Well, this might slow down my blogging efforts for a while!

Eddie Thomas Hancock, born at 12:18 on January 21st 2009. Weighed in at 8lbs 12oz.

Baby Eddie

I must be a glutton for punishment. Last year we took the children to Noah’s Ark Farm Zoo at Wraxall near Bristol. At the time, we thought it was just a standard play farm, but it turned out to be much more than that. The place is run by creationists, so the walls are full of creationist posters and there is a big exhibition of the story of Noah’s Ark (which of course is literally true). Anyway, a few months ago we won a prize in a raffle. It was two tickets to Noah’s Ark. We decided to go along yesterday for a day out as the children enjoyed themselves last time and I would be more prepared this time around.

Before we got to the main play area where the posters were, we saw a number of other notices pinned up, like:

Rhinos appear, like other mammal families, suddenly in the fossil records. Rhino fossils appear in the Eocene era, in the same geological period as camels, dogs, cats, shrews, moles, horses and many other mammals that we would recognise today. A few changes have taken place in each, but they are largely as they were then.

and a long list titled

33 reasons why humans did NOT come from Apes

This was taken from the book ‘The Origin of Man’ by Professor Stuart Burgess of Bristol University. This person is actually a real life professor in a good department in a good university. Surprisingly, given the subject matter of his books, he is not a biologist, but a mechanical engineer. When I googled him, I found this very unflattering description by the British Centre for Science Education.

In the Ark Exhibition room there was a curious diagram showing how all the animals would be arranged. It was interesting that the T-Rex was located between the Giraffe and the hay store (and underneath the fresh water tank). Doesn’t look like good planning to me.

Of course, any logical consideration of the ark story obviously falls apart very quickly. What about all the insects, worms, birds, etc? How anyone can believe this is literally true is incomprehensible.

We managed to pick up a couple of good leaflets. One was entitled ‘Can Life arise Spontaneously’ and was produced by the Creation Science Movement and the other was ‘Evolution – A Theory in Crisis’ actually produced by the farm itself.

From reading around Noah’s Ark and looking at the leaflets and websites they refer to (especially http://www.earthhistory.org.uk) it seems like the theory they subscribe to is a weird variation on creationism called Recolonisation Theory. Basically, it is a compromised half-baked idea that admits that standard creationism doesn’t make sense, but, as they are committed to their religious view of history, they have to use the same tactics of twisting facts to fit their bizarre story.

The basic facts seem to be:

• After The Creation, all life on earth was destroyed by cataclysms from above in the form of asteroids and from below in the form of water rising up
• Did I say ‘all life’? I forgot to say, a 600 year old man built a big boat and saved a pair of each living creature
• There is a fossil record showing a development of life over a number of years. However, they compress the timescale into thousands of years rather than millions (obviously you have to accept that all radio isotope dating and astronomy is wrong)
• To accept the above you need to accept that the speed of light used to be a lot faster than it is now (I liked this one!). Here’s a couple of quotes

Rates of radioactive decay are proportional to c. Accordingly, these rates would also have been higher

and

It is currently unclear whether the value of c was highest at the time of the Creation or at the Cataclysm. It had declined to close to its present value by the second millennium BC.

• Certain creatures, such as mammals and birds appear suddenly in the fossil record with no predecessors

There’s a section on the Earth History website called In-Depth Discussions which doesn’t discuss anything, just gives their own view of the deal.

Anyway, Answers in Genesis don’t like it, so it can’t be all that bad!

I know Richard Dawkins has referred to the labelling of children as Christian or Muslim as a form of mental child abuse. I’ve just converted my children (4 and 7) to using Linux instead of Windows. Am I just as bad? I guess I’ll have to do the same as I do when I talk to them about religion.

‘Lots of people around the world use different operating systems. Just because Daddy using Linux, then don’t feel you need to do the same. I’ll love you just as much if you use Windows when you grow up. Just don’t go all weird and start experimenting with a Mac’

After finishing in the gym tonight, I popped into the sauna. The gym supplies all the daily national and local newspapers, and someone had left a copy of the Western Daily Press in the sauna. It was a bit crinkly, but I thought I’d have a flick through as it was there.

