http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/jsa3riolpho/debate_results.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/debate_results.php

Ross Olson of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association has sent me the results of the survey that was given at the debate. He is trying to spin it as supporting the claim that this kind of debate was "useful" — but I'm unimpressed.

About 500 people attended, 290 returned the survey. The survey basically asked two questions about whether they supported teaching creationism in the classroom initially, and the same two questions to be answered after they listened to the debate, with a final question that asked whether the debate was held "on an intellectual level that can serve as an example for other discussions"…and with that, their motives are exposed. It wasn't to actually work through the problem, but entirely to give credibility to the creationist position. Contrary to Olson's interpretation, it tells me that this whole farce was a bad idea from the beginning.

When I looked at the numbers, what jumped out at me that there was almost no change in the audience's position. People who came in firmly opposed to teaching ID in the schools left with the same opinion (no surprise there, Bergman was a kook); people who came in demanding that creationism be given equal time left still feeling the same way. There were a couple of crazy people whose opinions did shift — from being initially opposed to creationism to being for including it in the curriculum. I call shenanigans on that; Bergman did not even try to argue for such a position, so these were ringers who walked in, gave false answers to the first questions, and then pretended to have been converted to a pro-creationist stance by Bergman. That is flatly unbelievable.

The numbers were boringly static. The comments were much more entertaining, and I've included them below the fold; to make it a little easier to sort out who was saying what, the comments from evolutionists are in blue, the creationists are in red, and the ones who switched significantly from the two pre-debate questions to the two post-debate questions are in purple.

What I mainly take home from these data is the simple fact that, even though this debate was a complete and embarrassing rout for the creationists, their minds were not changed at all. Debates with creationists are a waste of time, except for the small benefit of entertaining evolutionists with an amusing spectacle, and the larger detriment of giving liars for Jesus an opportunity to piously announce their support for rational discussion…despite the fact that they don't offer rational discussion.

http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/well-this-is-interesting.html

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003695.php

I occasionally run across clippings I tucked into books years ago, and I just found one that had a quote so marvelous I had to share it with you all. A Scott Kraft piece on the Lumière brothers in the Los Angeles Times of Dec. 24, 1995 (on the occasion of the centennial of their first public exhibition of films to a paying audience) included this sentence:

The Lumière brothers have a special place in the hearts of the French, who now use the word lumière to mean "light."

http://airplanepilot.blogspot.com/2009/11/forecast-was-right.html

It snows all day.

http://benabuya.com/2009/11/24/on-refusing-to-believe-in-atheism/

http://benabuya.com/?p=748

In addition to having possibly rankled a few people (to whom I apologise, if my remarks were misconstrued), a recent post demonstrated what some mistakenly thought was an atheist perspective. I have since removed the post – not because I am retracting my sentiments, but because I do not feel that they were adequately conveyed by my choice of words. As justifying myself in the comments thread was growing wearisome, I have decided instead to present my opinions on atheism in a separate post. While I do not believe in God, and am happy to publicise the fact, my being in agreement with some of the conclusions of this group does not make me a member. As my attitudes towards the biblical literature and my attitudes towards disbelief are so intimately connected, I would like to make a comment as regards my feelings for the former.

I purchased a book at the SBL conference in New Orleans yesterday: David A. Bernat, Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Priestly Tradition (SBL: Atlanta, 2009). He cites a scholar named Geller in his introduction: “Geller observes that the biblical authors, unlike their Greek contemporaries, did not articulate doctrine through systematic, philosophical discourse. Rather, they gave voice to ideology and theology through narrative, law, and other modes of literary expression. Consequently, the extraction of meaning from the Hebrew Scriptures is an exegetical enterprise requiring close reading that is sensitive to the lineaments of the text, and proceeds step by step within it” (4). That last part, in italics, is his quote from Geller’s Sacred Enigmas: Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible.

That passage sums up beautifully exactly why I love the Tanakh. It is quite unlike other corpora of literature in the nature of the analysis that it requires. Given how heavily meaning is dependent upon cotext, and given how reliant that cotext is upon broader historical and literary context (not to mention the elusive and subjective nature of any attempt to establish the “meaning” of such contexts!), the pursuit of biblical information is fraught with all of the difficulties of other fields, yet compounded by the fact that it is an ideologically determined corpus in every respect.

