Science

Climategate: Much ado about nothing

ArgusEyes — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:37:12 GMT

In case there is anyone out there who cares what i think about this. I have been massively underwhelmed at the criticisms of the email. Others have said it well.

I think that the science now tells us more than enough to warrant action. Certainly there remain uncertainties, but not on the issue as a whole.

With regards the private e-mails posted on the internet, I think the story is a simple one and it could apply to any one of us. Think of all the e-mails you have written over the past 10 years. Now imagine that someone criminally breaks into your e-mail account and downloads all of them, handpicks a few and posts them on the internet to cast you in a particular light. We could all be shown to be saints or sinners or anything in between.

Now look at what has happened with these scientists going about their work in much the same way anyone of us might attend to our job. Enough said.

Potholer54. Great as always.

I am still skeptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). I accept the scientific basis but question the doomsayers' claims. I still think AGW is catnip to various “isms” and the reverse to other “isms”.

I think that the proposed solutions, which is to control and intrude into our lives, are horrible and anti-liberal.

Is homosexuality natural?

ArgusEyes — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:42:09 GMT

Sometimes I make a post on a forum or discussion thread that I think is worthwhile enough to post here. Apologies if this seems cheap but a particularly interesting one arose recently. The issue of “is homosexuality natural” on my MRAS YouTube group as it happens. Why not join and join in on the discussion?

Here is the opening post:

actually..I didnt agree with it a bit. The ACT itself is unnatural. Homosexuality cannot sustain itself.It needs hetrosexuals to survive. If it was natural it would be able to sustain itself like other natural things. When he speaks of oppisites he is wrong. There is no such thing as dark.....only the absense of light.

…

creepyguy...life really aint that complicated. So would you say beastiality...polygamy....paedophilia.... are not unnatural=bad things?

My post:

When discussing this issue it is important that we rigidly decide our terms of discourse.

“Natural” purely means “formed by nature”. Homosexuality exists in a lot of other animal species apart from our own. In this sense homosexuality is indeed natural, so is paedophilia and bestiality.

But you muddied the waters by making a moral equivalence. Essentially natural=good and unnatural=bad. There is no basis for this. An animal species that is an evolutionary dead end and which is doomed for extinction is still formed by nature. Natural isn’t necessarily good. So we as a culture can create a moral code as to what we will accept and what we won’t, be it natural or unnatural. Medicine is also unnatural because they were not formed by nature, their ingredients were but medicine is a creation of man, not of nature.

Also, we don’t say that because man is natural and formed medicine therefore medicine is natural as well. We don’t apply an inheritance chain to this otherwise everything would turn out to be natural and the term would lose all its meaning.

Here are some sources:

Bestiality in nature: Mating toads leap the species barrier.

Homosexuality in nature: 1,500 animal species practice homosexuality

Cherchez-le-Femme

ArgusEyes — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:10:02 GMT

Cherchez-le-femme means “Find-the-female” in French. It is a term that I got and modified from Charles Krauthammer where he mentioned “Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif” (find-the-Jew) in reference to the Time’s Joe Klein who decried the odious attempts of "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.". I’m not touching that one now so don’t even try, but ever the thief, I will attempt to crowbar this term into the popular discourse, by which I mean i will use it a lot, so remember who came up with it first, alright?

Before your brain drops out with my inconsequential wittering (hey, I’ve been away a long time), let me introduce this piece from the BBC, Poor women ‘bear climate burden’:

Women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change, a report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned.

The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.

They do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said.

Regular readers will notice similarities to the “Greener Gender: The Greener Gender: Are men worse for the environment?” essay that I wrote some time ago, in which I criticised author Gerd Johnssom-Latham for bandwagon jumping and using climate change to server her ideological agenda. The exact same thing is happening here. Notice the middle paragraph in the quote above. “The agency said there was a disproportionate burden on those women and called for greater equality.“. Call me a fool if you want, but that sounds like a roundabout way to solve the problem. If an deleterious phenomenon is going to disproportionally affect a certain group of people then one would think that the first order of the day is to mitigate the effect, not to propose a social solution targeted at the group of people, people like this are meddlers and they irk me.

