Over at Chiefly Musing, Nathan developed a rather profound observation.
Go there, and (as they say) read the whole thing.
Thanks to Dean for the link! :)
In an odd fit of insanity, I submitted a photo to the King of Cotillion competition.
For those of you who don't know, the Cotillion is a collection of sexy, sassy, classy blogger babes. No men allowed! (sorry guys, get your own clubhouse)
The winner gains the title "King of the Cotillon."
In any case, yours truly is in competition with some truly ferocious competition, including the infamous B.C., Imperial Torturer, Jay (Stop the ACLU), and (worst of all) Thunder6 (365 and a Wakeup)!
This could get ugly; wounded egos, tempers flying. And that's just us guys...
Nope. The ladies can't complain they lack choice, this time.
Drop on by, and vote.
So what do you do, when you add eight whole blogs (out of maybe eight bazillion you really like) to your blogroll?
Do you send some sort of tacky form letter to all eight? Or should you send a personal note?
Or should you just wait for them to check their referral logs and get pissed off?
Heh...
Will Collier has an interesting post at Vodkapundit , wherein he speculates about just what Apple will be announcing during their October 12 "One More Thing" event.
His suggestion: "iFlicks," a downloadable movie service similar to iTunes, with (one supposes) similarly low prices. Will envisions a connection he calls "Airport-Express-on-steroids" with a video out connector, and a remote.
There's some consensus in the comment thread that -if this is what Apple is planning- it will involve a new 100Mbit/second Airport standard to handle the bandwidth.
All of this is very cool, and even if that's not the new service, folks should check out a recent innovation from Apple: Airport with Airtunes, called Airport Express.
What's so cool about Airport Express is that -if you're using Airport as your wireless router- you can painlessly transmit music to another room. Just connect a "stereo out" line from your sound system to the base station, and plug a second pair of speakers to a module in another room. Viola, music everywhere!
You can even get a remote. So (say) your sound system is in the living room, and your downstairs blogging (or hobbying, whatever) you can control the music from down there.
How cool is that?
If anyone is interested, I'm selling the COMPLETE Walt Simonson THOR on eBay. Details here.
Foreword: Dean Esmay writes about A Voice of Sanity on Intelligent Design. After I finished writing this, I was surprised by my conclusions. As opposed to Dean, I'm agnostic, and believe there are "things on Heaven and Earth, undreamt-of in your philosophy." On the other hand, I still insist on scientific rigor when processing ideas.
So where does that leave me?
-Scott Kirwins
So you've got the debate between steady-state evolution vs. catastrophic evolution all sussed out, Scooter? You'd better write Science and let them know! :)
Point being that there are many areas of uncertainty within the overall theory. Painting the basic theory as unassailable begs the question. We may find encounter data in the next fifty to one hundred years which calls at least some of the current assumptions into question. Einstein developed a theory which strongly altered Newtownian physics, but not until new data was introduced.
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Of course, this means that many areas called science, aren't, including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and so on. You can call them studies, disciplines, or even areas of expertise. They just aren't science. JDS, alas, drops the ball with the claim "the value one places on science is, in itself, a philosophical view." Untrue.
Real science is -as I said above- measurable, repeatable, and subject to mathematical analysis. Real science (in fact) deals in objective, not subjective concepts. This is (as has been mentioned previously) why science cannot address the issue of God. There are no "God fossils" lying around, and He has been recently uncharitible in providing a convenient miracle to confound the skeptics. ;-) We are therefore forced to rely upon unpleasant facts, logic, and statistical analysis.
I would, therefore, like to take issue with Martin's
That turns out not to be the case. An actual statistical analysis gives only one of two results: reject, or cannot accept or reject. I have to add that the latter is sometime referred to merely as "not reject," but I find that unclear, with an implication that "not reject" is equal to accept.
It works like this: one tests a hypothesis (say: smoking causes lung cancer) by creating a null hypothesis opposite to the starting hypothesis. In this case the null hypothesis would be "there is no connection between smoking and lung cancer." The next step would be in analyzing the statistics, which (the results have been established for years) show that there is a relation between smoking and lung cancer. We then reject the null hypothesis. This allows us to accept the original hypothesis, at least to the extent that we use further analytical techniques to further test it.
Please note that you can't use this approach to "prove" a hypothesis; the best you can do is not reject a hypothesis. You can view falsification as winnowing the scientific wheat from the inaccurate chaff.
I suppose I should point out here that a 90% level of confidence doesn't mean the research is 90% confident; rather it means that 90% of the time, the actual (as opposed to statistically estimated) value will fall within a specific interval. To take a common example, an approval rating of 35% [+-3%] for the president, with an established confidence level of 90%, means that 90% of the time the actual approval rating of the entire country will fall between 32% and 38%.