There was a bizarre article about a local businessman who stood to win £1,000,000 from a £100 bet. The bet was that life after death would be proven by the end of this year. Unfortunately, the story didn’t appear in the online version of the newspaper, but I made a note of his website, Now That’s Weird, and looked it up later and did a few other searches on the guy in question, Ross Hemsworth (a “well known paranormal radio and TV presenter, scientific investigator of anomalous phenomena and an intriguing and entertaining speaker at events worldwide” according to his website). There was a story about the bet here (No, Paranormal Review isn’t one of my regular reads). His website promotes Glastonbury Radio. Glastonbury is just down the road from me (and definitely is weird), so perhaps I ought to have a listen!

It looks like his bet is related to this piece of research at the University of Southampton. The title of the article mentions ‘life after death’, although the article itself actually talks about near-death and out-of-body experiences. I’m going to keep an eye on this, but I have a feeling that we are not going to hear much more.

When I did a search for Ross Hemsworth on Google, it came up with a entry from the great man himself, James Randi. I’ve included the text here.

Reader Barry Moyle informs me:

You may be aware of the website www.phantomorfraud.com. I sent an e-mail to these people questioning their statement: “Dowsing works, that has been proven time & again.” “Dowsing” is listed as a topic on left hand side of their home page. I also suggested they should apply for your million dollar prize & forwarded a copy of your “The matter of Dowsing” from Swift, vol.2 no 3/4. January 1999.

I received a somewhat rude reply, addressed to “Mr. Eyes Closed”, from a Mr. Ross Hemsworth. Amongst other things, he said “it’s not our job to convince other skeptics, or indeed to chase money from other skeptics who require convincing” and “being a dowser myself, I KNOW it works”!

However, what interested me is his saying “I am in daily contact with James Randi, and he is very aware of the research we are doing.” I know you are a busy man Mr. Randi but I would be very pleased to have your comment on that. He also asks that I do not waste his time by further contacting him because I do not have an open mind. I shall oblige him.

Barry, you must recognize that the million-dollar challenge is probably the single most-feared element in the belief system these people have constructed. They can’t respond to it, because they know they can’t perform as they fantasize they can. This delusion is so cherished, so important to them, that they will invent, distort, and lie in order to avoid facing the truth. Indeed, truth is their greatest enemy, and it is brought up to them by the JREF challenge, every day.

Ross Hemsworth has written me only once — on an entirely different matter — but I am certainly not “in daily contact” with him. He makes such claims because he is alarmed, but understandably so, because he sees the great threat that is offered to his self-delusion, if he is in any way called upon to face reality.

This dates back a bit, I wonder if the JREF has had any recent communication with Mr Hemsworth

This week I’ve spotted a couple of daft articles and letters that demonstrate the general lack of critical thinking around today.

The first one was in the National Trust magazine. There were a couple of letters in response to a recent NT article on gardening by the phases of the moon. On the face of it, it sounds a bit weird, but should be testable.

I found a couple of interesting resources on moon-planting. One is a calendar that advises which things to plant according to the phase of the moon and other astrological signs.

Here’s the letter

I was interested in the article on planting by the moon. This is something I’ve been doing for years – and have been teased because of it! But I swear by the method Ed Ikin described, and to prove it, this year I planted some runner beans before the end of April – although the new moon was to be later in May. Result: only two beans germinated. I planted a second batch on 5 May and within less than a fortnight had 90 per cent germination. The best method is to cut the inside of a kitchen roll into three, fill with soil and pop a bean into each. The whole lot can then be planted with little disturbance to the roots.

Apart from the obvious point that the second batch were planted at a later date (probably warmer condition, though it’s hard to tell in this country), it’s so typical that someone will try a particular technique, find it works and then prescribe the success to that technique without considering the other factors at play.

