Dan Gardner sniffs at the Templeton Prize in today’s Ottawa Citizen for its effect on undermining “real” science.

One of the more amusing things about the state of modern science is the gap between what the physicists are finding, namely the incredible fine tuning which is required at every level to produce a universe in which there are intelligent observers, and the materialist doctrines of randomly self-assembling biobots that are the party line in the field of biology. The biologists rail against design, while the physicists record it in the incredible number and detail of laws that have to work out just so, sometimes to 20 orders of magnitude, to produce minds such as ours, which watch stars and listen to Mozart.

Read the rest…

At last, saying what everyone is thinking, or guarding against thinking. tasteless, offensive, and funny:

China and Russia swoop in to protect their new BFF and kindred spirit, Comrade Robert Mugabe at the UN Security Council.

As I have noted often, a total lack of shame opens up vast new frontiers for some.

One of the byproducts of a euphoria is that everything is perceived as good news. A good example is the recent news coverage of Obama, in particular these two news items.

Jackson’s `Crude’ Remarks May Give Boost to Obama

Ironically, success of the surge in Iraq is helping Obama

Is there anything that won’t help Obama?

Watch this fellow:

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Listen to this fellow in the US House of Representatives. You may disdain his accent, (I speak to accent snobs) but is he not making eminent good sense? Listen to the EPA two-page single spaced rules for disposing of one of the neon-mercury light bulbs that the US and Canada have decided, by fiat, to impose on us.

The difference between the United States and Canada, where the use of these fluorescent bulbs has been mandated, is that there are, in the United States, sources of resistance to the collectivism inherent in the British ministerial form of government. When the Cabinet decides, the King rules. And the Cabinet is able to decide when it has the command of the House of Commons.

But both systems labour in vain against the know-it-all tendencies of bureaucracy, which is eternally the same. This decade it is energy conservation. Next decade it will be some other cause. And every decade sees the accretion of one more set of rules that is never deleted and forgotten. Think about it as you screw in your new government-madated light bulbs.

h/t Rumproast

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild Says Obama is “Elitist”

On CNN this HillRaiser stated “This is a hard decision for me personally because, frankly, I don’t like him. I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

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In 2003 Dr Charles Krauthammer, a former speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale, coined the term Bush Derangement Syndrome, which he defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.”

Now the psychiatrist at Royal Children’s Hospital in Australia have identified a “previously unreported phenomenon” which consists of a first case of “climate change delusion” in a 17-year-old. It notes that “The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies.” Full article is available here.

In the eyes of Justice McLachlin and her co-ideologues on the nominating committee, “controversy” is a variable absolute:

McGill ethicist refused OC because she was ‘too controversial’

[...]

The Order’s receptiveness to new, taboo-breaking social mores was evident well before the Morgentaler appointment. The Order last year approved the candidacy of Brent Hawkes, a Toronto cleric who performed Canada’s first same-sex marriage. Also last year, the Order appointed writer Jane Vance Rule, lauding her specifically for “populating her novels with homosexual as well as heterosexual characters.” And when it honoured Jean Chrétien, the Order put a curious emphasis on his support for same-sex unions.

Few people, even critics of gay rights, made a fuss. I think most Canadians thought the Order was making an effort to reflect a significant current of public opinion. It’s hard to be against broad-mindedness.

Now, however, it suddenly turns out that the Order is not so broad-minded after all. It has refused admission to Margaret Somerville, the McGill University ethicist who is a leading critic of the social views that the Order welcomes.

And what does Ontario’s favourite Catholic schoolboy made good have to say about this? Don’t wait for the translation, Mr. McGuinty!

The socialist economist John Galbraith, in his 1967 book “The New Industrial State“, argued that large American corporation, such as General Motors, are essentially immune from market forces because they can use advertising to create additional demand. Nobody should ever confuse leftist economics with reality, as we have seen GM’s market share drop precipitiously, but that hasn’t stopped platitudes raining down on him.

