Careful If You Buy Sony Copy Protected CDs!

This is a very technical description (link via J-Walk) of what happens to your computer if you buy a CD with Sony Digital Rights Management (Copy Protection), but the bottom line is:

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far.

ID = Incompetent Design

Mark Kleiman records some notes (link via Leiter Reports) from a talk given by Francisco Ayala, who is ordained as a Dominican priest, has doctorates in biology and theology, specializing in parasitology. He teaches at UC Irvine (as Unversity Professor, with appointments in biology and philosophy), holds the National Medal of Science, and is about to head his third National Research Council panel looking at the evolution v. creation debate. Some tidbits:

7. If organisms were the design product of engineers, the engineers ought to be fired for, e.g., making the human birth canal too small for the human newborn head. Intelligent Design would therefore be, to a large extent, Incompetent Design.

10. The current official Catholic teaching, as enunciated by John Paul II, is that Darwin's theory is one of the supreme accomplishments of the human mind and in no way contrary to Scripture. The Austrian Cardinal who tried to challenge that view just took it back, apparently having been slapped down by Pope Benedict.

Tags: Evolution, Intelligent Design

An Evolutionary Prediction!

Another scientist makes a prediction based upon his knowledge of evolution; and it turns out to be correct! (Link via Panda’s Thumb)

While we are on the subject of evolution, William Saletan compares Michael Behe’s recent testimony in a Pennsylvania trial in favor of Intelligent Design Creationism to be the equivalent of Monty Python’s Brontosaurus skit — completely devoid of substance. (Link also via Panda’s Thumb)

Finally, two national science organizations, The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association have refused to let Kansas use their copyrighted materials if Kansas goes forward and uses science standards that distort the definition of science and standards that open the door for Intelligent Design Creationism to be taught in schools. This move would mean that Kansas would have to re-write many of its science courses, delaying the implementation of these standards. This is an excellent decision by these two organziations. (Link once again from Panda’s Thumb)
Tags: Evolution, Intelligent Design

The Character of Our Leaders

Avedon Carol quotes Colin Powell speaking about the abuse of Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

I also told [Arab leaders] that, in their disappointment about America right now: Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong. Watch how a nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions.

I told them that they will see a free press and an independent Congress at work. They will see a Defense Department, led by Secretary Rumsfeld, that will launch multiple investigations to get to the facts. Above all, they will see a president -- our president, President Bush -- determined to find out where responsibility and accountability lie. And justice will be done. The world will see that we are still a nation with a moral code that defines our national character.

Says Avedon: “And then we proceeded not to do any of that, because we do not have leaders of values and character who believe in justice.”
Tags: George Bush, Colin Powell, Abu Ghraib, Torture

Stephen A. Smith, Are You Nuts?

I have to admit that I have enjoyed Stephen A. Smith’s appearances on ESPN. He comes off as opinionated but confident and knowledgeable, and his derisive pronunciation of Slava Medvedenko was memorable.

So I can only assume that he has lost his mind before writing his recent column in the Philadelphia Inquirer regarding Sheryl Swoopes. Smith seems to think that the real issue is Alisa Scott, Swoopes lesbian lover, who abused her position as Assistant Coach on the Houston Comets, the team that Swoopes played for. Scott, he claims, “The appearance of impropriety, of compromising one's position and organization, is flagrant where Scott is concerned.”

First, if this had happened in a high school situation, then yes, what Scott did was improper. If it had happened in a collegiate sports situation, then what Scott did was improper. But what happened was a decision, by consenting adults, to form a relationship. Furthermore, there has been no hint by Swoopes of coercion or other impropriety. There has been only discussions of a mutually beneficial and loving relationship between Swoopes and Scott. There has been no impropriety and there is no “appearance of impropriety”.

Adults, even those employed by the same company, even ones who might be employed as a superior to another adult, have the right to form a relationship. The same adults do not have a right to coerce another.

What Stephen A. Smith seems to be unable to differentiate between is coercion, and free choice — the exact opposite of coercion — leading to a loving relationship.

