In support of teaching evolution:

The recent ruling by Judge John E. Jones III in Pennsylvania that Intelligent Design cannot be taught is correct.

In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments “may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science.” Among other things, he said intelligent design “violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation”; it relies on “flawed and illogical” arguments; and its attacks on evolution “have been refuted by the scientific community.”

ID is not science, and if schools are to teach science, elucidating students in the Scientific Method, then they should not teach it. For reference, the scientific method is:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

Intelligent Design fails under points four. The Flying Spaghetti Monster also fails. Incidently, so does evolution.

I've found this to be one of the better discourses on this subject.

It must be nice to have the legal system behind your pet idea. I wonder how one goes about achieving that.

My friend said that writing about my life would make my site more interesting...

Here goes...

I woke up.
I graded 160 essay questions, in a harsh manner, repeated multiple times on multiple questions.
I stared at the lack of progress on my dissertation.
I posted this.

The rest of my day would be too interesting and risque to speak of. It would cause heart attacks in older men and induce fainting in women. I won't even begin with the story about the midgets.

If you ever need to tell that special someone about a special something, and you live in Los Angeles... here's a good website.

"In Los Angeles, there's an easy way to tell your sex partners you have HIV or another STD. Send them a free inSPOTLA ecard, ANONYMOUSLY or from your
email address"!!!

As with all things involving email and anonymity, please use responsibly.

So why do families in poor underdeveloped countries have lots and lots of kids? Well, the customary answer is that kids provide for you in the future, and you need lots and lots of them because not many of them are going to live.

My friend suggested that utility was increasing in the number of kids you had. I counterproposed that children were a form of contractual enforcement; that the more kids you had, the greater the costs of either party ditching the other. However, if you think about this enough, it doesn't really make sense.

Someone suggested that utility was actually decreasing in kids over time. So, new kids equals higher utility. Maybe.

We had the brilliant idea that there was a increasing return to scale or some type of skilled labor complementarity at work here... it just gets easier to make 'em, darn it!

The discussion turned from production of kids to naturally... trading children... I'll give you little Tommy here for your Timmy plus three marbles and a cupcake...Why don't we see this? (Bsides all the ethical and moral dilemmas that brings up) The fact that we don't observe this happening says that there is some type of inefficiency screwing up the market mechanism.

After thinking awhile we finally think we got it. It's similar to another problem involving cars and dealerships and why cars depreciate instantly once they're off the lot. Drumroll please... the Lemon Problem. The kid might be a lemon, and you'd be stuck.

Porn With a Purpose

Two European eco-crusaders are taking their love of nature to the extreme by running a porn site to raise money for the cause. "Everyone must try to create something good using what they have," said Tommy Hol Ellingsen, half of the provocative pair. "We had nothing, just our bodies." The site features hard-core videos of the eco-hippies (and their crunchy companions) getting nasty in a Norwegian clear-cut and other locales. But it also dishes out raw facts about environmental destruction. And talk about going green -- the couple has raised almost $100,000 by selling site memberships. Now the problem is finding nonprofit groups who aren't spooked by the money's illicit provenance. "What is morality when people are destroying the world?" asks Ellingsen, who calls some green groups "too boring."-- Lewis Wallace

I am wondering what they mean by "crunchy."

Courtesy of Wired News