I thought I was going to keel over.

While I'm sure there will be plenty of people to naysay the book simply because of the mention of the names Peikoff and Rand (and perhaps Feyerabend), it's important to understand that the book is at least attempting to get a discussion started about a very real problem in the philosophy of science. Namely, two seemingly contradictory facts present themselves simultaneously. On the one hand, we have the fact that science is "inductive" and thus by its nature, its statements are never concretely true. On the other hand, we see that science has an uncanny predictive ability, allowing us to lead the comfortable, technologically enhanced lives we lead today. The philosophers' Cartesian doubt is in direct opposition to the faith that we place in the laws of physics remaining more or less constant over time. The question of paramount importance here is, "Why is science so good at telling us the future if its results are always in doubt?" I don't propose to be able to answer this question, but I think the solution probably lies in the fact that science (typically considered a field driven by inductive reasoning) is highly dependent on mathematics (typically considered a field driven by deductive reasoning). In this view, it seems to me the more appropriate question to ask is not, "Why is science so good at telling us the future," but rather, "Why is the natural world described so beautifully in the language of mathematics?" This question, at least to me, is probably one of the most fascinating in the philosophy of science. But as I said before, I am not yet myself sure what the answer to these questions is or should be, but I'm at least glad to see that someone's seriously working on them and trying to bring new viewpoints to the table.

Okay, I'll bite.

Granting a right to one party is essentially imposing a duty on one or more other parties. For example, if we as humans grant dolphins a right to life, then we are basically saying "We (humans) will try not to kill you (dolphins) on purpose." Thus, by granting them this right, we are imposing upon ourselves the duty to not purposefully kill any dolphins. You can view it, if you wish, as a type of contract, though I'll be quick to point out that the concept of rights and duties extends beyond the legal realm into the moral one.

Why would we grant dolphins rights? Possibly because of what we feel to be a collective moral obligation. Granting rights to animals on the basis of moral obligation is not unprecedented. For instance, most animals for whom there is significant evidence that they can feel pain are granted the legal (and moral) right not to be abused. There's nothing physical stopping me from beating the ever living shit out of my dog, but I don't, because I think that inflicting unnecessary pain is immoral. Thus, I have implicitly granted my dog the right not to have the ever living shit beaten out of him.

Why would we grant dolphins a right to life specifically? This is akin to the question of why we would grant, for example, Homeless Joe with no friends or family a right to life specifically. If you approach the question from a secular viewpoint, it's kind of tricky. After all, there's no one to mourn the homeless person if I kill him, and he certainly won't care if I do it painlessly (in fact, he can't care; he's dead). Most ethicists working in this field approach the problem by appealing to the human traits of foresight and planning. Killing Homeless Joe thwarts his plans and deprives him of the possibility of making his life better in the future. (Interestingly, a very similar argument is used to justify euthanasia in terminal patients). Assuming that the scientific studies that we've done on dolphins show that they share the traits of foresight and planning with humans, denying them the right to life while granting it to Homeless Joe is simply drawing a line arbitrarily and discriminating against dolphins simply because they are a different species. The discrimination has no underlying rational basis.

I think that at least begins to explain why intelligence is an important factor in granting rights to non-human animals and why other traits are not as important. As for the stupid people comment, see the above argument. Consistency would dictate that if a human is so severely mentally handicapped that they do not exhibit foresight (nor will they ever--otherwise it would be totally cool to kill babies), then they wouldn't have a specific right to life under this reasoning (similar to the euthanasia argument above). However, I doubt they would be in much danger. After all, most people would need a reason to kill them (otherwise, why would they expend the effort), and even then, based on the discussion above about non-human animals, it would still have to be done painlessly. Remember, we grant the right not to be abused to most animals anyway, so this case would be no different.

As for your last statement, you bet your ass if a tuna fisherman caught a SCUBA diver in their net and drowned him, they'd be in deep shit. But we've also seen that, unfortunately, commercial interests often trump even well-established human rights, so there's really no telling.

