Science or Pseudo-science

Here is a pretty good article about how to tell if something is not science.

The Chronicle: 1/31/2003: The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

This week was a the first of a new quarter for me at LLU. One of the classes I am taking, and very much looking forward to, is a seminar in Science and Religion. At our first meeting we defined what science is and what religion is to our class, and how religion is different from theology and spirituality. Since we were mostly scientists we spent less time on that but I believe it is definitely important to think about it.


Here are some good quotes from the evening, uttered by the ethics professor Dr. Gerald Winslow.

Advice to aspiring professors -- "Don't lie awake wondering what to teach the student, lie awake at night wondering how to awaken inquiry in the students"

-- "You can't settle definitionial problems. What do you do get a bigger dictionary? All you can do is explain why you choose to use a word."

Wonders Wedding Pictures

Here are some, or a lot, of pictures from Bradley and Sunny's wedding.



























Harriet















Bradley


















There was some hugging.















Real trees and flowers.















Mr Bumkins
























Sunny's twin brother Jonathan and their mom Judy were the first to walk up.















Sunny and Bradley came up last.



















Sunny's dad talked for a couple of minutes after we were all on the stage.



























Sunny's grandpa read the vows.















But he forgot to make them kiss.














The Wonders





















Did I mention there were chocolates?


















I think my mom had fun.
















Eddy















We're cute.























Fiona the Love Tree was featured in the wedding.



















Some people took pictures after the wedding




































Bride's side



















Groom's side
































All of them


















Groom's family



















We had crackers and cheese and fruit afterwards, and a guy played a guitar.

Springbreak 2006: The Wonder Wedding

I was super busy last quarter. I was working on assignments and papers and grant proposals and exams right up until Ceri arrived at nearly midnight on the 14th. All of that and trying to get my dad to come out and visit, which I was ultimately unsuccessful at, was very stressful and I got sick. These are all my excuses for not posting.

I will make it up to you starting right now. Here I will tell you about our trip from SoCal to Vancouver and back and about my Brother's wedding.

We left late on Wednesday after sleeping in, submitting my projects and finals, packing my cloths, running 3 miles, and getting some oranges and gas.

We drove north then west through the Mojave to Bakersfield, then north on 99 to meet 5. At about 11pm we decided to sleep in the jeep in Corning rather than drive an hour out of the way to camp in a state park. We had remembered seeing a cafe in Ashland that we had quite unfortunately passed by without stopping in December.

This is the Breadboard where we had breakfast in Ashland, OR.

I had a tasty veggie benedict and Ceri had the waffle with fresh fruit. The coffee was excellent and the potatoes were good.

We made it to my Mom's house in Vancouver on Thursday afternoon.

Here is Bradley making chocolate truffles. The truffles were fantastic. I think he should try to sell them online. Or at least send them as Christmas presents.





He made 4oo truffles because he didn't know how many people would show up for the wedding.












We spent a lot of time wrapping the truffles.

I think the TV looks like it's made of cardboard.










On Friday we explored Portland with Eddy. This pictures looks towards downtown from Mt Tabor park.










We also stumbled upon Joseph Wood Hill Park. It was exciting for all of us to discover the park at the same time. It might be the best place to get a 360 degree view of the Portland area including Mt St Helens and Mt Hood.










Tammy and Carissa showed up Friday night with two giant dogs that each weigh 150 pounds.

They turned out to be pansies though.


I saw Caly smack one on the nose.

It ran away whimpering and then Mr. Benofrin chased them both into the bedroom.



Saturday morning Ceri ran 6 miles in Washington.

I was still sick so I drove around taking pictures like the paparazzi and listened to NPR.









We all ate at Sunny's parents house for lunch on Saturday.


















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Blogger is giving my trouble and won't let me save a draft. So I'll get to the pictures of the wedding later.

A Duck

Yesterday, I asked if anyone knew what this duck is. Today, I lost that post somehow while I was trying to edit it.

Anyway, last night I asked Alex if he knew about it and he thought it was probably a domestic duck. That hadn't occured to me but I guess he is probably correct.

RE: " HOMEWORK: Evolution & Creation"

This is a response to Jeff Boyd's post on the debate between evolution and creation. I apologize for not noticing your post earlier, Jeff. Of course you understand that this is a very difficult topic to cover in 300 words.

One point of confusion here is the idea that evolution is contrary to creation. You have correctly pointed out that the ultimate origin of life can not be studied by science, but evolution and predictions from evolutionary theory can be studied by science. In fact, creationists that believe in a young earth must believe in a very rapid evolution of species to account for the great biodiversity we see today. Evolution simply means change and the idea of fixity of species (that species never change and were created essentially as we see them today) has been abandoned by almost all creationist scientists for at least 100 years. However, many creationists that are not scientists have difficulty with this.

