Let's start first with Sebra's... I have just recently noticed how excessively patriotic I'm becoming in spelling. I guess sometime I just miss the balminess of home and the roar of the ocean... so I make a point of maintaining my Australian spelling. However, being a poor speller to start with, I have just taken the bulldosing approach and started spelling everything with a 's' instead. Yup, in Australia we have 'seros' and 'sebras'! :D
Now onto the main point, reading Gould's book (actually his Wiki bio...) I came across two contending theories of the mechanics of evolution - punctuated theory vs gradualist theory of evolution (affectionally refered to as jerks and creeps respectively - isn't the English language just wonderful?).
(Note, no one is asking my opinion... I don't need to have one, which is so entirely refreshing.)
Hmmm... fascinating theories and both proposed by 'evolutionists', however, I feel like the punctuated theory lends itself more to alignment with intelligent design. I wonder what Gould would think of this? I am in the last couple of chapters of the book, and while it has been jaw dropping reading and looking at the pictures of the marvels of the Burgess fauna, these last few chapters are full of philosophical musings which are equally jaw dropping, especially given it is all so new to me.
Interesting aside note to me, is that while other similar soft bodied preserved fossils have been discovered in nearby and far (China) places, it seems like there is no record of juveniles...
Okay, so how does Roy Spencer come into this? Well, he was mentioned to me recently for reasons of his having a loud opinion on climate change, and when I went to see what his opinions where which I am now interested in, so I'll have to go find his book to read...I stumbled upon the fact that well he was a 'creationist'. And was quoting Gould's theory of punctuation as a supporting point.
So then reading Spencer's case for intelligent design it is interesting but my heart just fell when I read 'Christianity'. Why, why do people need to be religious?! Why cannot supporters of intelligent design/creationism be apart/segregated from religion??? it's absolutely depressing. People are not capable of being/doing good in large numbers.... the social experiment and failure of communism is a prime example of this...
And this is all I seem to be capable of today... I feel drained, it has been such a long week...
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Wonderful Life
Having a particularly irritating day at work, which started off well, but quickly degraded into a heap of disappointment, and physically painful struggle trying to stay awake, I came home to do nothing but read, and found solace in 'Wonderful Life' :) Admittedly I understand very little (but I sense Gould's superhuman attempt to relate his field to the layman and greatly appreciate it), however, it is just filled with such eloquent wonder at the intricacies at the complexities of diversity and 'disparity' (newly acquired understanding) of life that it healed my crushed soul.
I was just about to start on a long lament at my predicament, but I am stopping myself as it is rather tedious...
I recently observed in reading the book on the statistics and also, a while ago on mathematical illiteracy (which I need to purchase and reread), I find that like fashion the 'fashionable ideas' of the day are recycled about every 10 years. The book on how statistics was written a while back, back when making $15,000/yr meant you where well-off, and it was addressing the same problems in society as we are today, and the same for the mathematical illiteracy book... However this is both comforting and scary. Comforting in the sense that it seems that humanity is globally, what we are all internally: short sighted and love wallowing in our current unfortunate circumstances. Scary in the sense that our progress to higher moral, educational and ethical standards seems slow, perhaps we are even regressing....?
On a side note, I am making it a goal to go to the Burgess Shale (soon)!
I was just about to start on a long lament at my predicament, but I am stopping myself as it is rather tedious...
I recently observed in reading the book on the statistics and also, a while ago on mathematical illiteracy (which I need to purchase and reread), I find that like fashion the 'fashionable ideas' of the day are recycled about every 10 years. The book on how statistics was written a while back, back when making $15,000/yr meant you where well-off, and it was addressing the same problems in society as we are today, and the same for the mathematical illiteracy book... However this is both comforting and scary. Comforting in the sense that it seems that humanity is globally, what we are all internally: short sighted and love wallowing in our current unfortunate circumstances. Scary in the sense that our progress to higher moral, educational and ethical standards seems slow, perhaps we are even regressing....?
On a side note, I am making it a goal to go to the Burgess Shale (soon)!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
2 + 2 = 4.0000
I love Mark Twain for many things: his sharp wit which I didn't appreciate him for until I read his "How I edited an agricultural paper once", and now an excerpt from his writing takes the honorable place of the concluding thoughts of the book "How to lie with statistics":
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
So having read "How to lie with statistics", which is an amazingly informative book (and is sure to make my PhD thesis more convincing ;)) I applied it recently to a report I read on public perception of science. So, here are a few points I made reading the report:
1. When conducting surveys, perhaps in order to avoid introducing hidden bias should not contain emotive phrases which necessarily incite people when 'binning' their opinions.