To be fair, I have a Ph. D. in chemistry from a very prestigious university and I thought some of these questions were inappropriately tough. The chlorophyll one sticks out in my mind as being both tough (need to know the pathway for chlorophyll biosynthesis) and wrong: the test indicated that it was false that some of the atoms come from glucose produced by photosynthesis. Without knowing the metabolic pathway leading to chlorophyll, there's no telling if those carbon atoms were derived from glucose or from amino acids or lipids. And, as far as I can remember, the phytol side chain on chlorophyll a and b is synthesized from acetyl-coA units, which come directly from glycolysis, and hence, glucose. While I tend to agree that scientific education is flawed, and even that it is flawed in the ways that are highlighted in the paper, I don't think this particular study is the greatest metric of the effects of these flaws on student understanding.

That's a little harsh. Yes, it's been known for quite some time that average atomic weights vary from sample to sample, and the information content of the paper may not seem fundamentally novel. However, this is a paper where scientists are recommending a change in IUPAC's policy. For these standards boards, this is a fundamental issue. Think of it as similar to the "Pluto is/isn't a planet" debate. It seems like it's just semantics they're arguing (and I'm inclined to think that, in either case, it is. Funny story: I had to correct some kid in a museum recently because he was telling his little brother that Pluto no longer existed.), but passions can still become pretty inflamed.

Anyway, just thought I'd try to put the whole thing in perspective.

FTFA:

So this doesn't really decrease the amount of dark matter in the universe. It simply shores up the anomalous hypothesized excess of dark matter observed for elliptical galaxies in comparison with spirals.

...Ice-nine.

For God's sake, mod this up. It's possibly the only reasonable comment here.

OpenOffice.org Impress. It works fine for me (scientific presentations). I've had no problems with OOo Calc (Excel equivalent) or the word processor either. To me there's really no difference as far as ease of use or features between any of the OO programs and their MS equivalents.

*Cough, Xbox, cough* But I dunno, I've seen Ivy-League-educated, advanced-degree-bearing, Mac-using scientists get pretty worked up if they don't have access to the Office suite. I think Microsoft products (especially Office) are probably looked upon by the general public in the same way as a dishwasher. They're convenient, ubiquitous, people use them all the time, and the only time anyone really notices them is when they're not present.

Crap, now not only can't I goof off on FB, I can't even do work related research on wikipedia. Guess I'll have to find out the solubility of thulium chloride the old fashioned way.

And we all know how Linux has cornered the PC market. But it's not even a fair comparison. The problem with being a competitor to Facebook is that Facebook already has something that puts them miles ahead of Diaspora in terms of viability: your friends are already on it. The real issue in getting a social networking site off the ground is that in order to convince one person to join, you're going to have to convince at least a few of their friends. Otherwise it's just a niche message board for people interested in FOSS (pot, meet kettle).

I dunno, I think the best way to try to compete with Facebook would be to adopt the Facebook approach (only release the product to select groups of people at first, possibly college students). But that of course goes against the entire point of the Diaspora project.

I hope it works out for them, I really do. And I know I'll probably have an account. But I definitely won't have high expectations. It's up to the guys at Diaspora to prove me wrong.

I figured they'd call it a "telescreen" or something along those lines.

Mod parent up. This is not the optical tweezer effect that people who (surprise surprise) didn't read the article have been confusing it with.

If you watch the two videos, the good dancer is moving his arms and legs much more than the bad dancer is. He even starts with the running man! I'm not exactly sure what the quantitative definition of "flailing" is, but the bad dancer definitely isn't flailing if the good dancer isn't.

It'd really be nice to see the rest of the videos. While I think it's a really big leap to go from good dancer to attractive mate, it could be something as simple as the fact that the bad dancer keeps his head down and looks much more defensive and withdrawn than the good dancer. My suspicion is that judging someone to be a good dancer or not has much more to do with the standard body language we already intuitively understand than with any sort of display of strength or fitness. Think about it: you could be the best dancer on earth, but if you're dancing around with your arms crossed in a defensive position, people probably aren't going to be too impressed. On the other hand, if you're dancing with your arms not obstructing your body and you keep your head level but don't really do much else, maybe no one will say you're a great dancer, but I doubt anyone will say you're a bad dancer. I dunno; I just think this study is another case of psychologists trying to prove too much with a limited amount of evidence.