This is where the term “Cherchez-le-Femme” comes in. This is the phenomenon we saw in the “Greener gender” report and in this report from the UN. People with an agenda are extraordinarily adept at linking a lot of things that happen in the world to their particular agenda. Certain people are obsessed with Jews, and everything that happens comes back to the Jews somehow, it really is quote boring talking to such people. This is why I am skeptical about climate change. I will accept that it is happening to a certain degree because as I know from defending evolution and science on so many occasions, that it takes a little bit of chutzpah to go against the scientific community. However, as an astute observer said on the Dennis Prager show one time, climate change has become catnip to a bunch of failed “isms”. It is a ripe fruit dangling in the faces of various political groups, to be picked and used to advance their purposes. The imaginary female that will be damaged by the next big thing must be sought by the feminist and identified as a victim to be solved by the medicine they offer. Hence the reason they say “more equality” is needed rather than “stop global warming” or even “raise the standard of living”.

I must also point out for people who don’t know my views. There is a problem in the third world, you’d have to be blind to not see it. Women in many countries around the world have less rights, some people say “therefore feminism” whereas I say “therefore equality”. Contemporary feminism as a solution the the plight of women in the third world is a bad idea. You can look to this and other blogs to advance that particular case. One last observance on this issue, the executive director of UNFPA is Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. If you go to her bio then you will see her dedication to standard feminist causes. I have highlighted the instances of the word “women” in the image below to show this. Now, I don’t normally dig into people’s past but it goes to the central message. Ms. Obaid is clearly a feminists who is looking to climate change as the catnip to sell her cause. It’s sneaky and veiled and will turn people off of her cause in the end.

Men lose their minds over pretty women

ArgusEyes — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:01:34 GMT

I think most men in the audience can think of a situation in his life where he degenerated into a pile of mushy brain goo in the presence of a stunner, It’s happened to me.

So here is a study: “Study: Men Losing Their Minds Over Women”. Didn’t really need to be done but it’s always useful to have some kind of scientific backing when dealing with people who have problems with reality.

The study measured brain function in 40 male heterosexual student volunteers, who were asked to perform a standard memory test in which they were shown a stream of letters and had to quickly say if each was the same as the previous letter. They then spent several minutes talking to either a man or an attractive woman and then repeated the test.

The researchers found that even a few minutes with the attractive woman was enough to make the students slower and less accurate on the test. The more attracted they were, the worse their results.

They also studied the effects on women students of being in the company of handsome men, and found the test scores were unaffected.

…

The idea for the study came from one of the scientists, who was so impressed by a beautiful woman he met that when she asked where he lived, he had forgotten his own address! He had temporarily lost his mind.

Natural Selection: A Machine for Making Almost Impossible Things

ArgusEyes — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:08:21 GMT

Taken from a lecture by professor Steve Jones called "Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right".
http://royalsociety.org/event.asp?id=4140

Making a Monkey out of Darwin: A Rebuttal (part 2)

ArgusEyes — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:24:17 GMT

"Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France.

Yes, he was such a Darwinist that he didn’t really mention it anywhere.

Historian Jacques Barzun believes Darwinism brought on World War I: "Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens -- all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate."

If you followed that, then explain it to me in non crazy talk.

Yet a theory can produce evil -- and still be true.

Like nuclear physics – when do we get to blame Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Lise Meitner? Or, maybe, humans have always fought each other? Nah, that’s crazy talk.

And here Windchy does his best demolition work.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a "completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection."

"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript.

The idea that Darwin stole his theory from Wallace is a historically illiterate falsity. There is no truth in it. Darwin sat on his theory for a very long time and ran the risk of being snubbed to the post by Wallace so they presented their ideas around the same time. You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Darwin's examples of natural selection -- such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive -- have been debunked. Giraffes eat grass and bushes. And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive?

Giraffes eat bushes and grass as well as leaves from trees. Has this guy ever seen a nature documentary? His ridiculous strawman about there being a cut-off for the length that a giraffes neck needs to be is ridiculous, are all trees the same height? No. Ergo, a shorter neck gets less food and a longer one gets more, ergo advantage, ergo natural selection can choose it.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man was a sensation until exposed by a 1950s investigator as the skull of a Medieval Englishman attached to the jaw of an Asian ape whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Therefore evolution is false.

For 150 years, the fossil record has failed to validate Darwin.

Complete inversion of the truth.

And Darwinists still have not explained the origin of life, nor have they been able to produce life from non-life.

Sounds like a child doesn’t it? Scientists haven’t answered everything yet, whilst your made up myths have explained exactly zero. Also evolution is not abiogenesis and I stifle the biggest yawn in the world.