Those of us who wish to promote an interest in the biblical literature must reckon with two phenomena. The first is the growing resentment of theology, which perceives in the Bible an intellectual enemy to be rejected. The second is theology itself, which perceives in the Bible the words of a creator. These two perspectives are not so dissimilar, for they both commence with presuppositions as regards the origin of the universe and they both ascribe meaning to the biblical literature beyond what the corpus deserves.

As I once described elsewhere, in a post that was intended to be frivolous, there are two different ways of construing non-belief in divinity. The first concerns the existence of God. That is to say, it suggests that the main protagonist of the Hebrew Bible does not, nor did not, exist. His actions belong in the realm of fiction, and his expressed opinions are the opinions of those who composed the text. The second, however, concerns the existence of god(s). That is, the existence or non-existence of a prime mover that initiated the process of creation, itself culminating in the establishment of the universe. While the first question is theological, the second question is entirely scientific. What is more, while I heartily add my own small voice to the list of those who disbelieve in God, I shrug my shoulders as regards belief in the latter. Did the universe have a creator? Not only do I not know, but I quite sincerely could not care less. Abstract speculation on that score, while it might prove entertaining as a diversion, is a waste of brain power – as can generally be evidenced by those who occupy themselves with the question.

Against the theologians, who profess a(n, admittedly qualified) belief in the biblical literature and in the existence of its chief character, I have nothing to say. It is their prerogative to think whatever they please about the books that they read and, while I may find some of their scholarship dubious, I am happily able to disregard those texts that do not appeal to me. This is the democracy of academia, in which no opinion should be overtly privileged over another, and within which all perspectives possess the right to be aired. My concern is not with convincing theologians of my perspective, for it is their right to think and to publish as they see fit. My concern, however, is with the ranks of unaffiliated individuals, whose antipathy towards the biblical literature is fuelled by misconceptions.

There are a large number of reasons as to why people may not enjoy the Bible, and a number of reasons as to why they might find it threatening. I would like to focus on one issue in particular, as I feel that it constitutes a major obstacle to the enjoyment of the biblical literature. Those who have been raised on reading texts in translation don’t appreciate the allure of Hebrew and Aramaic. Those who choose to embrace the Bible in English must reckon with its banality, and it is no surprise that many forms of religiosity are found, by those who were not raised on them, to be so very insipid. I’ve read the Bible in English, and considered it frustrating to the extreme. People who treat it as a source of intellectual enlightenment need to go back to school, and those who profess it to be great literature have evidently never encountered Milton, Shakespeare or Keats. The antiquated thinking of its authors shows through on almost every page and it is difficult to account for the book’s tremendous popularity. In short, I am not in the least surprised that atheism is such a global phenomenon.

What these people fail to realise is that much of what fails to work in English is oftentimes splendid in Hebrew. The economy of expression makes succinct the circumlocutory and the semantic indeterminacy opens avenues of investigation which, when coupled with considerations that concern the setting of composition, turns banalities into triumphant yearnings of the human spirit. What is more, those who read a text in their native tongue will never appreciate the subjectivity of their own reading, nor the full weight of all the intellectual baggage that they carry to the task. Those who must labour with a foreign grammar, and the parsing of words in a tongue long dead, will reckon with such crucial phenomena every day.

This is why I don’t subscribe to atheism. As a movement, atheism professes the non-existence of a divine being who interacts with creation. As stressed above, the existence of such a divine being is either a scientific question, the contours of which do not interest me in the slightest, or a question regarding the literalness of the biblical literature. This is a moot point, for any appropriately engaging analysis of the Hebrew Bible will reveal the fact that reception of the text is not commensurate with a belief in its literal truth. Furthermore, I can speak for Judaism when I say that religious affiliation can be broad enough to subsume those who do not subscribe to the tenets of that religion. While I cannot in faith speak for Christianity or Islam, or any other religion on the planet, it would be a sorry situation indeed if they were so rigidly defined as to exclude members who do not profess their creed.

Dawkins, the contemporary champion of disbelief, has never read the Bible in Hebrew. Indeed, it is doubtful whether or not he has even read it in English. As a result, his attempts at demonstrating the banality of the biblical literature are, in turn, banal. This is my message to “atheists”: your beliefs concerning what you call “God” do not concern me in the slightest, but your opinions concerning the Bible are lamentably misinformed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not caring about the biblical literature, but if you aspire to the singular honour of hating it, I suggest that you learn how to read it first.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/QxJ13ahmIO4/more_autotuned_music_for_scien.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/more_autotuned_music_for_scien.php

Enjoy. This is part of a whole series at Symphony of Science.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/UknYBH-mJQ4/somebody_gets_rebuked.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/somebody_gets_rebuked.php

One of the peculiarities of my recent debate with Jerry Bergman was that he announced his definition of irreducible complexity, which he claimed to be the same as Michael Behe's…and under which carbon atoms were IC. It was utterly absurd. A reader wrote to Behe to get his opinion.

