The Saga Continues...

I've moved back to WP, so update your blogrolls if you A.) like me and B.) feel like it. My first post up there explains everything.

I am Shocked and Appalled, I Must Say

The general opinion out there seems to be that the Bush administration hasn't exactly shown themselves to be "credential queens" when making key political appointments. Let me offer a dissenting opinion from the consensus here: the Bush administration has stringent standards when it comes to credentials. The only problem is that the main credential that matters is your willingness to bend over the desk, spread 'em wide and make sure that ol' Georgie knows in no uncertain terms that he has an enormous penis. Via Digbylicious, I find the latest on the Mukasey Justice Dept.'s effort to stonewall the investigation into the destroyed CIA torture tapes. As Digs points out in one of her post-titles, it's an elaborate game of heads I win, tails you lose, with the added stipulation that you still lose even if the coin somehow lands on its edge.

The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes' destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

...

The administration has taken a similar strategy in its dealings with Congress on the issue. On Friday, the Justice Department urged Congress to hold off on questioning witnesses and demanding documents because that evidence is part of a joint CIA-Justice Department investigation.

Okay, nothing new here. The CIA isn't going to be held to account for its clandestine skullduggery, a Bush crony is covering the administrations' collective ass, and the Democrats aren't going to do a damn thing about any of it. Sometimes it just seems like it isn't fucking worth it anymore.

Evidence? How Many Divisions Has He Got?

Eric Alterman and George Zornick of CAP have penned an interesting column detailing the reaction from the pro-war crowd to the NIE's report on Iran. The primary focus of the piece is a comparison of the neocons current bashing of the NIE to their past behavior in snubbing intelligence when it doesn't yield to their preconceived notions. The accusations of "Bush-hatred" were an entirely predictable effort to poison the well, but what I find interesting is that a good number of them openly advocate the idea that the intelligence apparatus should be completely subservient the president. Yes, we have no need of such antiquated defeatist notions as "evidence" and "reality", we need a bunch of yesmen to tell ol' Georgie whatever he wants to hear. I have no doubt that these people will eventually succeed in getting the war-wagon rolling again, but their disdain for anything that contradicts them serves as a good reminder of who we're dealing with. The idea that supporting evidence is even required here is a pretense; deploy first, ask questions later. The exact same philosophy that got us into Iraq will soon have us embroiled in yet another mideast war.

Sal Rapes the Quantum

[This post was a bit rushed, so I've edited a few times to add details I initially intended but forgot. I doubt I'll edit further. -- Ed.]

Blake and I were discussing Sal's latest nonsense earlier. Blake is the physics expert here, but let's face it, he's sick. So I'll substitute for him in pointing out the serious flaws in Sal's argument. Sal essentially claims that, since quantum systems are time-reversible and only collapse into classical states through observation, there must be an "ultimate observer" providing measurements to give us the bondary conditions of classical physics. Problems:

1. Sal is restricting himself to the classical Copenhagen interpretation in explaining "wave-function collapse". There are several other interpretational frameworks that physicists use in quantum theory, such the Everett (Many-Worlds) and Consistent Histories interpretations, neither of which, as far as I know, hold the observer as fundamental.
2. Sal ignores the experimentally verified phenomenon of quantum decoherence. Decoherence provides an explanatory framework for the appearance of "wave-function collapse" by formalizing how quantum systems interact with each other and their environment. The collapse associated with measurement in quantum mechanics no longer requires a mechanismless handwave like "observation".
3. Sal attempts to say that the existence of an "ultimate observer", i.e. god, "implies intelligent design". Perhaps Sal would like to revisit logic 101 to rediscover the difference between sufficient and necessary conditions. Assuming there is a point at which intelligent design contrasts with our current understanding of evolution, said current understanding is completely compatible with the argument he is proposing.
4. Even in the Copenhagen interpretation, the result of a measurement can only be known within a certain probability. This fact plays a prominent role in quantum computation, where linear-composed coherent qubits return a classical result with a given probability after they are measured. That certainly implies an upper-bound on the knowledge any quantum mechanical observer can have, and such a being would be prohibited from being "All-Knowing". And furthermore, the observer doesn't have any control over the result of its observations. If God is an observer, it's certainly more a hapless, disconnected deity that the one Sal apparently wants us to believe is implied by his argument.

That's all for me, others can jump in at their leisure.

A Farrago of Nonsense from a Familiar War Criminal

Via IOZ, I find that Henry Kissenger has joined the concerted effort to get the war-wagon rolling again after the recent NIE report on Iran's nuclear program. The general thrust of the argument seems to be "they didn't suspend the program, they only stopped making warheads." Since the other two aspects of the program are uranium enrichment and long-range missles, and seeing as though Iran 1.) has the right to enrich uranium for power purposes under the NPT and b.) long-range missles are conventional armaments, that line of argument doesn't seem quite so strong. He also repeats the tiresome argument that our invasion of Iraq on the pretext of their alleged nukes/nuke programs is what compelled Iran to halt its program. Somehow, that didn't seem to stop Kim Jong Il. The argument also overlooks the fact that we knocked out Iran's two biggest regional rivals and thus detracted from the deterrence benefit of nuclear warheads. Maybe he's just stuck on the notion that Iran could only possibly want nukes because they're a bunch of unthinking, slavering camel jockeys with an insatiable desire to eviscerate the jooz over near the Mediterranean coast. It's where all these ambitions to go to war with Iran seem to find their justification.

