oh the irony.

Beyond that point, the rest of his post spirals off into a rant against those whom he perceives are attacking him and people like him for his religious beliefs, the NYT and scientists in particular. To feel so persecuted while enjoying the status of a majority faith in this country has always baffled me and will probably continue to do so. Those who see the evidence before us and conclude that evolution is the best mechanism for explaining that evidence are not out to make a huge army of “Godless” minions. We are, however, more than willing to defend against blatant falsehoods and outright distortions, like his post.

If Doug chooses to believe, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, that evolution is some faith-based cult of people using the scientific method to draw conclusions about how organisms changed and adapted over time, there’s probably little I or anyone else could say that would sway him. The least he could do, before lashing out, would be to get the facts that the science is operating on and argue against those rather than draw his own straw men up and knock them down with his attempted rhetorical wit.

And as an immediate follow-up to the post below, I should mention that the last two squadrons of F-14’s returned from Iraq on March 10th and have been retired. Arguably one of the most popular military aircraft with pilots and with the general public now officially no longer flies for the country of its birth. A sad day for those who flew them and for those who wanted to.

Sniff.

They are being replaced with additional F-18E/F Super Hornets, an aircraft designed from the outset to be multi-role (air-to-air/air-to-ground), with far more sophisticated avionics and requiring only an aircrew of one instead of the two needed in the F-14.

For a good overview of the Tomcat you can check out its wikipedia entry here.

And for my money there was simply no better squadron than the old VF-84 Jolly Rogers, before they went all low-vis with their paint scheme. The black vertical stabilizers with the skull and crossbones and the yellow tips were as good as it got in my opinion. Here’s a great example (from the above wikipedia article):

So long to the Tomcats.

This has been a long time coming, but since I still get a number of hits on this site from people searching for “what does check six mean” and the like, I figured I’d finally post on what “check six” actually does mean.

In short, it means look behind you, as in “check your six ‘o clock” where 12 noon would be looking straigh-ahead with 3 ‘o clock to your right and 9 ‘o clock to your left. It’s basically a term that arose from air combat, though exactly when and how I’m not sure (though I’d put money on it originiating during the early aerial dogfighting of World War I). As you would expect, having someone directly behind you in a dogfight is a bad position to find yourself in. Hence you are supposed to always “check your six” or to shorten it even more for communication over radio channels, “check six.”

Why did I chose that title for my blog? I suppose because back in the eighties I had wanted to fly for the Navy. As you can guess that never worked out. The result of that desire though was an acquired knowledge of things military and especially things Navy and aerial. In other words, I was a jet fighter groupie of sorts, and I took to phrases like “check six” and “target rich environment” even before “Top Gun” came along and made every young adolescent high-school age male want to fly F-14’s and ride crotch-rockets into the California sunset. To show you what a jet-dork I was even before “Top Gun,” I had wanted to fly the F-14 because of it’s (at the time) superior airframe design with swing wings, it’s ability to track 24 targets and attack up to six of them at the same time at a theoretical range of almost 120 miles with a full load of six AIM-54 Phoenix missles. Which were fire-and-forget by the way (at least in the terminal part of thier attack profile which took them up to a very high altitude where they would then nose-over and dive on their assigned targets at incredible speed and under the guidance of their own radar). And I just pulled all of that from memory nearly 25 years after I first learned about it. Honest, I googled none of that. And I bet if you do you’ll find that I’m right. I’m not bragging, just showing you what I spent my youth learning about. Which, I suppose, would explain why I was such a dateless wonder all through high school.

So with that little trip down memory lane you’ve learned what “check six” means and why it’s the name of my blog and why I had so few dates in high school.

I’ve done my educational duty for the day. You’re welcome.

Scientists in Italy have successfully melded living brain neurons onto a microprocessor:

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

“They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip,” said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip’s electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip’s transistors, while the chip’s capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

Red pill or blue?

I will admit the I took a rather strong disliking to Bode Miller during these recently completed Winter Olympics. In this I’m not alone. He seemed like an undedicated slacker, someone who had a lot of talent and put none of it to use. Or so I was led to believe. I don’t downhill ski, nor do I follow the sport in the least. But everyone was saying he was the best, had a good chance at sweeping his events, etc., etc., etc. Turns out he didn’t finish two of them and medalled in none. Why this frosted me and so many others did cross my mind but not in any serious fashion.

And then I read this. And I have to admit it made a lot of sense. And while most of us probably wouldn’t admit it, this sums a majority of us all too well:

You are not like Cal Ripken Jr. You aren’t that dedicated, you aren’t that intense, and you care about your job a whole lot less. Ripken might be your favorite player of the past 25 years, but the two of you have almost nothing in common. In fact, I bet there are many days when you wish you could just take a suitcase of money to Australia, drop out of society, grow out you hair and smoke cannabis all afternoon while having sex with whoever you felt like. In fact, if you had the chance, you’d probably do it tomorrow. But you know what? I bet you also think Ricky Williams is despicable.

Sound familiar? OK, maybe not all of that above but you get the point.