What most folks miss is the immediate corollary: 10% the actual value will fall outside of that range. This means that 10% of the time one (incorrectly) rejects the null hypothesis. For the above example, this would have meant that there was no relationship between smoking and cancer, despite the data indications.
This is known as a "Type I error:" incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis. A "Type II error" is when you fail to reject a null hypothesis. Again, note that a Type II error doesn't mean one has incorrectly proved a hypothesis, but merely that you failed to reject it. It is, in other words, not evidence to the contrary.
I just came across an interesting analogy while double-checking my memory: this is similar a court decision, wherein "guilty" is the definite rejection of a false hypothesis, and "not guilty" is failure to reject. Most people equate "not guilty" with "innocent," which are both legally and semantically different. One may fail to convict an actual criminal due to lack of evidence. One may fail to reject a false hypothesis for the lack of data.
What this boils down to is that -scientifically speaking- one may disprove a false hypotheses, but not positively prove a true hypothesis.
So those who say that any scientific theory -evolution, for example- has been "proven" are incorrect in their statement. It would be more accurate to say that the theory in question accurately explains the known data. Also note that I do not say that they are wrong, but rather inaccurate. A proper respect for science tends to instill respect for semantics as well. :)
This common confusion about statistics is also reflected in the common confusion about probability, as the study of any state with a lottery can attest. One of the more popular (bad) arguments is "argument by unlikelyhood."
You can even see this in political discussions, wherein one disputant makes the claim that event X was so improbable that it is only logical to assume that conspiracy/criminality/take your pick is the only possible answer.
The first problem with this is that these arguments never establish actual probability distributions before the fact, which begs the question. How unlikely is an event? Say someone rolls two dice 108 times. Furthermore, the roller gets "snake eyes" (two 1's) three times. An observer then immediately claims the dice are loaded, since there's such a low chance of rolling two 1's, which is non-quantitatively true. But an objective examination of the probability distributions shows that -in 108 throws of a pair of honest dice- one should expect precisely three sets of "snake eyes." This is a simple example. Generally, one must specify the probabilities before an event, not after.
Another area of confusion is trying to estimate after-the-fact probabilities. Our example: every US dollar bill has a serial number consisting of a letter, eight digits, and another letter, e.g. B11895196B. What are the odds of my having that particular dollar bill?
(For those completely unfamiliar with probability, the probability of a combination of statistically independent events is equal to the product of the separate events. In the above example, the probability of rolling "snake eyes" is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36. The probability of rolling three 1's with three dice is 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6, and so on. The probability of picking out two B's out of a bag of SCRABBLE tiles (assuming a single tile for each letter, and replacing the tile between picks) is 1/26 x 1/26, or 1/676, which is about 0.14%)
Someone who knows a bit about basic probability would reply "well, that's a series of independent probabilities, so you multiply 1/26 x 1/10 (6 times) x 1/26, and get 1/(26 * 1,000,000 * 26), or 1/676,000,000. Thus our math wizard answers that the author has a one out of nearly seven hundred million chance of having that dollar bill in hand. A very unlikely event, indeed!
There's only one problem with that: the actual answer is precisely 1.0.
How do you resolve this apparent paradox? Simple: the event has already occurred. That is, I already had the dollar bill in hand when I phrased the question! (Literally. I took one out of my wallet to get the example serial number.)
In other words, the probability of an event which has already occurred is always 1.0, or 100%. Therefore anyone who argues that event X (having already occurred) is suspect, because the event is statistically unlikely, is providing an argument which is statistically irrelevant.
...Which -now that I think about it- seems to shoot a pretty big hole in ID. Whoops. On the other hand, I doubt this would impress them very much, as they reject the classic definition of science I presented above, in terms of "real" science is that data which can be measured, analyzed, and reproduced. If you can't use the math, don't call it science.
Actually, if you go here, and read some of the arguments presented by the Discovery people, you'll find they're hyping philosophy over science, preferring metaphysical hot air (but I redund) over objective, measurable reality. Basically, they attack real science as "positivistic," and try to vitiate the elemental concepts of measurability, observability, and falsifiability.
Instead (assuming that Steve Meyer's article is representative of the whole) they try to make ID acceptable by formulating "philosophical" definitions of science which allow the introduction of supernatural intervention via appropriate definitions.
