Well, Kenneth Miller’s lecture at UT last night was awesome. Even better was that I got there very early and got to talk to him. He was generous enough to talk to me for about 20 minutes. I didn’t think it was possible to like him more than I already did, but he was very cool. I asked him what he thought about PZ getting thrown out of the Expelled movie, and he just laughed. We talked a little bit about the “framing” issue (see here, or just go to ScienceBlogs and search). I also asked him how he got along with Dawkins, and he told me a great story about Dawkins correcting part of Finding Darwin’s God (something very minor about physics), and how much Dawkins liked the book in general. Of course, Dawkins disagreed with almost the entire thing. But it’s positively great that rational people can disagree about such things (I exclude fundamentalists from the “rational” categorization). The world would be boring otherwise.
The lecture itself was very entertaining. Dr. Miller is very funny, and his presentation was very slick and well-done. I can easily believe that his biology classes would be excellent. You can watch online here. I highly recommend it — if you aren’t familiar with the creation/evolution debate, this is a good primer. I couldn’t stay for the Q&A period though, which seemed like it got off to a good start.
Ah, I love people who don’t understand science or statistics. This CNN article is about how some parents believe that vaccines have caused their children’s autism. For example:
Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says the connection between vaccines and autism is nothing more than a sad coincidence… “The studies compared autism rates among populations of children who did and did not receive the MMR vaccines, and among those who did and did not receive vaccines containing thimerosal. It’s been asked and answered: Vaccines don’t cause autism,” Offit says.
Michelle Cedillo’s parents disagree. “I think there is a link,” says Theresa Cedillo, Michelle’s mother.
Wow. She disagrees. Personally, I go through the day disagreeing with facts all the time. No, wait, that would be the definition of insanity.
After doing some additional reading about various fusion projects (as a follow up to this article on Michio Kaku’s book), I’ve uncovered my own misunderstanding. I’ve always taken “cold fusion” to mean “controlled fusion”; that is, I understood “cold” to essentially mean “not a bomb”. But I was wrong. “Cold fusion” actually refers to room-temperature fusion; Prof. Kaku was clearly referring to “controlled fusion at high temperatures” as being possible within a few centuries. I’ve made edits to my original article to rectify this.
On the other hand, I’m glad for my mis-labelling, because it seems to have attracted an actual cold-fusion crank, Jed Rothwell, which has been an interesting diversion. While I am no where near qualified (as evidence I give you the first paragraph of this post) to judge the scientific merits of the research he is propagandizing, I can still point out several characteristics that smack of quackery to me.
Continue reading ‘Crank Physics’