And that same derision that Stephen A. Smith used when pronouncing Slava Medvedenko now belongs in the pronunciation of Stephen A. Smith.

D-Mac at Philadelphia Will Do has more.

Tags: Stephen A. Smith, Sheryl Swoopes

Astronomy Picture of the Day

APOD does it again, with another strikingly gorgeous picture of our universe, entitled “The Ghost of Jupiter”.

According to APOD:

After a star like the Sun completes fusion in its core, it throws off its outer layers in a brief, beautiful cosmic display called a planetary nebula. NGC 3242 is such a planetary nebula, with the stellar remnant white dwarf star visible at the center. This nebula is sometimes called The Ghost of Jupiter for its faint, but similar appearance to our solar system's ruling gas giant planet. NGC 3242 is light-years across however, and much farther away than the measly 40 light-minutes distance to Jupiter. In fact, while watching this ghostly nebula expand over time, astronomers have estimated the distance to NGC 3242 to be about 1,400 light-years. The red FLIERs visible near the edges of the nebula are still a bit mysterious, though.

Tags: Astronomy

War On The Poor™ Continues

BlondeSense Liz reports on this weeks War On The Poor™, as Medicaid gets cut more. “If they would quit the war in Iraq, imagine how much could be spent helping our least brethren in this oh so (not) christian country.”

And Operation Big Oil Enrichment continues, as ExxonMobil and others record huge profits. I mean, not just huge, but humongous profits that companies in any other industry would kill for. Well, no wonder, we’re paying nearly $3 per gallon of gasoline. But as long as Big Oil is prospering, the country must be prospering too … right?
Tags: War on The Poor™, ExxonMobil, Medicaid

Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 (and Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 2)

Go get the latest updates to Firefox and Thunderbird. Although these are listed a “beta” releases and not full-fledged production versions, I am finding no problems with them and they have some nice new features. Firefox is now faster and has improved pop-up blocking, while Thunderbird now comes with a spell-checker and the ability to delete attachments (in other words, save the e-mail but delete the attachment to save space).

And as long as I’m on the subject, if you use Firefox on more than one computer, try Portable Firefox — it fits on a USB drive so you can take it with you and have the same profile on every computer that you use!

What? You’re still using Internet Explorer? Oh my god, join the 21st century! Get Firefox!

Phil Rizzuto Indicted

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald today indicted Baseball Hall of Famer Phil “The Scooter” Rizzuto, on charges of obstruction of baseball. Rizzuto, who was the New York Yankees announcer for many years, inventing the scorecard abbreviation DNW — for “did not watch” — preventing baseball fans from tuning in late and hearing what happened.

What? Different “Scooter”? Nevermind …

Skeptic’s Circle!

Come visit the latest Skeptic’s Circle, hosted at The Uncredible Hallq: College of Skepticism. For example, in one post linked at Skeptic’s Circle, we find Ryan Michael Whitmore interviewing Bigfoot himself!

Swoopes

Congratulations to Cheryl Swoopes for making public her sexual orientation. She no longer has to hide it because of what she perceives as pressure from our society. She is now free to be in public the person she really is. I wish her well and I hope this brings her (and others) more happiness in her life.

Americans Want Universal Health Care

America slides down the slope towards less and more expensive health insurance. The result of course, is that the populace will be less healthy and poorer. This feels very wrong to most people. It’s not the direction we should be heading in. And yet, there is little movement among our elected representatives to reverse the trend.

Perhaps a new Harris Interactive survey can spur some movement in the right direction. The results are summarized over at Donkey Rising. Here are some highlights:

• Universal health insurance is favored by 75 percent of all adults, including 63 percent or more of all religious groups.
• Medicare (health insurance for the elderly and disabled). Fully 96 percent of adults support Medicare, including 92 percent or more of all religious categories.
• Birth control/contraception is supported by 93 percent of all adults, including 90 percent of Catholics and 88 percent of born-again Christians, the “very religious’ and Evangelicals.
• Medicaid (health insurance for people with very low incomes) is supported by 91 percent of all adults, including 88 percent of all religious categories.

America is the only Western country that does not provide universal health care for its citizens. Let’s join other civilized nations and take care of our people, rather than leave them to fend for themselves.