But I think the subject of your essay is the ultimate origin of life and possibly even the universe, as opposed to questions over the reality of evolution. The difficulty is that any theory of abiogensis requires evoultion to work. But i think it is important to distinguish bewteen the two.

In the fifth paragraph I think a few important points are not addressed but I don't know if you can make room for them.

• One: and this is a paraphrase of my professor Ron Carter, “In science you get kudos for being self critical and changing your mind when you are wrong. But in religion you get kudos for being certain and steadfast in your believes.”
  
• And two: opponents of ID argue that it is philosophy and not real science. Scientists are not opposed to teaching ID in school. But the idea that it be taught in science classrooms is very frustrating. This goes back to a previous post of mine.

I think that your questions are good. If the point is to start a conversation this will definitely do it and i think that philosophical accuracy is not that important. I could go on and on about it but I think if you could address the issues I mentioned that would be good.

Orange and Chocolate

First, I want to apologize to all the pedants for my misspellings and bad formatting. I'm sure reading that last post was excruciating. I generally publish a new post and then go back and edit. But the user interface in blogger got all screwed up in my browser after I posted and I didn't want to deal with it.


This morning I made some chocolate chip and orange juice muffins. I thought it would be a good idea because I like chocolate with orange flavor in it. I called Ceri to tell her and she was very dismayed. Actually, I think they taste ok. Once they cooled down they lost their warm orange juice taste. So they weren't as good as orange-chocolate bars but I think there is room for improvement. I've decided to go ahead and eat them despite Ceri's objections.

I think she will be happy to know however, that I decided not to buy a gallon of milk with my dollar off coupon after watching her PeTA propaganda.

Bahamas part 2

I am so swamped with homework for the next two weeks. I haven't had much time to do work I get paid for. But my brain is numb. So I'm going to post to my blog.

I have a few more pictures and these are all from Inagua.

I forgot to tell you, while I was driving on Abaco at times when I wasn't listening for birds I would listen to Radio Abaco. I heard some good commercials that I wish I had recorded. One was about how I should get everything from Price Right with an unintelligable guy tell me what was available for purchase and then another guy translateing. I think I met that guy at a gas station when I was asking for directions. He said, "khre ke cor to co ca tahcahco" and i took that to mean, "If you want to use a credit card you have to go to Texaco." I was actually impressed that I understood him before he pointed to Texaco.

Then there was the Bahamian trying to do an Italian accent for a commercial for some canned noodle thing.

But the absolute best thing, was that I actually got to hear Boney M on the radio. Awesome!





So, Abaco is the most northern Island in the Bahamas and after leaving there I went to Inagua, the southern most island in the Bahamas. They are quite a bit different. Abaco has a much larger resident population as well as attracting a lot of tourists. Inagua doesn't attract nearly as many tourist. Most of the people that stop there are just passing through on their way to Cuba or Haiti or Puerto Rico.

















cloud

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There is only one town on Inagua. It's called Matthew Town. I was told before I arrived that there would be hundreds of parrots all over town. I didn't see any parrots on Friday or Saturday. Many people I talked to said they hadn't seen parrot for weeks. I guess they will be back in town when the Genip (Spanish lime) is in season.

Another problem I had on Inagua was that the rental trucks were broken. So I was on foot. I did a lot of walking around the town but I had to hitchhike to get out of town where the parrots are.



Matthew town
















Morton Main House

This is where I was lived.











City Park

My shadow

Generators






















Dog at church







Lawnmower/future dinner.
















Dragonflies on a wire.

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Some plants

Cotton

Cactus tree

big moth

Inagua Parrot

On the last day I was there I saw two parrots in town.















Osprey on dish

















Dead Donkey

Dead mini















Passport photo

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Trip to East Inagua

On Sunday I hitchhiked to the east side of the island with some people that had hired a truck. It was a long day, 10 hours. Half of which I was sitting on coolers in the back of the truck. It as a bumpy ride but I got a good view.

After 10 hours I had recorded only 2 parrots. I was very tempted to return to California and return later when the parrot would be in town.






Eastern Inagua

















Feral Donkey














This is a big lake we tried to drive across.

















It turned out it was a little too wet. We drove half way across here and then had to turn around.









East Inagua



















Road to narrow

At one point there was another truck of hunters coming our direction. We stood still for about 5 minutes with neither driver wanting to drive off the road.

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Morton Salt is the biggest employer on Inagua. It runs 24/7.

Morton shop



Salt












Evaporation ponds





There are usually flamingos in these ponds.










Morton shop






Morton ship yard

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Here are more hermit crabs for Janelle and Daniel.


I don't know why there was a pile of peanuts here but the hermit crabs really liked them.















Hermit crab without a shell

I cracked the shell of one to see what it looked like inside.