On the subversive merits of reading SF at a young age.

(Note: this was originally posted at WTTFTG for Speak Out With Your Geek Out; it's not on science, per se, but I decided to include it here as a helpful one-off for Blogger people reading this directly from Speak. Enjoy.)

Many, many moons ago - while blundering through the horror of what's termed "Sophomore year in high school" - an anti-social miscreant primarily interested in punk rock and other forms of loud, abrasive music happened upon a couple of import paperbacks at a long-dead bookstore (across from the more famous but equally dead Wax Trax records on Lincoln Avenue north of Fullerton) in Chicago.

The two PBs in question were a novelization of the Doctor Who serial The Nightmare of Eden and a UK printing of Philip K. Dick's Doctor Bloodmoney: the purchase of the first was inspired by watching the show Sunday nights on WTTW (my last respite of sanity previous to having to slog back to high school the following Monday); the last one, oddly enough, was inspired by my reading an interview with PKD that had appeared in a double issue of the Los Angeles punkzine Slash. Although the book version of Nightmare was better than the actual televised version I saw a few months later, one thing stuck with me about both it and Bloodmoney; it made me want to read. And it made me want to read more SF.

It's now over 30 years later. I haven't read a Who novelization in a long, long while, but I've never stopped reading  - or appreciating - SF. It's almost as central to my attitude towards life (such as it is) as my interest in music, science, history and the like, and that's saying a lot for what is still considered an "escapist" form of literature. "Escapist". Sure. Was Stand in Zanzibar by John Brunner "escapist"? What about The Sheep Look Up, the Jagged Orbit or The Shockwave Rider? None of those novels would be characterized is "escapist" by anyone except a total loon if they had been classified as mainstream fiction, but the "Sci-Fi" tag always seems to take the air out of serious arguments presented in a fictional form merely because people can't get past the BEM/raygun stereotypes they have of the form. The same, sad to say, is true of their perception of the fans - even if you're ridiculously photogenic to the point of being slapped on a cover of GQ or Cosmopolitan, it's automatically assumed that you have secret fantasies of making out with a tentacled alien if you can actually read, say, Ken MacLeod's The Cassini Division with any sense of real enjoyment.

Problem is, that's a load of nonsense. Judging by the bus I used to take to and from work, roughly half to two thirds of the people sitting on it as passengers who were reading anything were reading SF and fantasy. So much for odd make-out fantasies, eh?

So do yourself a favor, kids; the next time somebody knocks you for liking Stargate or for reading the latest Iain Banks novel, remember that you'll be enjoying those books and series and others for life; they'll only be enjoying themselves for a few minutes before they wake up to the reality that they have to go back to flipping burgers after school and that, unlike you, they can't escape to somewhere in their imagination. And you, on the other hand, can.

Cretin of the moment

Dr. Mehmet Oz, for some well-publicized dumbth concerning apples and arsenic.

This part is really telling about his lack of scruples:

His show got this letter (from the FDA) that clearly explains why his measurements were invalid a week before the show was aired, and Oz ignored it and went ahead and broadcast a misleading and hysterical piece. Some public schools are already yanking apple juice from their lunchrooms on the basis of Oz's lies.

Maybe somebody should explain to Oz that arsenic is entirely "natural". Or maybe some orchard owners ought to get together for a big class-action suit.

I suppose I'm jaded; I saw the beginning of that episode of Dr. Oz and quickly changed the channel before he got particularly deep into the segment. I knew what was coming, and that should be a lesson to anyone else still watching his show after he let like John Edward (!) and other assorted hustlers and quacks on to begin with.

Cretin of the moment

Presidential candidate, House wingnuttery magnet and newly annointed anti-HPV vaccine woo-peddler Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota). Likewise, consider me doubtful on the issue of whether or not she or one of her unlucky staffers can actually produce the person she referred to on Fox News in order to grab a total of $11,000 out of Professors Steven Miles and Art Caplan's hot little hands.

9/11: smart answers to dumb "questions" that remain neccessary

If you came over from Wait 'till the fire turns green, welcome.

Since we're getting close to a major anniversary in the history of the US, a few people insist on rehashing some serious nonsense concerning the events of that anniversary; needless to say, more than a few people have responded with refutations of the more familiar bilge that's been spewed on the subject, so feel free to follow the links to the material in question.

Orac, Respectful Insolence on ScienceBlogs from 2006, "Your Friday Dose of Woo: And now for something completely different..."