I recently attended a debate between Dr. P. Z. Myers and Dr. Jerry Bergman on the topic of "Should Intelligent Design be Taught in the Schools?" The topic of irreducible complexity came up, and Dr. Bergman had an interesting definition. His definition of irreducible complexity was "two or more parts are required for something to function" and that if you "remove one part, it will not work properly." The example he gave was that a carbon atom is irreducibly complex. He said that "you will not have a carbon 12 atom unless you have 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons, therefore it is irreducibly complex." Dr. Bergman went on to say that, the only things that aren't irreducibly complex were elementary particles, such as a lepton, because they could not be broken down into smaller parts. Much of the audience was confused about this, because as Dr. Myers pointed out, your definition of irreducible complexity dealt with biochemical systems. Dr. Myers also pointed out that carbon is formed naturally in stars, and if Dr. Bergman's definition of irreducible complexity were correct, it would show that irreducible complexity occurs naturally, therefore negating it as an argument for intelligent design. Dr. Bergman claimed that he was using your definition of irreducible complexity in the example of the carbon atom. That is why I wanted to ask you for a concise definition of irreducible complexity and if you believe Dr. Bergman's example and definition fits with yours.

Thanks for you time,
David

Behe wrote back.

Hi, David, nice to meet you. Dr. Myers is right; my definition deals with biochemical systems. I take the underlying laws and elements of nature as given. I do not know where Prof. Bergman got the idea that the concept applies to atoms, but he didn't get it from me. In Darwin's Black Box, I defined IC as:

"By irreducibly complex I mean a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."

Best wishes.

mjb

I got the answer right. I feel so dirty now.

However, I will go on (as I did in the debate) to explain that while it is definitely true that many biochemical systems actually do exhibit the property of irreducible complexity, the fact that an existing pathway can suffer a loss of function when modified says absolutely nothing about whether it evolved or not. Antecedent versions of the current pathway may have 1) had different functions (the exaptation explanation), 2) had less stringent requirements for function because other physiological functions had less specific demands (the coevolution explanation), or 3) had redundant or alternative paths to the final output of the pathway (the scaffolding explanation). IC, even as defined by the author of the concept, is no obstacle to evolution.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheComicsCurmudgeon/~3/fxgnKzTH66A/

http://joshreads.com/?p=4996

Shoe, 11/23/09

It is not often that I offer unironic congratulations to the writers of any comic, let alone to those of Shoe, but: Unironic congratulations, writers of Shoe, for slipping what seems to me to be a fairly transparent premature ejaculation joke past the censors at Cassatt and Brookins, Inc. I guess you could just bat your eyes innocently and say, “Oh, no, that’s just the length of their relationship!” but, uh, yeah. And the joke would have maybe worked better if she had said “six and a half feet,” though would anyone actually say that in idiomatic English? Also: six and half foot tall prematurely ejaculating bird, yeesh. But still, a comics coup!

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/23/09

Speaking of coups, I’m pretty unsettled by the sheer quantity of ammunition that Snuffy is stockpiling in his rickety rural shack. Apparently he’s tired of just killing muskrat for stew and firing warning shots over the head of the occasional revenuer, and has decided to launch a full-on armed assault on Sheriff Tait, who as near as I can tell is the only legally sanctioned authority figure resident in Hootin’ Holler. If Lukey’s head-shakin’, tongue-wagglin’ approval is any indication, he assumes he’ll have a privileged position in Snuffy’s New Order, though of course one can never really trust the word of an unstable military dictator.

Gil Thorp, 11/23/09

Tightly wound rage case Duncan Daley has been working hard at being good because of some inspirational blah blah his brother tried to hand him before he went to prison, but now that his brother is starting prison fights, Duncan has decided that being good is for suckers. His disconcerting facial expression in panel three — the tight little smile, the faraway eyes — promises that he’s going “celebrate” with grim, fanatical intensity, possibly leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

Crock, 11/23/09

OH OH WAIT EXCEPT WE LIVE IN THE SAHARA FUCKING DESERT

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#6473094539039598884

Surgeons make two tiny cuts less than a centimetre wide underneath each breast.
Silicone cups like the ones used in a traditional uplift bra are then are then inserted around 1cm below the skin.