Could We Have Captured Osama?

I sure wish President Bush had “stayed the course” and put the proper resources into capturing Osama bin Laden. But we really can’t expect Bush to follow his own words, can we?

A new book by the CIA field commander for the agency’s Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, will publish this winter. In it, the following definitive claim that will be made, according to Newsweek: “Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed up at Tora Bora — intelligence operatives had tracked him — and could have been caught. He was there.”

Penguins as Intelligent Design Evidence? No Way!

Leave it to those wacky intelligent design creationists to try to claim that the movie Penguins provides support for their theory. Fortunately, PZ Myers is on the case. Says Myers: “Again, it was amazing that these nitwits thought that long, dangerous treks through a frozen wilderness were signs of design. It is a kind of cruel complexity of exactly the sort that arises from unguided processes, and certainly wasn’t evidence of a benevolent hand.”

Conservatives, too, have tried to use penguins as examples of morally superior beings that humans should emulate. But … the movie shows clearly that penguins are not monogamous and fathers leave as soon as they see the chick is okay.

The Outrages Continue, Part 2

Not only is former FEMA Director Mike Brown still on the payroll to investigate what went wrong in FEMA’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina, but he is working from home as a consultant for $148,000 (it’s not clear if that’s for a year or for 30 days work).

The Outrages Continue

Former FEMA Director Mike Brown couldn’t reply to urgent requests to send food to the evacuees in the Superdome because he was too busy having a dinner in a Baton Rouge restaurant.

Fewer Jobs and Less Health Care?

… or more jobs and more health care. That seems to be a pretty clear choice. But it also seems to be the choice that America, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to make. It appears that a national comprehensive health care system would result in more jobs and better health care for all.

Kevin Drum points out that a recent agreement between General Motors and the United Auto Workers to slash health care costs by $1 billion. In other words, the workers either get lower health care coverage, or pay higher premiums. According to the New York Times, one of the reasons why this was necessary:

The company has been losing market share to foreign rivals that operate at lower costs, partly because Japan, Germany and other governments provide universal health care for all their citizens.

Annoying Commercials

That talking baby still is annoying in the Quiznos ads. It would be one thing if he simply promoted the food put out by Quiznos, but this talking baby is a smart aleck who hits on adult women. I don't know why Quiznos wants their name associated with this type of behavior, but I guess they do. Fortunately, there are no Quiznos here in Rochester, so there’s not much chance I’ll be buying from them. However, on my trips to Buffalo, I will avoid Quiznos like the plague.

I also wonder what the marketing “geniuses” for TGI Fridays had in mind. In their recent commercial, a customer asks the waiter if he would recommend the wild or mild menu ("wild or mild" being their latest culinary gimmick). The waiter responds by asking the customer if he wears tighty-whiteys. Now, why would someone watching this commercial want to go to a restaurant where the waiter is portrayed as someone who asks embarrassing personal questions? Why would TGI Fridays want that image? Annoying commercials like this make it extremely unlikely I will be eating at TGI Fridays any time soon.

This leads me to wonder about something I never understood. Why would you ask the waiter which item on the menu you should buy? Or similarly, why would you ask the waiter if a particular item is good? First of all, the waiter is biased. Second of all, the waiter has different taste buds than you and maybe you don’t like broccoli but the waiter does. Thirdly, have you ever seen a waiter say that a particular item is not very good? Could someone explain this behavior of customers to me?

A Scary Time for American Workers

Delphi, a company that supplies parts to General Motors, declared bankruptcy and then slashed workers wages from an average of $27 an hour to $10 an hour. That’s almost a 2/3 cut in pay! But top executives still get handsome severance packages. And if Delphi can do this, expect General Motors to follow suit.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has done nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs to places overseas, an issue that I complained about in the past. In fact, it has done less than nothing — it has actively tried to prevent the information about how serious the problem of outsourcing is from being made public by burying a report made by the Department of Commerce so it would not see the light of day before the 2004 election. Said report might have influenced the election of course. Once again, we see the values of the Bush administration — rather than deal with a problem, prevent bad publicity.