The most delicious chapter is Windchy's exposure of the Scopes Monkey Trial and Hollywood's Bible-mocking movie "Inherit the Wind," starring Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow.

The trial was a hoked-up scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tenn. Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury. And William Jennings Bryan held his own against the atheist Darrow in the transcript of the trial.

In 1981, Gould had this advice for beleaguered Darwinists:

"Perhaps we should all lie low and rally round the flag of strict Darwinism ... a kind of old-time religion on our part."

Exactly. Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.

Some bullshit about a film only loosely based on reality, a quote mine and the faith card and we’re finally done. Phew.

When you see a “…” in a creationist quote, you can pretty much rely on the fact that you’re being lied to. Here is the fully quote from Stephen Gould:

But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment — a kind of old-time religion on our part.

But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a unified front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

So he says the opposite to how it is being construed by Buchanan. I know how these things can work though, because I have messed up quotes before. He has passed on a quote that another has sent him without looking it over, it can happen to any of us.

The last line is standard, the creationists aim to being us down to their level by conflating evolutionary theory with faith. It speaks to the fact that they know their position is less tenable so they’re trying to drag us down to their level. Nice try but sloppy B.S. like this continues to render creationism the laughing stock of anyone but the most faithful who will gobble this up.

Also see “Pat Buchanan makes a monkey of himself about evolution” and “Old fossil "disproves" Darwin!”.

Making a Monkey out of Darwin: A Rebuttal

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:21:52 GMT

Well, this one's going to be fun.

Patrick Buchanan has written a piece for RealClearPolitics.com called “Making a Monkey Out of Darwin”. It’s a knee-slapping rip-roaring fun ride down lame off-the-shelf creationist claims alley. In short, the claims are:

“Darwinism” inspired Karl Marx
“Darwinism” inspired Hitler
“Darwinism” inspired eugenics
“Darwinism” caused world war 1!? (That’s a new one to me)
The neck of the Giraffe
Nebraska Man
Piltdown Man
The fossil record is rubbish
Stephen J. Gould fossil quote
Darwinism doesn’t explain how life started
“Darwinism” is a religion

Well, isn't that original? Let’s get dug in.

"You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

Right, science as a procedure has created innovation that has completely changed the way we live. However, the people who do the work are humans and humans are flawed, a particular scientist will cling to his or her theory despite reasonable evidence that it is wrong because of his or her personal pride and cognitive dissonance. But, in the long term the theories are gradually refined or thrown out. The scientific method is backing a theory with evidence and submitting it to peer review, it is the best method that humans have derived for finding the truth. It’s a messy process but life is not as simple as wishing making and magical thinking. I don’t believe that a sustainable farce for an extended period of time is likely in the scientific community.

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

I am a very light global warming skeptic, I say “light” because as I mentioned above, I don’t think that a prolonged farce is possible in science so I make criticisms very very reservedly. However, I believe that in the global warming issue, there are two groups to the left and right who have emotional reasons for embracing or denying the theory based upon their own belief systems and how much it can advance or recede their agenda. It is a sure golden goose to those who believe in greater governmental control and environmentalists (many times the same people) and people who are the opposite – who believe in smaller government and who oppose the other side consider it to be a thorn in their side.

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

I should address the endless reference to “Darwinism”. Some evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dawkins use this word often, others don’t like it. I am one of the latter. What does it mean? To put “ism” on the end of something is to make it a belief system of the first word, this no always accurate (I.E. “feminism” is not a belief system of the “feminine” – they often despise traditional femininity) but Darwinism would be a belief system of Darwin, which man or woman who accepts the theory of evolution would accept it as a reasonable term that they base their views on Darwin's? You might as well call me a “Newtonist” or a “Einsteinist”. We accept the body of work of these great people but we do not center our belief systems around them. A good example of a legitimate use of the term would be “Christian” or “Christianity”, the form is different but the idea is to base one’s life on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Darwinism is not an appropriate term in our modern times.

As for the substance of the above quote, I have a certain kind of distaste for such mud-slinging. To assume the superiority of one’s own race or group is a “Darwinist” inspired meme is it? I disagree, I would content that this is a fundamental facet of human nature. Does something like evolution or “Darwinism” lend a patina of scientific credibility to such ideas? Probably. Buchanan states in his article that a theory can be true and yet inspire evil ideas, true, then what is the point of his article? Because he seems to flit between stating that "Darwinism" is false to stating that it has caused evil (even if it may be true), I think he is trying to fling enough mud to make some of it stick.

