Blackmoor Vituperative

I imagine that you’ve heard of PETA, the group that would prefer to kill animals rather than allow them to live as pets? Oh, yes: you heard me right. The funny thing is that I used to support PETA, back when I thought they cared about animals. Then, in the late 1980s *(see note below), I learned the truth: that PETA is a radical organization that fosters vandalism and even terrorism against legitimate medical research laboratories, and that they don’t even care for the welfare of animals all that much. They are just as likely to kill animals as they are to find good homes for them.

Hmm, let me re-phrase that. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, and I’m being sloppy with my facts. It is not true that PETA is “just as likely” to kill animals as they are to find good homes for them. The fact is that PETA is over five times more likely to kill animals as they are to find good homes for them. PETA kills thousands of animals every year, animals which could have gone to good homes if PETA had just left them where they were. Not counting those that PETA held only temporarily — for spaying or neutering — the group killed over 85 percent of the animals it took in during 2003.

In 2003, PETA euthanized over 85 percent of the animals it took in, finding adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By comparison, the Norfolk (Va.) SPCA found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals and Virginia Beach SPCA adopted out 66 percent.

(from The Center for Consumer Freedom)

As I said before, this isn’t new. PETA has euthanized animals for years, and they are still at it. In Virginia last year, the activist group euthanized 2,278 animals, sterilized 7,641 and found homes for 361.

Of course, if killing animals by the truckload is your thing, or if you get a kick out of dumping animal carcasses into dumpsters by the dozen, then PETA might be the group for you. I happen to know that they’re hiring (those dead pets aren’t going to dump themselves).

* (Note: that was when I still lived in California, before I moved to Norfolk, VA — which is, oddly enough, the location of PETA’s headquarters.)

April Editorial from Scientific American Magazine

Okay, We Give Up

There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense, and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there’s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that’s a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because of a lack of scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits to blindly building an anti-ICBM defense system, that can’t work as promised, that will waste tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars and imperil national security, you won’t hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration’s antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that’s not our concern. No more discussion of how policies affect science either – so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools’ Day.

THE EDITORS
editors@sciam.com

from:
Scientific American
April 2005

Susan and I just got back from seeing What The Bleep Do We Know at the Naro Expanded Cinema, and we can’t stop talking about it. For the most part, we have been using words like “unwatchable”, “flakes”, “spiritualist mumbo-jumbo”, and “scientifically illiterate”.

It would be tempting to call What The Bleep Do We Know the worst movie I have ever seen, but it’s not really a movie. It’s one part infomercial for pseudo-science cults, one part bad home movie, and one part PBS elementary school special which tries to explain a complicated field of study without using any actual facts. I am embarassed for Marlee Matlin: she hasn’t been in much recently, and I hope that this drivel doesn’t poison her career. I feel even worse for any real scientists or mathematicians who may have been involved in this garbage. But the people I feel sorriest for are those who come out of this movie and think that they have learned anything about quantum physics.

This isn’t a new phenomena, of course. When radioactivity was new and little understood, quacks came out of the woodwork, proclaiming it a cure for everything from hot flashes to the common cold. Before that, the same thing happened with electricity: by plugging electrodes to your wrists, you could cure insomnia, gout, and arthritis. It’s no surprise that quantum physics has become the vehicle for superstitious nonsense and half-baked theories concocted by charlatans and bought into by scientific illiterates. Same thing, different decade: people are morons.

If you genuinely want an introduction to quantum mechanics, rather than 111 minutes of spiritualist gibberish, read Alice In Quantumland, by Robert Gilmore. Now that would make a great movie. It would even be educational, in stark contrast to What The Bleep Do We Know.

I learned an interesting thing at the Virginia Aquarium the other day. A swamp is not a bog, nor are either of these marshes. A swamp has trees, water, and mud. A bog has trees, water, and decaying vegetation which is decaying more slowly than it builds up. A marsh has grass, water, and mud, and is either a salt marsh or a freshwater marsh, depending on how close it is to the ocean and how much brackish water the tide brings in. The Virginia Aquarium is located right on top of a salt marsh, and the exhibits on the marsh ecosystem are really interesting.