Then surgeons fit fine straps made from a strong material that will hold the bra in place without it sagging These are attached to the ribs between the breast and the shoulder with a pair of titanium screws.

Then they are stitched to the cups and everything is tightened to lift the breasts into the desired position.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/uM27njaq9l8/no_jesus_meat_for_you_patrick.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/no_jesus_meat_for_you_patrick.php

Representative Patrick Kennedy has been barred from taking communion by the Catholic church. This is a politically motivated action to intimidate a politician into supporting a position on a political issue opposed by the church, abortion rights. Hmmm…using religion to commit extortion. How unusual.

I feel for him. I have a few consecrated wafers somewhere around the house; I'd love to send him some so he could cannibalize Jesus, but unfortunately, I also got threats to send me poisoned wafers from a few good Catholics, and I haven't tested them. I'd rather not be responsible for murdering a Democrat. Maybe some of you could help him out; go to Mass, pocket a slice o' Jebus, and send it to poor Patrick.

If he's smart, though, he'll just desecrate it. The article makes much of the fact that the Catholic church has not excommunicated him, but only denied him the sacrament. A little blatant heresy might be enough to get them to help Kennedy escape fully from the clutches of that cult.

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#3459448484698886629

In an attempt to try to find a compromise for dealing with abortion services in the legislation, I offered an amendment that would essentially continue this ban - even though I personally oppose the Hyde Amendment - that was supported by Energy and Commerce Committee Members whose records span the pro-life and pro-choice spectrum. Our hope was that we could continue the current ban on federal funding for abortion so the issue wouldn't bog down the overall health reform legislation.

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#2174594921328620261

Now, there are many people who look at this and say that the bill(s) under discussion are so anemic that they're maybe not worth fighting for at all. And that's certainly a legitimate opinion. But I think there's another question. Considering how down to the wire this is, is it really worth holding up everything else contained in the bill when the point of contention, the public option, is as measly as it is?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/NancyFriedman/away_with_words/~3/wDxsuvTMb24/books-for-name-developers.html

http://improveverywhere.com/2009/11/23/signed-books-for-sale/

http://improveverywhere.com/?p=1352

This holiday season, we’re selling signed copies of our new book Causing a Scene. Author Charlie Todd will sign each book and add any personal message you want to the recipient of the gift. We have a limited number of copies on hand to sign, so order now before they’re gone.

A signed book costs $30 and shipping is free anywhere in the US. (International orders see here.) Of course, you can always buy an unsigned copy on Amazon for $13.59 (plus shipping.) And don’t forget that we also have our DVD for sale. Get the book and the DVD for the prankster on your list!

HOW TO ORDER

Use the PayPal “buy now” button below to place your order. (If you live outside of the USA, please use our international order form.) There will be a box on the order form where you can write exactly what you want written for the personal message in the book. If you leave this blank, you’ll just get it signed without any personalization.

Signed Copy of Causing a Scene – $30

Orders will ship via US Mail. The USPS lists December 21 as the last day they will guarantee shipping for Christmas so if this is a Christmas gift, be sure to order by Sunday, December 20. We are not responsible for USPS delivery speed, so order early if you want to be safe. Send us an email if you’d rather pay by check.

http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2009/11/word-of-the-week-botax.html

http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/monday-november-23-2009/

http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/?p=2164

http://thegreenbelt.blogspot.com/2009/11/comment-closing.html

http://thegreenbelt.blogspot.com/2009/11/monday-science-links_23.html

• Mark Liberman at Language Log looks at two genes and their reporter: Nicholas Wade is an inveterate gene-for-X enthusiast — he's got 68 stories in the NYT index with "gene" in the headline — and he's had two opportunities to celebrate this idea in the past few days: "Speech Gene Shows Its Bossy Nature", 11/12/2009, and "The Evolution of the God Gene", 11/14/2009. The first of these articles is merely a bit misleading, in the usual way. The second verges on the bizarre.


• Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science looks at extinction secrets hidden in poop: Around 15,000 years ago, North American was home to a wide menagerie of giant mammals - mammoths and mastodons, giant ground sloths, camels, short-faced bears, American lions, dire wolves, and more. But by 10,000 years ago, these "megafauna" had been wiped out. Thirty-four entire genera went extinct, including every species that weighed over a tonne, leaving the bison as the continent's largest animal. In trying to explain these extinctions, the scientific prosecution has examined suspects including early human hunters, climate change and even a meteor strike. But cracking the case has proved difficult, because most of these events happened at roughly the same time. To sort out this muddled chronology, Jacquelyn Gill has approached the problem from a fresh angle. Her team have tried to understand the final days of these giant beasts by studying a tiny organism, small enough to be dwarfed by their dung - a fungus called Sporormiella.