I have decided to wrap this up as a "part 1" for now.

The Dogma of Feminism

ArgusEyes — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:20:07 GMT

Hi BoundlessEyes, thanks for the video response. For those who don’t know, I contacted BoundlessEyes in the first place to see if she wanted to make a response to my video “what is feminism”. I did so because she seemed to engage in discourse to a greater degree than many other YouTube feminists, which is not difficult seeing as no other group seems as reticent to explain and defend their views.

There is a talk show host I admire called Dennis Prager who has a saying that goes “I prefer clarity to agreement” and that is what I thought we could do here. Clarify where we differ as opposed to just battling it out to win. To do that effectively we I want to address the most important points where we differ. These topics will be on patriarchy, on gender differences and on Harriett Harman.

On patriarchy: I do feel that your video lacked clarity as it seemed like you were less interested in explaining your position and more interested merely reciting dogma.

[see video]

Answering questions in this way will get your fellow feminists nodding in agreement but I fear it has less effect on the rest of us who haven’t swallowed that blue pill. Far be it for me to get in the way of your intellectual masturbation but could you please define your terms more clearly. Patriarchy would be rule by males, at least according to the dictionary that I know you like to use. How can a democracy be a patriarchy? We have had a female prime minister and we have women in government. Iran and the Catholic Church are patriarchal systems. Western democracies are not.

Far from being a solid concept the term seems to encapsulate whatever feminists want it to, and yes I have read a number of opinions on the subject and in doing so I have encountered raises the bar for decedent writing quite a bit. Take one particular view

Feminist writer Marilyn French, in her seminal work Beyond Power, defines patriarchy as a system that values power over life, control over pleasure, and dominance over happiness.[1]

This is not a rational argument. It is an emotional and religious one. And, to be quite honest, it reeks of conspiracy theory.

On gender differences: I believe that we should all examine the things we believe to honestly assess whether they are true or not.

Take for example the common claim that women use more words per day then men do. The numbers you will hear cited differ in each case but they always cite that women use more words than men do.

As a man I am not insulted by this claim, it is either true or it is not.

If we take these studies and add on top our understanding from other research [3] that different areas of the male and female brain are used in sounding out words along with our plain and common sense observations of our sisters and mothers and female friends talking more on the phone and in the office.

Given thus fact it is not a huge leap to posit that the actions and careers that men and women take could be influenced by our differences. I see an obvious nurturing advantage in women, evolutionarily programmed to aid in the protection of young no doubt. Would this have any effect on more women wanting to be nurses for example? It might not but as us scientific sceptics like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Could we have the evidence that this is societally constructed and by whom and to what ends?

What evidence you have presented would get you a failing grade in any science class for lack of proper isolation of variables. Yes a girl who was raised by dogs, as some sort of proof that humans are a tabula rasa to be scribbled upon by a conspiracy of white males intent upon god knows what. Are you familiar with the phrase “non sequitur”.

You can’t shame me with such dishonest tactics. I have always held that humans are the product of a mixture of nature and nurture as I specifically said in the original video. It surprises me not that being raised by dogs will be a profound effect on a developing child’s behaviour. The difference between the sexes is a fact and if humans can be manipulated so easily then the question of David Reimer still stands? Let’s see the intellectual honesty with which you approach this issue.

That. Was particularly loathsome. Let me read to you how David Reimer described his experience.

"It was like brainwashing. I'd give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it's torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind - with the psychological warfare in your head." [4]

David Reimer is now dead, he committed suicide.

I think your supercilious little dismissal about being teased on the playground is a sham. And you need to be honest with yourself about how easily you grasped onto any little scrap of information that you could use as a plausible deniability mechanism to not have to deal with the obvious black eye that the David Reimer case gives to feminism. If you ever want to know why people like myself get angry at feminists then just think about what you just did.

On Harriett Harman:

Remember at the beginning when I mentioned clarity instead of agreement? Well this is the perfect example of a clarifying moment. I don’t need you to explain how the things that Harriett Harman believes leads to her actions. I know how she thinks and why she is doing what she is doing. People who commit bigoted actions frequently do so on twisted belief systems and believe themselves to be in the right. If I may quote Mr. Prager again.