The other item was in my local paper, The Weston Mercury. It concerned the sad story of a couple who have both recently contracted cancer. She was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma in November 2007 and he was diagnosed with leukaemia in February 2008. It’s an awful thing to happen to anyone – my dad died of cancer, but the reason for the story being in the paper was that they claim that their illnesses result from being caught up in the Asian tsunami in 2004.

They say they can

trace their ill health back to the day when they were forced to shelter on an iron roof after the wave struck.

They

asked doctors if there could be a link – they told her it was possible but nothing could be proved

The wife says

I’m convinced it has something to do with it. Before the tsunami I was fit and healthy, but afterwards I was having five or six weeks off work at a time…It was like I had my immune system lowered. I would get ill all the time

The husband says

I’m a bit more scientific about it, but the tsunami is the only common factor. Everything has gone downhill since that date and we have not been able to pull ourselves out of it

It’s a weird kind of non-story. They don’t appear to be trying to gain anything from the story, just stating what they think is to blame for their illnesses.

Maybe cancer can be triggered by stress, maybe not. I’m not doctor (well, not that sort of doctor). The point in both these cases is that people seem to be happier if they can find some pattern or reason for what happens to them or around them. I’m there are more than one logical fallacy in each of these cases, but they definitely seem to come under post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. assuming that a temporal relationship between two event implies a causal relationship.

When I was watching the Olympic highlights on the BBC yesterday, I thought I recognized the music they were playing. I realised that it was Hong Kong Garden by Siouxie and the Banshees (incidentally, the first single I ever bought), but played in a plinky-plonky Chinese style. I wonder what they are planning for London 2012? Anarchy in the UK performed by the London Symphony Orchestra?

I’ve never quite understood advertising and sponsorship deals. I was looking at the Castrol website for work the other day and I found out that Castrol were the official suppliers of engine oil to the Euro 2008 Championships. Would you be more inclined to put certain oil in your car (or, in our particular case, aircraft landing gear) because they were connected with football? Anyway, at least we now know what Christiano Ronaldo puts on his hair…

Common spelling mistakes should be accepted into everyday use, not corrected, a lecturer has said. Ken Smith of Bucks New University says the most common mistakes should be accepted as “variant spellings”.

I’ll accept this when I accept that Bucks New University (formerly High Wycombe Discount Carpet Warehouse) is a genuine centre of learning.

I had my son’s end of year school report yesterday (he is 7 1/2). While he was rated as above average in all subjects (of course!), the teachers were critical in one particular area – something that they had previously brought up with us. They said that he always wants to take time over his work, particularly writing and drawing, and likes to make sure it is correct and accurate before he finishes it. When they first mentioned this a few months ago we took it as a compliment! They felt it that wasn’t a good trait and it was far more important to get something finished, however badly, in the little time available while they rushed from one subject to another, rather than spend time doing something properly.

Even at home he will spend hours drawing very detailed pictures or building complex models out of lego. If he gets something wrong, he will scrap it and start over again.

I always thought that attention to detail and the ability to concentrate on one task for a long period were good things. It’s bad enough that today’s internet culture is giving a generation of children with the attention span of a goldfish – it’s another thing when this is reinforced by schools.

I recently stumbled across a website that brings together quite a few of my interests – science, technology, skepticism, articles on life (real and artificial) and evolution. Their people section links to some of the characters I got to know when I was working with Artificial Life. It also features a nice little app that is worth going back to just to check if anything has changed

The weird thing is that Google Ads is obviously getting a bit carried away and missing the website’s target audience. A couple of the automated ads that Google put on the site are:

“Atheism against the law? Scientific proof that atheism requires a belief in miracles. ”

“2008: God’s Final Witness Unprecedented destruction will come in 2008, leading to America’s fall. ”

I wonder how many hits these sites got from this site?

Machines Like Us is a nice looking site with some good content, but I don’t know if it gets visited or updated very often and the forum is a bit sparse. Perhaps I’ll have to start stirring them up a bit.