Paul Hutchinson’s Blog

One Hundred and Fifty years ago today on July first 1858, Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker read a paper to the Linnean Society of London. The important paper was: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection, By Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S.., & F.G.S., and Alfred Wallace, Esq.

Thus began 150 years of amazing advances in the biological sciences that have improved our lives and life spans enormously. Sadly, this also marks the start of 150 years of denial and willful ignorance by fundamentalist religious people.

Read more about the event at this post by Richard Carter, FCD of The Red Notebook blog. While you’re there sign up to become a member of The Friends of Charles Darwin.

Paul Hutchinson, FCD

Charlie is my Darwin

Well the House of Representatives passed the crappy piece of legislation that provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. I find it disgusting that the House decided that potentially illegal spying on citizens is not worthy of full investigation and instead passed a bill that kills the currently progressing legal proceedings. I am glad to report that my representative, Congressman Richard E. Neal, voted against the bill, thank you very much Representative Neal.

There was a former Deputy Attorney General on the News Hour Friday night who tried to make light of this immunity with a bad analogy. He said if a policeman takes your car to chase a criminal you are given immunity from prosecution for whatever happens so, the telcos should get immunity. This is not anywhere near the same as the immunity they want to give the telcos. If a policeman hands you a gun and tells you to shoot someone in the head AFAIK you will not be given immunity from prosecution. Every citizen is required to know the law and when instructed by anyone to break that law the citizen must say no or accept the consequences. Sure a Judge might give you a break on the sentence if it wasn’t easy to determine the legality but you can’t expect full immunity because an insane authority figure tells you to do something that you should know is wrong.

The bill is now in the Senate, lets hope they throw out the retroactive immunity provision so that we can find out what this monkey business was all about.

Please contact your Senators and urge them to vote NO on this bill that cuts sharply into our Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

More information about the House fiasco here:

House Caves, Approves Fake ‘Compromise’ on Telecom Immunity

House Falls Down on the Job

This article covers the action in the Senate on this bill:

Senators Dodd and Feingold Stand Strong Against Immunity

Blaise Pascal was born June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Pascal was a truly great mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. I see his name all the time in my work because the SI unit of pressure is the pascal.

Over at Rationally Speaking Massimo Pigliucci has a post with a nice quote from Monsieur Pascal.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

The Wikipedia entry for Monsieur Pascal I find to be excellent so I’ll send you there for more about this giant of science.

“They reported me to Children’s Aid,” Leduc declares, still disbelieving. “Based on a psychic!”

The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic

Go to What’s The Harm? for more sad tales of people being harmed by pseudoscientific nonsense.

David L. Katz, M.D is a purveyor of medical woo from Yale University. Since he posted this quote on his blog I figured I’d make his wish come true. Of course we all know this makes him a Witch! I’ve developed some easy tests to determine if a doctor is likely a quack. If the doctor has been on Oprah’s TV show they are very likely to be promoting quack medicine (e.g. Dr. “enlarge your penis by loosing weight” Oz). If the doctor has a web site trying to sell you stuff they are extremely likely to be a quack, hold onto your wallet as you run away fast.

For more information about the bad doctor and his pseudoscientific ways check out these posts by some good evidence based doctors.

“Fluid evidence” strikes back: Dr. Katz versus the skeptical blogsophere

Integrative baloney @ Yale

Changing the Rules of Evidence

“Integrative” medicine at Yale: A more “fluid” concept of evidence?

As far as I’m concerned Yale’s Dr. Katz is far less useful than the funny Dr. Katz.

I hereby release the Dr. Katz as a Duck image to the Public Domain.

The Do-Not-Call list has been made permanent!

The Federal Communications Commission has amended its rules to require telemarketers to honor registrations with the National Do-Not-Call Registry indefinitely. The previous rules provided that registrations would expire after five years.

This action is consistent with Congress’s mandate in the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of 2007, which prohibits the removal of numbers from the Registry unless the consumer cancels the registration or the number has been disconnected and reassigned or is otherwise invalid. The Federal Trade Commission has already committed to retain numbers on the Registry indefinitely.

