Sick Transit

Via Yglesias, an official count from Israel’s Foreign Ministry of the result of Hezbollah attacks from May 2000 to June 2006: “3 soldiers and seven civilians killed, along with 27 soldiers and 7 civilians wounded, plus three IDF soldiers and two Israeli Arabs captured.”

Via AP, the Israeli army’s count of casualties so far: “Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians.”

The border skirmish would have had to continue at its previous level for thirty years to kill as many Israelis–not to mention Lebanese–as have died in these past two weeks.

Via BPS research digest, researchers at Brown put implants in the brain of a man who was paralyzed due to a knife wound that severed his spinal cord. The electrodes were connected to the part of his brain that controlled his left arm, and he was able to control a computer cursor and a robotic arm by mentally ‘moving’ his arm.

Unlike previous reads of generalized brainwaves, which required the subject to focus intensely, this research involved connections to specific neurons, and so the subject was able to ‘move’ his arm instinctively, while simultaneously holding a conversation.

This is probably old news for anyone with a decent knowledge of palentology, but it was eye-opening for me. PZ Myers has a chart of the geological timescale, with corresponding life forms. It seems that, according to our current best estimates, it took over 2 billion years from the formation of the Earth to the appearance of the first bacteria, compared to just 22 million years from the first apes to the earliest homo.

For many creationists–including me, when I was religious–abiogenesis (life arising from non-life) was one of the more difficult ideas to swallow. (And of course, evolution does not depend on it.) The timescales involved here seem to validate that intuition, while fitting it nicely into our overall understanding. Sure, the spontaneous formation of life is a highly unlikely thing, but it wasn’t an overnight process: it took two billion years (and another two billion to create multicellular organisms).

The more material evolution already has to work with, however, the faster it goes; which is exactly what you would expect from a process that works by adapting existing materials rather than creating new ones. And so amphibians took only 180 million years to develop, and mammals a mere 160.

BTW, for those who would argue that these dates are arbitrary or solely based on self-confirmation, it’s interesting to note that they were revised by a couple of orders of magnitude in the middle of the 20th century, based on findings from radiometric dating.

Anyway, I don’t necessarily think this information would change anyone’s mind as to creation vs abiogenesis, but at least for me personally, it helped some things click into place.

Via Howard Friedman, this case in Maine is disturbing:

A leader at a Lewiston mosque says he is hopeful federal charges will be filed against a local man who already faces state and local action for rolling a pig’s head into the mosque during a prayer session.
…
Matthews, 33, was charged with desecration of a place of worship, a misdemeanor, for rolling a frozen pig’s head into the mosque while 26 men prayed on the night of July 3. Pig and pork products are considered dirty in Islamic culture.

On Thursday, Attorney General Steven Rowe filed a civil lawsuit alleging that Matthews was motivated by bias based on race, color, ancestry, national origin and religion. The complaint seeks to have the court bar Matthews from having contact with the mosque or its members and to order him to abide by the state’s anti-discrimination law.
…
Howaniec said his client lost his part-time job because of the fallout from the incident. He also has sought counseling, Howaniec said.

As applied here, a law forbidding ‘desecrating a place of worship’ sounds patently unconstitutional, since it would involve the Federal government in interpreting religious doctrine to determine what constitutes ‘desecration’. The actual text of the law is more reasonable:

1. A person is guilty of desecration and defacement if he intentionally desecrates any public monument or structure, any place of worship or burial, or any private structure not owned by him.

2. As used in this section, “desecrate” means marring, defacing, damaging or otherwise physically mistreating, in a way that will outrage the sensibilities of an ordinary person likely to observe or discover the actions.

I don’t know what judicial interpretation has arisen around this law, but by the plain language of the text, Matthews is not guilty, since he did not physically damage the building.

IANAL, but there probably is a misdemeanor that Matthews can legitimately be charged with; perhaps disorderly conduct or trespassing. It’s deeply troubling, however, that:

- the local prosecutor is interpreting the law against desecration as, essentially, a blasphemy statute;

- the State is wasting their time suing some schmuck who has already lost his part-time job; (and since it’s a civil suit, Matthew may not even get a public defender)
- the State is applying anti-discrimination laws to what is obviously a personal interaction;

- Federal charges may be filed (although the US Attorney did not comment, so that may not be an issue).

Even if you do view Matthews’ actions as a ‘hate crime’, rather than an act of petty vandalism, the overkill here is disturbing.

Via Tyler Cowen, it seems the UK is passing a law to make it easier to cancel the credit cards of purchasers of child pornography:

As the Data Protection Act currently stands, card issuers do not know when their cards are used to access child pornography.

The amendment will allow card issuers to receive information on card usage from the police.

The issuers said this will free them to terminate the contract with the cardholder and cancel the cards.

First off, what logical reason is there to single out pedophiles for credit card cancellation, as opposed to other types of criminals?

Secondly, if the law applies only to convicted pedophiles, it seems that getting your credit card cancelled would be the least of your concerns when you’re headed to jail. If it applies to charged or accused pedophiles, OTOH, then the card is being cancelled precisely when a defendant may need it to pay for legal expenses.

As far as I can tell, this law seems like nothing other than a cheap way for the government to pretend that they’re doing something about child abuse.

I don’t expect world leaders’ light lunch conversation to be full of deep pearls of wisdom, but surely Bush can do better than “You eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country… Takes him eight hours to fly home. Russia’s big and so is China.”

His remarks on substantive policy aren’t much better: “He told Blair he felt like telling U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who visited the gathered leaders, to get on the phone with Syrian President Bashar Assad to ‘make something happen.’” A real creative thinker, that President of ours.

The next time someone says “it’s pointless to try to fix the Middle East; people have been fighting there for thousands of years”, I’m going to smack them.

The people of Europe have also been fighting for thousands of years. In fact, frequent violent conflict has been the norm all over the world for most of human history. But you don’t find the English avenging the Viking raids of the 10th century by lobbing rockets into Scandinavia. For that matter, you don’t even find France and Germany exchanging volleys in Alsace.

That doesn’t mean that problems in the Middle East are easy, or are going to be solved any time soon. But this idea that “you can’t stop them damn furriners from fighting” is bullshit.

</end rant>

Via Publius: “Syria and Iran… are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.” (William Kristol)

Via Prof. Cowen: “Mr. Boehner made a virtue of being friendly with lobbyists, saying that absent our personal, longstanding relationships, there is no way for us to tell which ones might be corrupt.”

I’ve signed the petition for Initiative 91–preventing the City of Seattle from providing public subsidies to for-profit sports teams–but I didn’t realize until I read this Seattle PI article that the group behind the initiative has the kick-ass name “Citizens for More Important Things.” Unfortunately, they also have a losing streak a mile wide, but here’s hoping that this year is different. (The polls are on our side.)

Anyway, if you live in Seattle and haven’t signed the petition already, please do.