• Brian Switek at Laelaps is hard on Nova's Becoming Human series, which I actually enjoyed: Though I might be a little more merciful on the producers of this documentary than Greg, he was right to point out that the opening segment of the [third part] is worn old tripe about how our species has fulfilled a kind of evolutionary destiny set in place millions of years ago. The entire hominin family tree can be split, the preface suggests, into our proud ancestors and the unimportant evolutionary "dead ends" that lived alongside them. The narrator references discoveries that are "shining light" on the "final stages of our evolution" as if our species is fulfilling some pre-ordained plan that has reached a stop. This is unfortunate, I would have thought better of an award-winning science program like NOVA, but when it comes to human our evolution our own hubris still obscures our view.
  
• Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex wonders why Tiger Woods affects other golfers' scores: Despite the individualistic nature of the sport, the presence of Woods in the tournament had a powerful effect. Interestingly, Brown found that playing against Woods resulted in significantly decreased performance. When the superstar entered a tournament, every other golfer took, on average, 0.8 more strokes. This effect was even more pronounced when Woods was playing well. Based on this data, Brown calculated that the superstar effect boosted Woods' PGA earnings by nearly five million dollars. Brown argues that this phenomenon is caused when "competitors scale back their effort in events where they believe Woods will surely win." After all, why waste energy and angst on an impossible contest? That hypothesis is certainly possible, but I'd argue that the superstar effect has more to do with "paralysis by analysis" than with decreased motivation. I'd bet that playing with Tiger Woods makes golfers extra self-conscious, and that such self-consciousness leads to choking and decreased performance. The problem, then, isn't that golfers aren't trying hard enough when playing against Tiger - it's that they're trying too hard.


• Carl Zimmer at Discover looks at doing math: The central role of numbers in our world testifies to the brain’s uncanny ability to recognize and understand them—and Cantlon is among the researchers trying to find out exactly how that skill works. Traditionally, scientists have thought that we learn to use numbers the same way we learn how to drive a car or to text with two thumbs. In this view, numbers are a kind of technology, a man-made invention to which our all-purpose brains can adapt. History provides some support. The oldest evidence of people using numbers dates back about 30,000 years: bones and antlers scored with notches that are considered by archaeologists to be tallying marks. More sophisticated uses of numbers arose only much later, coincident with the rise of other simple technologies. The Mesopotamians developed basic arithmetic about 5,000 years ago. Zero made its debut in A.D. 876. Arab scholars laid the foundations of algebra in the ninth century; calculus did not emerge in full flower until the late 1600s. Despite the late appearance of higher mathematics, there is growing evidence that numbers are not really a recent invention—not even remotely. Cantlon and others are showing that our species seems to have an innate skill for math, a skill that may have been shared by our ancestors going back least 30 million years.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DailyPangram/~3/EtXqFNm3u0A/429.html

Zoë, joking, explains why acquiring TV feeds is dumb.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1914

A couple of days ago, Jesse Sheidlower wrote to me about the recent climate-scientist email controversy.  Since Jesse is a lexicographer, he wasn't writing about whether this is the blue-dress moment for anthropogenic climate change, or a nontroversy based on the shocking discovery that scientists are not always scrupulously fair-minded in private.  Rather, Jesse was concerned about the argument structure of the verb hack.

For example, the lede sentence in the NYT's article on the subject (Andrew C. Revkin, "Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute", NYT 11/21/2009) was this:

Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

This sentence assumes  the frame <PERSON> hacks <DATA> from <SYSTEM>, where hack means something like "steal". This same frame is implied more succinctly by the headlined phrase "hacked email". A Google News search for "hacked email|emails" and "hacked data" shows that Norma Loquendi is happy with this. But Jesse expected hacked data to be data that has been modified illicitly, not data that has been obtained illicitly.

Some commenters will hasten to complain that illicit access to computer systems is cracking, not hacking.  For the standard take on the origins of the positively-evaluated term hack among techies, see the Jargon File's entries for hack, hack value, hacker, etc., or read Stephen Levy's classic 1984 pop-ethnography Hackers (relevant quotes discussed here; or read the Wikipedia article on the Hacker Ethic).  For some discussion of the diverse pre-electronic roots of hack, see "Joy and contempt", 5/25/2005.