Josh Bunting, Buffalo Beast, "5 Ways 9/11 Truthers Are Like Creationists"

Mark Hoofnagle, etc., in Denialism Blog on ScienceBlogs, "9/11 Conspiracies" (a compendium of articles)

RationalWiki, etc., "9/11 conspiracy theories"

Chris Mohr in eSkeptic, "9/11 and the Science of Controlled Demolitions"

Regardless of what pols want you to believe, it's an old, old, old, old world

If you're able to drag yourself away from a blogosphere now contemplating a Presidential debate that found most of the GOP field spluttering on about not "believing" the Theory of Evolution or making incredibly bad, ass-backwards "points" about Galileo (John Huntsman excepted), something of much more relevance to science - specifically, the type of science that evolution deniers in that debate would like to ignore (feel free to peruse Josh Rosenau's piece on this phenomenon or Howard Stern's [!] take on it) -  has been recently uncovered in South Africa:

Two fossil skeletons of early humans appear to mark a halfway stage between primitive "ape-men" and our direct ancestors. A year of detailed study has revealed that the skeletons are a hodgepodge of anatomical features: some bones look almost human while others are chimpanzee-like.

The two fossils, an adult female and a juvenile male, were discovered in the Malapa cave system near Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008. Both about 1.2 metres tall, they are unusually complete and well-preserved and date from 1,977,000 years ago. Excavated by Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and colleagues, they were given the name Australopithecus sediba.

Let's face it, though: despite evidence such as Berger's find, certain career politicians will make a game of proving how much the evidence doesn't matter to them and how proud they are of their ignorance of it. Feel free to shudder at the possibility that one of them may be making scientific policy decisions in the future.   

If you can't sue 'em, lie about 'em

No one expects the Discovery Institute to be particularly honest about anything, but colluding with another like-minded organization in order to make a thoroughly dishonest attack on the California Science Center Foundation just about takes the cake:

The California Science Center Foundation has settled a long-running legal dispute with the American Freedom Alliance ("AFA"). The settlement agreement explicitly states that no party admits fault or liability, and the settlement is a means to avoid the costs of further proceedings. As part of the settlement, the Foundation and AFA agreed to a joint statement that the Foundation would invite the AFA back to hold its private event, and the AFA would decline that invitation. The Foundation is satisfied with the terms of the settlement, which includes a cost of defense payment from the Foundation's insurer, to avoid the expense of further litigation.


The dispute arose out of unapproved press releases that had been issued relating to a private event that the AFA (American Freedom Alliance) had intended to hold at the California Science Center's IMAX Theater. The press releases, for which AFA was responsible, falsely implied that the Foundation or the Science Center were sponsors of the AFA's event. They were not, and as a result of these false and misleading press releases, the Foundation cancelled the AFA's event.
 
The AFA then sued the Foundation and the Science Center for breach of contract and violation of the First Amendment, claiming that the Foundation's cancellation was based upon the purported content of the AFA's program. This was not the case, and the evidence demonstrated that the Foundation was right. Indeed, the fact that the Foundation booked the AFA's event in the first place affirmatively demonstrated the lack of merit to AFA's argument.

Through discovery, the Foundation also discovered other evidence that undermined AFA's claims. For instance, although the AFA asserted that the offending press releases were issued by an entirely independent third party (the Discovery Institute), it was uncovered that the AFA and the Discovery Institute actually had been secretly coordinating the publicity efforts (emphasis mine) and were intentionally trying to make the publicity that led to the cancellation as provocative and controversial as possible. One email among Discovery Institute individuals talked about "letting the jinnie out of the bottle" when "all hell will break lose." The Foundation was certainly entitled to cancel the AFA's private event.

You'd think that the DI and their buddies in the AFA would learn to leave well enough alone. No such  luck:

Unfortunately, it appears that neither the AFA nor the Discovery Institute have learned from their mistakes and false and misleading press releases continue to be issued. For instance, although the Discovery Institute's August 29, 2011 press release states that the "state-run Science Center" paid a settlement amount, the reality is that the Science Center did not pay a dime. Likewise, although the Discovery Institute contends that it was "dragged into the case," the fact of the matter is that the Discovery Institute knowingly and inappropriately issued offending and false press releases leading to the lawsuit. The court in Seattle agreed with the Foundation's discovery position, and forced the Discovery Institute to turn over its embarrassing emails. And although the Discovery Institute touts the fact that the joint statement includes the Foundation's inviting AFA back to hold its event, they ignore the fact that AFA declined such invitation.

Way to raise the level of debate, DI. So when do you start hiring people to leave burning bags of dog crap at the front doors of organizations like the CSFC? It would seem to be the next logical step.

Cretin of the moment

Ann Coulter, again. When does the hurting stop?