Unintelligent Design

Dr. Jeremy Gunn:

“Intelligent Design” has gained notoriety not by the quality of major academic publications or scientific endorsements. (There are none. Zero. Zippo.) It gains its notoriety by press releases, lobbying school boards, and distracting the nation’s attention from what it should be doing.

Imagine that scientists like Einstein (or Louis Pasteur, or Jonas Salk, or J. Robert Oppenheimer — or Charles Darwin for that matter), advanced their theories not by conducting research and publishing the results in scientific journals or announcing them in scientific meetings, but through press releases, by publishing pamphlets, and by lobbying school boards to accept textbooks that were completely repudiated by the scientific community.

Proponents of “intelligent design” want to put the cart before the horse. They start not by writing peer-reviewed scientific journals, but by inserting their unscientific ideas into children's textbooks. This sounds a lot like propaganda and not much like science.

Skeptic’s Circle!

The latest Skeptic’s Circle is available at Time To Lean. Good stuff!

The Origin of a New Species

Thomas Schneider, Ph. D., conducts an experiment and observes the appearance of a new species Noodleous doubleous. He concludes that the extremely low probability of the event he observed “is too low to be explained by thermodynamics and therefore apparently represents intelligent design”, and the results are consistent with, and provide strong empirical evidence for, The Flying Spaghetti Monster hypothesis. Do not try this yourself as dihydrogen monoxide is a very dangerous substance. (Link via Panda’s Thumb)
Tags: Flying Spaghetti Monster, Intelligent Design

Wrong Direction

A new poll shows that only 28% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction. Why? Here are some possibile reasons:

A study of income distributions shows that the top 1% of Americans found their income rising faster than inflation, while the remaining 99% found the opposite. “Other data show that among major world economies, the United States in recent years has had the third-greatest disparity in incomes between the very top and everyone else. Only Mexico and Russia, among major economies, have greater disparity.”

The war on the poor continues. The Republicans want to slash $574 million from food stamp programs and slash payments to farmers by over $1 billion in five years. But tax cuts for the rich remain an important issue for Republicans.

A second bill this year has now been passed (via dubious means) lining the pockets of America’s oil companies, who are already showing profits in the range tens to hundreds of billion dollars, while us ordinary Americans are paying around $3 per gallon for gasoline and we are asked to conserve gasoline and heating oil and electricity prices are rising. That’s another wrong direction our Republican leaders are taking. Relief for oil companies, sacrifice for ordinary Americans.

Probabilities of Evolution

Over at Tangled Bank #38, hosted by GrrlScientist, there are links to zillions of great articles about science that have appeared lately in the blogosphere. Great reading.

One particular post by Ronald Brak explains why creationists are wrong when they quote ridiculously small probabilities that life could have evolved naturally. And he explains it in a way that anyone can understand.

Best Low-Light Photo Ever?

I hereby nominate this photograph over at Travis Ruse’s photoblog Express Train to be the best photo I have ever seen taken under low lighting conditions.

Rumsfeld Fails To Support The Troops

American soldiers still have to purchase their own body armor, and have not been re-imbursed for it, despite a law that mandates re-imbursement. Why won’t Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld support the troops? How can we lose billions in Iraq, totally unaccounted for, and be unable to re-imburse soldiers for body armor? Why doesn’t the Department of Defense provide this body armor in the first place for our soldiers? Where is the outrage from the conservative “support the troops” crowd?
Tags: Iraq, Rumsfeld

Flying Spaghetti Monster

A growing number of scientists now favor teaching that all life on Earth was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster — and his noodly appendage — if school boards insist on teaching “alternative theories” to evolution. In fact, one scientist has written to the Kansas School Board demanding equal time in science classes for the FSM and evolution.

I gladly join that movement. If school boards want to teach alternative theories with little or no evidence to support them, then let’s teach FSMism. It’s equal to, or superior to, intelligent design creationism in explaining the real world.

It would appear that FSM has been with us throughout history, and off into the future as well.

Get a FSM emblem for your car!

Tags: Evolution, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Intelligent Design