Regardless of your view on Bode Miller, winning, competitiveness and the like, read the whole thing and give it a bit of thought. It’s worth it.

Some pretty amazing chalk drawings done on sidewalks around the world. They are dependant, for the most part, on viewing from a certain angle and the effect is even more enhanced when you’re looking at it as a photograph. All in all, pretty amazing work.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

In keeping with my science theme from the last post, there’s this simply amazing discovery: scientists have confirmed that dolphins don’t seem quite so bright when they’re not in the water:

“The dolphins were incapable of recognizing and repeating simple gestures,” said study co-author Dr. Scott Lindell. “Their non-verbal communications were limited to a rapid constriction and expansion of the blowhole, various incomprehensible fin motions, and heavy tremors while they lay prone on the lab table.”

Perhaps the most interesting result was that their ability to use echo-location to navigate was rendered useless.

“The military has claimed great success in training these mammals, utilizing their echolocation skills to detect mines that have been placed underwater,” said Lindell, who conducted a similar experiment in a concrete parking lot. “We were unable to replicate this finding ourselves.”

Lindell added: “In most cases, the dolphins succeeded in finding land mines only when we placed them directly on top of the mines.”

They were also unable to…

…display novel behaviors, use a map to pinpoint their location on campus (spatial reasoning), or complete a simple obstacle course and wall climb.

I mean come on! They can’t even do a wall climb?!

Read the whole thing. Maybe that large dolphin brain isn’t being used all that well after all. Leave it to The Onion to break such important scientific discoveries. You’d think Nature would have been all over this…

And yes, I know it’s satire, I’m not as dumb as I look.

I’ve always been very interested in quantum mechanics. It’s something that I’ve done a fair amount of reading on it, and while I don’t profess to understand absolutely everything that I’ve read, I’d like to thing I have an above-average understanding of the material for a lay-person.

With that said, this little story from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign caused my brain to emit a sound like the engine of a 50 year Yugo with no oil.

Apparently they’ve constructed a non-running quantum computer that still generates answers:

They send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices, which included a set of components that run a simple database search by changing the properties of the photon.

The new design includes a quantum trick called the Zeno effect. Repeated measurements stop the photon from entering the actual program, but allow its quantum nature to flirt with the program’s components - so it can become gradually altered even though it never actually passes through.

Got that?

Yeah, me too.

I would be terribly remiss to not link to this article by Charles Krauthammer, a conservative op-ed columnist, regarding Intelligent Design and whether it should be taught in public schools.

I’ve written a lot about this particular debate, but this particular piece is so spot on that it needs to be read. It’s worth the few minutes it’ll take to do it.

I’ve had this long post written and saved and edited for months now, almost from back when this blog was created. I haven’t published it because it just wasn’t conveying my point correctly. And then comes this post, from Dispatches from the Culture Wars (a great blog by the way) which basically sums up one of the points I was trying to make, which is basically this: science, specifically evolution, does not precluded belief in or the existance of, a supernatural power.

ID was created in direct response to what was perceived to be the materialistic naturalism of evolution. A sense that evolution was attempting to supplant the theistic notions with those of the purely natural. There were no miracles, there was no God. But evolutionary biology doesn’t and hasn’t done that at all. Or at least it had never explicity set out to do that. People were always free to interpret evolutionary theory as they saw fit philosophically. In other words, the facts are the facts, whether those facts help reinforce your belief in God or not is entirely up to you. You can draw your own philosophical conclusions from the science, but the scientific conclusions don’t change. That’s the key, philosophy is not science, and vice-versa. Just because evolution, and all science for that matter, deals with the laws of nature doesn’t mean that it somehow precludes the existance of the supernatural.

…evolution is “naturalistic” in the exact same sense in which the germ theory of disease, the kinetic theory of gasses, or plumbing are naturalistic. It does not rule out the possible existence of anything supernatural, including the existence of God, it merely proceeds on the working assumption that the world behaves consistently within the parameters of natural law without disruption.

So you really can have your cake and eat it too. To sum up:

It is a mistake to conflate a scientific theory with the philosophical inferences one can draw from it…Richard Dawkins infers support for his atheism from evolutionary theory, while Ken Miller infers support for his Christianity from evolutionary theory, but those are both non-scientific inferences and are not a part of evolutionary theory itself.

The science holds regardless of your theistic viewpoint. It really is that simple. The Catholic Church seems to see it this way, more or less. Fundamentalists, of any religious stripe, seem to either be incapable of or simply don’t want to see it like that. As a result we end up with the nonsense in Dover, PA. or worse, the travesty in Kansas where the Kansas State School Board REDEFINED the defintion of science so that science is “…no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.” All so they can get their particular philosophical viewpoint, i.e. creationism, taught in the public school science classes there.

What a shame. Science is difficult enough to grasp without muddying the waters with vague notions about whether something like transitional fossils prove or disprove the existance of God. The long and the short of it is that it does neither, and that’s where it should be left. Theistic or atheistic crusades have no business in the science classroom. Leave the philosophy to the philosphy and religion classes, where it belongs.