Similar events could be unfolding in the political arena, where Obama is poised to raise $500 million. Since this fund raising projection was published on June 19, 2008, the events have unfolded which seem to indicated that Democrats are playing with Galbraith’s playbook. Eleanour Clift describes this 50-state strategy as follows:

Let’s do the math. If Obama holds all the Kerry states, he’s at 252. Add Iowa for 259. Add a win in Virginia or North Carolina, “and it’s game, set, match,” says Plouffe. Or add Colorado and New Mexico, Republican states where Obama now leads, to reach 270. The campaign last week put up a biographical ad in 18 states, including Alaska and Montana, historically Republican states. It looked like Obama was just trying to taunt McCain, lure him into spending money in states where he shouldn’t. But Plouffe insists “there’s not a head fake in the bunch.” Alaska’s octogenarian Sen. Ted Stephens, under investigation for corruption and the sponsor of the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” is in a tight race for reelection. Montana, which Bill Clinton won in ‘92, has a Democratic governor and senator.

And Plouffe is just getting started. There’s Georgia, a state that hasn’t gone Democratic since 1976, but the presence of former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, who’s running for a third party—Libertarian—could drain 2 to 4 percent from McCain and put the state within reach for Obama. “Indiana is another place where I would ask you to reorder your thinking,” Plouffe said with clinical certainty, adding it to his list of states “behaving” more Democratic. “Our goal is to adjust the electorate more to our liking,” he said, explaining how registering a record number of African-Americans and young people under 40 could swell Democratic turnout and swing Republican-leaning states to Obama.

It looks as if Clift is expecting Obama to win 50 states in the upcoming Presidential election with the help of advertising strategy as described by Galbraith. Your correspondent is certainly glad that this will leave 7 states for McCain and the election won’t be a disaster for him, like 1984 was for Mondale, who only carried one state and the District of Columbia.

From NRO:

So, the recent news out of the Obama camp is that they’re planning a huge rally with thousands of people in a stadium, want to create a mandatory youth corps for national service, and are thinking about a big dramatic speech in Berlin.

It’s like they’re trying to sell copies of Jonah’s book or something.

Perhaps it is the something.

A new study reports that consuming tofu increases the risk of dementia:

The researchers found high tofu consumption – at least once a day – was associated with worse memory, particularly among the over-68s.

So much for that old bromide about those who can’t remember the sixties.

FromPhysicsworld.com

Apr 20, 2007

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality

“Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra “hidden variables”. Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism — giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871).”

What is it about mind that appears to be central to the constitution of reality? This is the question raised by modern findings of physicists in repeatable experiments (provided you have atom smashers). Measurement, which is an act of consciousness, collapses superposed states (simultaneously dead and alive) into definite states. Open the box and Schroedinger’s cat is either dead or alive. Before you made the observation, it was both. Observation collapses the possibilities. What was a philosphical debate between Einstein (realist) and Niels Bohr (there is only measurement) in the 1920s and 1930s has now been put to the test in increasingly clever experiments which prove that realism is not a sustainable position.

Physicists have come to the conclusion that the assumption of realism, that there is an objective reality independent of measurement, is not sustainable. Einstein was wrong, and Niels Bohr was right. There is only measurement. Physicists have been testing this proposition in many subtle ways for decades. One by one the assumptions of locality (that apparently separate things cannot actually be united in simultaneous faster-than-light ways) and realism (that there is an objective reality behind the measurements) have had to be abandoned. 

The second implication of this weirdness is for the biologists, and the materialists, such as Dawkins, constantly railing against the possibility of God. I keep wondering whether these fellows have actually read a book about the philosophical implications of quantum physics. I am not saying that modern findings in quantum physics prove the existence of God. Not at all. I am saying that modern findings in physics disprove the existence of matter as independent of mind. One can only wish that, before we are all hauled into the materialist Star Chambers to confess our thought-crimes against Dawkins Thought, we shall at least be granted the right to point out to them that they have an exceedingly compromized view of material reality. Indeed, matter is just not what it used to be.

The vast deserts of our ignorance!

Are we in the Matrix?

I know how I feel about Dr. Henry Morgentaler getting the Order of Canada. I do not know whether I am justified in my feeling.

Morgentaler is a hideous man. His doctrines are appalling. His view that the the primacy of the woman over her fetus is so absolute, it cannot be right. There is no balance in his view. Freedom to choose is the freedom under all circumstances to be able to abort a future child, no matter at what stage of pregnancy. And if you object to that view, you will be accused of believing that women are not and should not be absolutely sovereign over all decisions of reproduction. I am guilty as charged.