Victimhood. A lifelong study of good and evil has led to me conclude that the greatest single cause of evil is people perceiving of themselves or their group as victims. Nazism arose from Germans' sense of victimhood — as a result of the Versailles Treaty, of the "stab in the back" that led to Germany's loss in World War I and of a world Jewish conspiracy. Communism was predicated on workers regarding themselves as victims of the bourgeoisie. Much of Islamic evil today emanates from a belief that the Muslim world has been victimized by Christians and Jews. Many prisoners, including those imprisoned for horrible crimes, regard themselves as victims of society or of their upbringing. The list of those attributing their evil acts to their being victims is as long as the list of evildoers. [4]

And to that list we can add you and Harriett Harman.

A woman whose mind has become so twisted as to act like women are oppressed by some nebulous patriarchal force whilst occupying a position of immense power and using that power to actively give a governmentally mandated superior status to women.

You have no excuse, from now on, whenever you open that dictionary and say that feminism about equality know that you are participating in a massive lie. For what you actually come to support in reality is sexism and oppression by the very definition of those words that you’ll find in that same dictionary. For in Harriett Harman’s own words:

'It is about saying, "because you are a woman I'm going to put you in this promotion".' [6]

If you read that and like what it says then you can pat yourself on the back and join a very select club of totalitarians who use their grievances to push for tyranny over liberty. Who masquerade under the banners of changing for the better but who in turn bring more misery onto earth. Who push their small minded dogma onto all.

The “What is Feminism” video encapsulated all of what modern feminism means today and the Pièce de résistance is you, a young feminist coming along and proving everything that I’ve said:

Feminism is a movement with a gendered name that claims to stand for gender equality but really is an activist political movement and sexist belief system which, in its worse forms, denies reality, suppresses women’s choice, tramples liberty, hurts men, infantilises women and fosters animosity between the sexes.

Sources

[1] Patriarchy: Encyclopedia II - Patriarchy - Feminist view
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Patriarchy_-_Feminist_view/id/5367497

What is patriarchy?
http://www.essortment.com/all/whatispatriarc_rhsf.htm

[3] Men and Women Use Brain Differently, Study Discovers
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/16/us/men-and-women-use-brain-differently-study-discovers.html

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-419040/Women-talk-times-men-says-study.html

[4] The true story of John/Joan
by John Colapinto
Rolling Stone December 11, 1997
http://www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan/menu-id-1427/

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, Glenn Sacks
http://www.hisside.com/6_6_04.htm

Death by Theory? Wendy McElroy
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120914,00.html

Told to Act Like a Girl, Carey Roberts
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0519roberts.html

[5] Why Do People Do Evil?
http://www.creators.com/opinion/dennis-prager/why-do-people-do-evil.html

[6] I'll put women in charge of banks: Harriet Harman's plans to use equality laws to challenge macho City culture
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1178140/Ill-women-charge-banks-Harriet-Harmans-plans-use-equality-laws-challenge-macho-City-culture.html

Brilliant!

ArgusEyes — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:12:54 GMT

The Greener Gender: Are men worse for the environment?

ArgusEyes — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:50:00 GMT

In 2007 an author by the name of Gerd Johnssom-Latham penned a report to the Swedish environment advisory council entitled "A study on gender equality as a prerequisite for sustainable development". This video is a critique.

I originally made this a long time ago for a documentary. It didn't make the cut and I am releasing it now.

Here is Gerd's original study:
http://www.genderandenvironment.org/admin/admin_biblioteca/documentos/rapport_engelska.pdf

Scientific progress is rarely useless

ArgusEyes — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:37:48 GMT

I am mightily impressed with the Large Hadron Collider. To build such a complex mechanical machine that stretches for miles and to turn it on and have it work boggles my mind. Sometimes I despair at the human race and sometimes I am overjoyed. This is an instance of the latter.

I asked a workmate about it and he sniffed and said something to the effect of it being a “waste of money” that would be better spend on “humanitarian efforts”. Here’s the deal. If we balked at scientific progress that didn’t seem to have an on-the-face-of-it practical application then I don’t think we would have a world close to what we have today.

The word “science” comes from “knowledge” or “to know”. Progress that may seem useful may turnout to be very useful indeed. Computers operate on the principles of solid state physics. Would the pioneers of that field have predicted computers and the way that they have changed the world?

Nothing helps cure misery and elevates human problems than science and technology. This is why I hate creationism so much because they invariably spit on this beautiful methodology. The scientific method is the greatest human creation ever.

Speaking of which:

Listen to this podcast for good info on the LHC.

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/skepticsguide/podcastinfo.asp?pid=164

The "big picture" feature has some great pictures of this human achievement:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html