But that's all irrelevant to the commonest contemporary usage, which centers on unauthorized or irregular access to computers, and involves at least the following frames:

1. <PERSON> hacks <SYSTEM>
2. <PERSON> hacks into <SYSTEM>
3. <PERSON> hacks <DATA> [from <SYSTEM>]

The problem is that hacking  (in this sense) involves an illicit purpose that might include either stealing data or modifying data. In either sense, hacked-as-modifier is not very common — but to the extent that it occurs, it seems to mean "stolen" rather than "modified". Before the recent East Anglia climate heist, I could only find one example of "hacked data" in the NYT archive (from 2005):

(link) Before 2003, there were plenty of examples of hacked data.

And one in COCA (from 2007)

Investigators believe it is the boldest tangible evidence of criminals cashing in on hacked data from TJX.

In both cases, hacked meant "stolen". However, the distinction between hacking-as-access and hacking-as-modification seems to depend in an obvious way on the contextual motivations involved.

There are lots of examples on the web where (for instance) the object of the verb hack is "credit card numbers", and all those that I've looked at involve stealing, not modifying. [Update: some also involve creating fake numbers that pass redundancy tests.] That's presumably because there's an obvious motivation for stealing credit card numbers, and little motivation for modifying them.

In contrast, if we search for something like "hack|hacked|hacking Wikipedia entries", we find exactly the opposite situation: people who hack Wikipedia entries don't steal them (since they're freely available), but rather modify them in an illegitimate way (since they have personal, political, ideological, or commercial motivations for doing so).

The same seems to be true for school records, grades, and so on — these are not freely available, but there's more motivation to modify them than to steal them.

In the case of the emails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia U., both sorts of motivation are present, and which one comes to mind first may depend on your beliefs.  If you think that mainstream climate scientists are the agents of a conspiracy to destroy civilization, then you're likely to think that their e-mail archives contain proofs of their guilt, and so a scandal based on their "hacked e-mails" probably involves mere theft.   If you think that mainstream climate scientists are rational people trying to prevent the destruction of civilization, then you're likely to think that their email archives are innocent, and so a scandal involving the contents of their "hacked e-mails" probably involves  counterfeiting.

[Update — this is a bit like the changing frames of the verb rob, and many other examples of change-of-possession verbs where there are several different ways of organizing the participants.  In current standard use, you rob someone (or a more figurative possessor) of something; but it used to be normal to rob something from someone, as in this couplet from Dryden cited in the MWDEU entry:

… They themselves contrive
To rob the Honey and subvert the Hive.

There are several verbs where the loser and the thing lost can be arranged in several ways: "strip A of B" and "strip B from A";  "take B from A" and "take A for B".

So it doesn't surprise me to find that "…hack [into] A for B" turns into things like "How to hack money from the Godfather in Mafia Wars", or "They hacked the [credit card] numbers from 9 major retailers", or "Many people used to hack CSS files from the web".]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/su4KjjiHD-E/i_get_all_my_clothes_off_the_i.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/i_get_all_my_clothes_off_the_i.php

I repeat: Skepticon II was a blast, and I think what really contributed to the fun was that there was a lot of young people organizing it and in the audience, and no stodginess was allowed. Make sure you go next year — it really was one of the more entertaining and enthusiastic meetings I've gone to this year…and it was held in the heart of the Bible Belt, in the city otherwise best known as the capitol of the AssGod church.

I have to answer a couple of questions I was asked repeatedly. I dazzled everyone with my sartorial flamboyance, and on the first night I wore my infamous crocoduck tie. I'm sorry, you can't get it, at least not yet. Josh Timonen had it made, and so far, only Richard Dawkins and I have one. Maybe it will show up in the RDF store someday, or maybe it won't.

On the second day, I was asked about the Creation "Museum", and ripped open my shirt to reveal a portrait of the epic battle that was waged on our visit. People asked where they could get that, too (although one audience member showed me hers — she'd already got one). This one is easy.

PZ Myers, DJ Grothe

Just go to Jen's store, and you can order them right now. You can also get it on a black shirt, too.

You'll have to get your own boy toy, though.

By the way, the photograph is by Ziztur — who has a nice blog.

http://thegreenbelt.blogspot.com/2009/11/week-in-entertainment_22.html

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/11/since-1992/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12414