Read the full announcement here.

More DTV transition actions against retailers:

Big Lots Stores, $48K

Variety Wholesalers, $38K

BJ’s Wholesale Club, $20K

Conn’s Inc, $70K

Rent-A-Center, $60,000

Tomorrow, June 17th, is the official launch of Firefox 3 and we’re trying to set a Guinness World Record. Please download Firefox 3 tomorrow to:

Set a Guinness World Record
Enjoy a Better Web
Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.
The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008.

I’ll be downloading it tomorrow and you should to.

———-Update 11:00AM EDT———–

According to the Mozilla blog, the record setting attempt starts at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00PM EDT), for other  time zones see this page.

Denon is now selling a 5 foot Ethernet like cable for $500.00. Either Denon’s engineer’s are totally incompetent for designing a digital audio link that requires a $500 cable to work over 5 feet or, Denon’s marketing and management are jumping on the take money from gullible audiophiles bandwagon. Either situation is very bad, you don’t want to buy incompetently designed or fraudulent products.

Take a look at the data sheet, it is completely devoid of electrical specifications, all it has is the usual range of pseudoscientific marketing phrases. The biggest laugh I got from the data sheet is this bullet point. “Direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable” and the picture shows a double headed arrow printed on the connector shell. The symbol clearly shows that you can connect the cable in either of the two possible ways making the symbol completely unnecessary. Another laugh is their labeling of the strain relief bushing in the head shell as a “bush”. Sorry Denon you don’t even have a firm grasp of the English language, a bush is plant type not a strain relief device.

I am very disappointed in Denon and in my opinion they have become snake oil salesman. I recommend that people do not even consider buying any gear from these hucksters. Any company willing to stoop this low is one to stay far away from if you value your money.

This article about the cable has some spot on observations and reasonable reader comments. My favorite phrase from the article is this, “Not made of solid gold and unicorn hair then”.

This is disgusting and illegal by military law, the invasion of Iraq is not supposed to be the new Crusades.

Now residents of the city are abuzz that some Americans whom they consider occupiers are also acting as Christian missionaries. Residents said some Marines at the western entrance to their city have been passing out the coins for two days in what they call a “humiliating” attempt to convert them to Christianity.

…

“Multi-National Force-Iraq is investigating a report that U.S. military personnel in Fallujah handed-out material that is religious and evangelical in nature,” the spokesman, Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, said in a statement e-mailed to McClatchy. “Local commanders are investigating since the military prohibits proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”

Hopefully they’ll severely punish those responsible for the atrocious action. Read the full story here:

McClatchy Washington Bureau - Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah

A forfeiture order of $9,000 has been issued to Christian Voice of Central Ohio, Inc., for repeatedly broadcasting commercial advertisements. At the time of the violations they held a noncommercial educational television license for WCVZ.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-1092A1.txt

Digital Antenna, Inc. manufacturer of cell phone boosters and repeaters thinks, like the goofballs selling cell phone jammers, that what they do is allowed under the rules. The guys at Digital Antenna seem to think their systems are not transmitters, Doh! To top it off they apparently violated a Commission order by willfully and repeatedly failing to respond fully to a directive of the Enforcement Bureau to provide information to the FCC. http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-1093A1.txt

Two more retailers caught not properly labeling analog only TV’s, Value City Department Stores, Inc., ($216,000)  and Toys “R” Us, Inc., ($248,000).

Some of the previously fined retailers are challenging the authority of the FCC to fine them for violations of Section 15.117(k). AFAIK, the FCC has not made a formal response because this is going to federal court. It will be interesting to see who wins in court, if the FCC loses on this it could undermine much of the authority they need to keep our spectrum useful in the coming century. If that happens the Congress will need to re-write the legislation authorizing the FCC so, that we can have useful wired and wireless communication and broadcasting services. I’ll be following this story closely as it develops and will post when I have new information.