The Nerve-Fiber Melting Stupid of HuffPo Comment Threads, Again

Via Mark and Denialism, I see that Matthew Chapman and SB's own Sheril Kirshenbaum have written an article for the HuffPo advocating the Presidential Science Debate for the 2008 election. I don't have very much to say that hasn't already been said on the subject, but I can't resist traveling down to the comments section and seeing the tiresome anti-science asshattery that is unfortunately typical of a large portion of the HuffPo's audience.

From the "understanding science isn't important to science and technology policy" department:

The comments seem to confuse science with science and technology (S&T) policy. S&T policy includes such questions such as the division of funding between pure and applied research; the extent the military can be depended upon to push technology; in the competition for a fixed pot of funding, what fields should be emphasized. In other words, what is the government's role in S&T? One might also suggest the inverse: what is S&T's role in government, but I think that is a philosophy of governance, not S&T policy.

See, because, implementing good science and technology policy in no way depends on a thorough understanding of objective facts about science. It's all about one's "governing philosophy". This isn't the exact kind of thinking that's given the Republicans and their industrial lobbyist benefactors a blank check to confuse public understanding and stave off sensible legislation. It is in fact in no way similar.

From the same comment, we come to our entry from the "stem cell research is not a scientific but a religious issue" department.

On the other hand, the stem-cell debate has virtually no scientific content at all: it is a philosophical-religious debate that affected a funding decision in exactly the way abortion funding decisions were driven.

Yes, no scientific content. Except for the bullshit claims about adult stem cells being inherently superior, about stem cell research leading inexorably to "human cloning" or "fetal farms", about embryonic stem cells not having any promise because of rejection rates, and many other attempts to confuse public understanding through scaremongering and misinformation. Nope, no scientific content there at all.

From the "pharma/military/Zionazi/whatever shill" department.

This argument rests on a misconception of its fundamental premise: It is not that science and technology are "the two most pressing social issues of our time;" it is that the CONSEQUENCES ensuing from how science and technology are currently PRACTICED are the "most pressing social issues of our time." Einstein understood the need to reason about consequences, but his wisdom went out of fashion with the rise of the Military Industrial Complex and remains neglected to this day. I can understand that scientists and technologists who see their careers in jeopardy want to confront any would-be President; but our very social world is in jeopardy from some of the abusive practices that now pollute science and technology. My guess is that this latter problem is "off the radar" for both Science Debate 2008 and the candidates it wishes to invite.

Yes, that stupid and eeeevil military industrial complex,* it's such a pernicious social influence that it gave us the internet I'm using right now to spew this bile! Fuck your careers in their fucking faces you tools, I'll continue to be an worthless ingrate and make unfounded accusations of "abusive practices" against you as a collective without giving specific examples.

From the "stupid scientists are turning science into a religion" department.

Over in the states you have religionist politicians who oppose sciences as a matter of faith, here in the UK we seem to have bred a generation of scientists who are determined to turn "science" into a faith.

We should remember the sciences are simply formalised bodies of knowledge, the religionists need to understand scientific study is essential if we are to deal with climate change, those who appear to believe "science" is some kind of deity should learn the origins of science are in religion, in the Avesta, the sacred texts of the Zoroastrians.**

Or in other words, science is not properly a faith, it just originated in faith. So show some respect for the ancient superstitions that are to varying degrees tangentally related to the socio-cultural circumstances in which your discipline arose. It's the only sensible thing to do. Oh by the way, there are people who think science is a deity. Don't be accusin' me of erectin' strawmen all up in this bitch, ya'll!

That's just a sample of the more egregious ones. I amuse myself, but I fear I may be killing too many brain-cells doing this.

* Just for the record, I myself have many problems with the influence of military contractors in our politcs. But my problem with sentiments like this is how they so broadly condemn the "military industrial complex" without acknowledging its benefits. I somehow doubt that this poster would be willing to part with the internet, the semiconductor, the fiber-optic cable or any other technology that came either directly or indirectly from Defense Department funding. It's a bit more nuanced than the typical leftist mantra of "stinking white male capitalist scientists working for the military are polluting and destroying everything."
** The claim that science arose from Zoroastrianism is plain loony. The historical contingency that gave rise to science was the breakdown of Aristotelian philosophy in the Western intellectual world and the subsequent ascent of modern humanistic philosophy. If anything, Christianity is where the "roots" of modern science are located, not that that is particularly relevant to whether Christianity is true or deserving of deference in modern times (it is neither).

The Best Way to Avoid Failure is to Never Do Anything Worthwhile

Or at least that must be Sal Cordova's philosophy. In a couple of posts he's beaten his chest with self-important wankery, Darwin bashing, hanging equations with no explanation of their relevance, bragging about knowing algebra, and some bizarre attempt to appropriate Erwin Schrodinger to the cause of IDC and, I presume, "Advanced Creation Science". Actually making any kind of argument seems to be an alien concept to slimy ol' Sal. Seriously, this guy couldn't find his ass with both hands.