By the nineteenth century, attempts to distinguish science from non-science had changed. No longer did demarcationists attempt to characterize science on the basis of the superior epistemic status of scientific theories; rather, they attempted to do so on the basis of the superior methods science employed to produce theories. Thus science came to be defined by reference to its method, not its content. Demarcation criteria became methodological rather than epistemological.(emphasis added) In other words, Meyer prefers the philosophical, subjective approach -arguing about "true" vs. "false' knowledge- as opposed to the modern, objective approach, which still relies on measurement and analysis, despite what he has to say about it, such as his complaint that Newton's laws did not "explain" gravity
First, many laws are descriptive and not explanatory. Many laws describe regularities but do not explain why the regular events they describe occur. A good example of this drawn from the history of science is the universal law of gravitation, which Newton himself freely admitted did not explain but instead merely described gravitational motion. As he put it in the "General Scholium" of the second edition of the Principia, "I do not feign hypotheses" -in other words, "I offer no explanations." Insisting that science must explain by reference to "natural law" would eliminate from the domain of the properly scientific all fundamental laws of physics that describe mathematically, but do not explain, the phenomena they "cover." For the demarcationist this is a highly paradoxical and undesirable result, since much of the motivation for the demarcationist program derives from a desire to ensure that disciplines claiming to be scientific match the methodological rigor of the physical sciences. While this result might alleviate the "physics envy" of many a sociologist, it does nothing for demarcationists except defeat the very purpose of their enterprise.In other words, Meyer insists that a natural must explain the ultimate "why" of a process, as well as the process itself.
I could go on, but basically the above article (and again, by extension the ID position) relies on philosophy and fancy tap-dancing about definitions instead of science.
True, Carl Sagan once observed that the scientific process does include at least one metaphysical concept: the world is a rational place, and operates according to physical laws, which can be derived and comprehended by human beings. So far, that assumption has withstood examination.
The odd thing about this is that I have no theoretical objection to God, I just expect His works to follow the known laws we have derived from our (aha) God-given faculties. If you check up the Roman Catholic position these days, the Pope decided a few years ago that evolution was compatible with Christianity, as long as one posited some sort of "divine spark" inherent to the speciation of homo sapiens. It's gonna be bloody difficult to test the idea, though!
A major part of the confusion in this debate is, I fear, yet more confusion about terms. This isn't really about science, or the "philosophy about science" (what the fubar is that, anyway? how can you get philosophical about the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics?) It's about control of the political entities in our lives.
In this case, it is the question of who runs the local school. Is it the local community, the county, state, or federal authorities? Jerry Pournelle has repeatedly pointed out that the best answer to this question is to reduce authority to the smallest denominator; in this case the local school board. As the good doctor has pointed out, this will no doubt result in some very silly-looking reading lists, but that's the cost of liberty. The beauty of this approach is that 90% of the worthless dolts (er, politicians and lawyers) who interfere now, can't.
This isn't a case for the courts, nor even for the state legislature, as long as the school isn't breaking any laws. Certainly it's none of D.C.'s business.
The problem is that everyone likes to talk about liberty, but they hate to let other people exercise it. Simply put, the left breaks out in hives about "God in the classroom," while the right wets their pants about "sex in the classroom." Here's a new idea: let the parents decide. It's their kids, and it's none of our business. If you're that worried about it, work on your own kids first. If you don't have any, shut the Hell up, as it's literally none of yours.
Dean's World contributor Aziz P discusses the "fanatical bickering" ... of competitive DVD formats.
His final graf focuses content protection, and how it protects consumers:
I think [the debate between Blue-ray and HD-DVD is] important and affects us in a potentially greater way than did the VHS vs BetaMax standards battle of a few decades ago. Ultimately, content on these next-generation discs will have to tread a fine line between consumers' rights and content producers' need to protect their intellectual property. It is good that the debate is playing out in public, because the transparency will ensure that we consumers have a window into the process. After all, it's our hard-eaned cash that both consortiums plan to suck in the hope that we will replace our DVD collections for our personal home theater libraries. Stay tuned.
Some thoughts:
Let's recall that what people want is backwards compatibility, as commenter Jerry Kindall pointed out.
Not only that, there's a more than a few DVD players out there these days, and not very many people spring for bleeding-edge, state of the art hardware. Especially if it's expensive.
Let's recall that previous generations of media technology included significant improvements over and above an increase in capacity.
Vinyl (33-1/3 rpm) LPs were so-called because they were long-playing compared to 78s; but LPs also displayed a significant increase in sound quality over the older 78 rpm records as well. 45 rpm singles were popular during the 50s and 60s, but eventually died out. One may consider iTunes their (modern) spiritual successor.
The original compact discs were -ironically- of lower sound quality than LPs, especially in the context of audiophiles who carefully maintained their collections. In fact, some of the first remasters to CD format were pretty bad, such as some of Jethro Tull's early catalog.
What CDs did offer was -in effect- entropy-free playing; how many of us remember playing a favorite album so many times we literally wore the grooves out? Doesn't happen with CDs*. Also the physical size of the media was much, much smaller than an LP.