Society, in some form, in some way, has an interest in its own survival, and consequently in the reproductivity of its women. This has always been the foundation of our laws controlling access to abortion. Consequently I do not consider that women are absolutely sovereign in their reproductivity. They have the preponderant interest, to be sure, but not absolute freeedom of choice. Call me a compromizing weasel on this issue, and I will agree with you. Most of us are all compromizing weasels on the subject of killing the unborn. I do not think even the freedom-to-choose crowd contemplate killing the unborn with equanimity, they just want to shut off their consciences. We would be very convinced of our own rectitude if we were not compromizers, or persuaded of absolute doctrines on the matter, as many are.

I can understanding killing the guilty for capital crimes, but not for parking tickets. Likewise killing the unborn for our convenience, that is a harsh doctrine. Yet we live by it. We put into practice our beliefs in this matter all the time. And the same people who uphold the euphemistic “freedom to choose” are most often the people who are repelled by capital punishment. Go figure.

But back to Morgentaler. There is something deeply wrong about the man which defies my powers of description, and possibly my understanding. I see him as the Nazis’ last poisoned gift to mankind. Somehow the Nazi vision of evil was so pure and absolute (kill all the Jews, because they are the source of evil) that its doctrines have perversely, weirdly infected the doctor, who did time in Auschwitz. I cannot imagine the stress of being in a hell created by a political ideology that declares that you are the emanation of Satan, but Auschwitz would come close. I hope never to undergo a similar process of degradation, enslavement, starvation and hideous, unremembered death at the hands of demons who hate you and wish to see you and your kind exterminated, as one would a wasps’ nest under the cottage deck which has just stung your baby. His absorption of some of the absolutism of their doctrines, and its weird refraction as an evangelist of aborting human fetuses, is an imaginative stretch on my part, but I prefer to situate the cause of evil outside of Morgentaler himself. In this I may be too generous towards him. He may be authentically and originally evil, without assistance from the Nazis.

Whatever he thought he was doing for the cause of women, he has so far exceeded that goal that he has become a menace to our survival. He is not the right sort of person to be honoured in this way by the Order of Canada. The selection committee has lost its moral bearings if they could not see that they have honoured the exponent of quite evil and disgusting doctrines, which are far in excess of the immediate cause, questionable as it is, of access to abortions.

I was dismayed but not really surprised to read in the July 2 Ottawa Citizen that mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah will host CBC Radio Two’s only program devoted solely to classical music come September, the 10am – 3pm weekday slot of an as-yet unnamed show.

Not that I have anything against Ms Nesrallah, she is a talented singer with a charming onstage manner. It was the dismissal in the article of very talented current classical show hosts like Tom Allen and Eric Friesen by Programming Director Chris Boyce with inane statements like “she really knows this stuff” and “the conversation she will be having about it will be really intelligent conversation.”

Mr. Boyce appears not to know anything about classical music or ever listen to Radio Two’s current programming; if he did, he would be aware that it is not possible to have more intelligent and knowledgeable conversation about classical music than we currently get from the two broadcasters mentioned above – and they are charming and entertaining to boot. But neither one has been offered the prize. Instead it has gone to someone with no broadcast experience of any kind. What could the reason be?

What does Julie Nesrallah represent? The same thing our charming GG represents, and who was chosen for the same reasons. Yes, you guessed it – the new multicultural face of Canada. Ms Nesrallah is female, off-white and of non-European ancestry. The CBC poohbahs must imagine that she will naturally attract all those “new” Canadians who currently listen to ethnic radio or CDs from their country of origin, because she will reflect them. Well, no, she will not turn them into new listeners of Radio Two – the reason they don’t listen to CBC is because they prefer to hear music they are used to and commentary in a language they speak fluently.

And she is a star! So doubtless she will also attract all those people who have never listened to classical music because it is presented by some dull broadcaster they never heard of. But here’s a flash for the geniuses at CBC Programming like Chris Boyce – people who don’t already enjoy classical music have never heard of Julie Nesrallah either, and they couldn’t care less.

The formerly small but loyal audience for Radio Two is about to vanish into a black hole as a result of the new “vision” for the station, which is really just the political agenda, or politically correct agenda, of the little band of tired left-liberals who now run the CBC. All Radio Two will “reflect” is their view of Canada as they think it should be, not as it really is. And we “old” Canadians who love classical music will tune in to BBC and NPR classical on the Internet, or join the “new” Canadians and just listen to our CDs.