2. What is the definition of scientists? - there are people who hold PhDs who are not scientists, and people without PhD certification who are excellent scientists...?
3. It was interesting to see agreement in the polls (comparing 'scientists' opinions with the 'general public') when the point was concerning children vaccines. Possibly because this was addressing the common ground of both, as both are parents and want best for their children.
4. I noticed that the 'geosciences' had the most positive outlook of their profession (I can see why...).
5. It was annoying to note that it was seen as a negative that the American public didn't know that an atom was larger than an electron. This was seen as a lack of knowledge in science. What a big smelly load of garbage! Okay, now I've worked myself up, and probably won't make much sense, but I cannot stress how infuriating it is! Who the hell cares?! This is a small, small insignificant 'fact' (I'm cautious using this term), it's basically on par with remembering jokes so that you can entertain your dinner guests. Science is an approach to facts, the systematic ordering of ideas rather than remembering stupid dumb things. How can you expect people to 'anchor' random facts like this, like remembering the names of new people they have met, some do it better than others. AH! (btw, I am partial to this idea of anchoring, fascinating way of looking at why we attach ourselves to certain things and situations. I'm working on being all Zen ('unanchored' about life)...
6. Interesting to see that 'scientists' see themselves as liberal, whereas public opinion is that they are very conservative. Perhaps as scientists we are trained to be liberal, as we are trained to form hypothesis and then be unbiased in our testing, and accept the conclusion whatever it may be. But with advancement of our careers, when our hypotheses build on themselves, finding out that our initial one was wrong is a huge blow to the whole scaffold and our personal ego. And we become conservative, as we cherish most of all those ideas which are our own, and hold on like to our ideas once formed as pitbulls. Hence, we perceive ourselves as liberal (as is our professional training), but portray ourselves as conservative (trying to save our careers)? :P
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
So having read "How to lie with statistics", which is an amazingly informative book (and is sure to make my PhD thesis more convincing ;)) I applied it recently to a report I read on public perception of science. So, here are a few points I made reading the report:
1. When conducting surveys, perhaps in order to avoid introducing hidden bias should not contain emotive phrases which necessarily incite people when 'binning' their opinions.
2. What is the definition of scientists? - there are people who hold PhDs who are not scientists, and people without PhD certification who are excellent scientists...?
3. It was interesting to see agreement in the polls (comparing 'scientists' opinions with the 'general public') when the point was concerning children vaccines. Possibly because this was addressing the common ground of both, as both are parents and want best for their children.
4. I noticed that the 'geosciences' had the most positive outlook of their profession (I can see why...).
5. It was annoying to note that it was seen as a negative that the American public didn't know that an atom was larger than an electron. This was seen as a lack of knowledge in science. What a big smelly load of garbage! Okay, now I've worked myself up, and probably won't make much sense, but I cannot stress how infuriating it is! Who the hell cares?! This is a small, small insignificant 'fact' (I'm cautious using this term), it's basically on par with remembering jokes so that you can entertain your dinner guests. Science is an approach to facts, the systematic ordering of ideas rather than remembering stupid dumb things. How can you expect people to 'anchor' random facts like this, like remembering the names of new people they have met, some do it better than others. AH! (btw, I am partial to this idea of anchoring, fascinating way of looking at why we attach ourselves to certain things and situations. I'm working on being all Zen ('unanchored' about life)...
6. Interesting to see that 'scientists' see themselves as liberal, whereas public opinion is that they are very conservative. Perhaps as scientists we are trained to be liberal, as we are trained to form hypothesis and then be unbiased in our testing, and accept the conclusion whatever it may be. But with advancement of our careers, when our hypotheses build on themselves, finding out that our initial one was wrong is a huge blow to the whole scaffold and our personal ego. And we become conservative, as we cherish most of all those ideas which are our own, and hold on like to our ideas once formed as pitbulls. Hence, we perceive ourselves as liberal (as is our professional training), but portray ourselves as conservative (trying to save our careers)? :P
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