After that we had the VHS-HQ vs. DVD format; you won't see the difference between a professionally-recorded tape and a DVD unless you have a high-end TV, or a low-end tape player. And (believe it or not) it's hard to beat sound quality on VHS-HQ. Just about any high-quality stereo Hi-Fi videotape player is as good as the older reel-to-reel players. In fact, I've had one audiophile tell me he considered a high-quality stereo Hi-Fi videotape player to provide better sound than anything outside of a studio deck; even a Nakamichi Dragon.
But (again) the digital format allowed nearly unlimited replays without loss of quality. Tapes will, eventually, wear out.
Both CDs and DVDs also included the flexibility of random access, compared to tapes. You could (to a degree) randomly play LP tracks, but only with a great deal of manual queueing, and/or flipping the record over.
Point being that these improvements included much more than mere higher capacity; they included higher quality and/or greater convenience than before, and (in the case of DVDs) more options such as the documentaries about the movie, commentary tracks, and other extras such as (my personal favorite {g}) "blooper" reels.
Something else to consider is that CDs and DVDs replaced fairly mature technologies; LPs date from the 50s, and videotape from the early 70s.
One may consider standard CDs to be fairly mature, now, but are (once you factor fast modern burners) still nearly unrivaled for convenience. It's too easy to make your own mixes for the car player, parties, and so on.
With all of this in mind, just what do Blue-ray and HD-DVD offer consumers, aside from higher capacity? We know Blue-ray, at least, offers features to vendors, but who buys what's good for vendors? I'm sure the RIAA hates CD/DVD burners, and even videotape recorders. Let's not bring up the heinous court decision which allowed peon consumers to tape movies for their own use!! The bastards.
Do the new formats offer significantly superior video or sound performance? Do they offer new features (eg extras on current DVDs) or greater convenience? Stephen den Best points out that the new formats will support HDTV resolutions. For those of us with HDTVs....
Will the new players play my old DVDs? Recall that all DVD players also play CDs as well. Consumers have become accustomed to a single "all in one" player. Will this backwards compatibility continue?
And (critical question, I think) will most people be able to tell the difference? Aside from the greater capacity, that is.
Recall above when I alluded to the fact that a vinyl LP in good condition gives better sound than a CD? That's true, under most circumstances. The trick is that you have to have a system good enough to hear the difference. Most home audio/home theatre systems won't highlight that difference. You need at least a low-end Harmon-Kardon, or Onkyo amp, with Bose, Polk, or (maybe) Boston Acoustic speakers to notice. The $400 "home theatre" system at Circuit City or Media Play won't cut it.
But then, most folks are willing to settle for that. Hell, .MP3s are of even lower audio quality than CDs, but that's not stopping Apple from selling iPods hand over fist.
Let's not forget SuperAudio CDs (SACDs): many musicians and audiophiles have lauded the incredible quality of this format, but it's never really caught on. SACDs have faced a legacy problem similar to what the new DVD formats will. from the Sony website:
You'll have a choice of four types of Super Audio CD, including multi-channel and "hybrid" discs.Any of that sound familiar? It should, if you've read up on the issues facing Blue-ray/HD-DVD backwards compatibility.Hybrid discs will play back beautifully in any home, car or portable CD player made since 1982. These discs contain two signal layers: one for CD, the other for Super Audio CD.
[Single-layer stereo] - Discs with this emblem will only play in Super Audio CD players.
[Hybrid stereo] - These discs play in all standard CD players, as well as Super Audio CD players.The extraordinary experience of Super Audio CD doesn't stop at stereo. Multi-channel discs deliver the full warmth and resolution of Super Audio CD on up to 5.1 channels. And each multi-channel disc also includes a separate two-channel version of the music, for complete compatibility with two-channel Super Audio CD players.
[Single-layer multichannel] These discs will only play in Super Audio CD players, providing stereo sound on two-channel players and multi-channel sound on multi-channel players.
[Hybrid multichannel]Discs with this graphic will play in all CD players, as well as Super Audio CD players.
Let us include the datapoint that -while providing massively superior sound- SACDs have never caught on. Perhaps the format issues referenced above contributed that lack of success.
So should you buy a Blue-ray, and hope the studios release your favorite movies on it, or gamble on HD-DVD, with equal uncertainty? Recall that the studios' public commitments to the new formats are as hazy and contradictory as the rest of the debate.
And -all hype aside- no one has released a new-format player which will play older DVDs as well. Oh, the consortiums have said they will, but right now it's all vaporware.
I promise you that my money is going to stay in my pocket until (at the very least) a real high-def DVD player, with full support for the current DVD format exists. And even then they'll have to provide features which are so far beyond the current DVD format that I'll just have to upgrade.
And I bet I'll have a lot of company, too...
*Ok, you can scratch or damage the surface of a CD, but not by playing it over and over again.