User:Filll

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[edit] About me

I know a little. I am a research scientist. I have a few graduate degrees. I have a background in physics and mathematics and mathematical physics. I am from Canada originally and live outside of Washington DC. I speak a little English and even less French.

I am not too enthusiastic about letting people attack science. I have fairly strong religious views but I do not advertise them; I am not an atheist, although I am often accused of being one.


[edit] Selected articles I had a hand in

[edit] Notes

[edit] Wikis of interest

[edit] Information sites


[edit] Funny vandalism

Take a look at this.

[edit] Why science does not include the supernatural

Including the supernatural in science will destroy science. Suppose you have some physics homework to do. You know the answer from the back of the book. You need 20 steps to get to the answer. You can only get the first 3 steps. Then you write "The remaining 17 steps are a miracle and I dont need to do them so there". And then you complain when the teacher gives you a bad grade for not doing your homework. And complaining when the other student who does all 20 steps gets a better grade. Understand?

[edit] My activities on WP

I try not to do this
I try not to do this

Image:Beating 2Da 2Ddead 2Dhorse.gif

Wikipedia simply reports what is actually believed today, not what you would like people to believe, or what you would "teach" them to believe.--Codex


Given that, what is actually believed? How do we define it? Polls? All POV? Are some POV more important than others in the literature? I do not mean to be difficult. I just do not understand this concept very well. For example, I read at Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial:

Points of view held as having little credibility by experts, but with wide popular appeal (e.g.: the belief in astrology, considered as irrational and incorrect by the vast majority of scientists and astronomers), should be reported, but as such: that is, we should expose the point of view and its popular appeal, but also the opinion held by the vast majority of experts

I am just trying to learn.



[edit] More humor

Fundies say the darndest things

[edit] Bee inebriation

If you look through my articles and edits, you will notice that I do not always tackle serious subjects, although "bee inebriation" is very serious to some people. I do not just engage in battles with assorted nuts, but I do like to learn things and I like trivia. And I like things like:

  • food trivia
    • did you know we have orange cheese and yellow Phillipino rice from anetto, which is also a major colorant in lipstick and was first used as a warpaint in the Yucutan peninsula? It comes from a tree there
    • carrots apparently were purple with orange middles and the orange was bred as a tribute to the Dutch Royal House of Orange (still tracking that one down)
    • Eggplants were originally white? (hence the name)
    • The Durian is a very smelly fruit from southeast Asia that can be very expensive (about 50 bucks when ripe and fresh). It is illegal to eat it on the subway or in a hotel in some places, because it smells so bad.
    • The bubble drinks in Vietnam and tapioca pudding are made with casaba root, originally from South America, and now mainly eaten as a staple in Africa?
    • Sugar cane origins in Hawaii are a bit of a mystery
    • lutefisk, a Christmas special food in Norway, is made from rotting herring that has been doused in lye to stop the rotting?
    • surstromming, a food eaten in the summer in Sweden, is made from rotting fish that is preserved in salt water and smells so bad you can smell it for a great distance

Other interesting facts:

  • There were three parts of North America actually occupied by the Axis Powers during World War II: Aleutian islands (obviously), Miquelon and Saint-Pierre (part of Vichy France, and still part of France; within territorial boundary waters of Canada), and some locations in the Canadian Arctic occupied by Germans with weather stations to help with naval and aerial combat by making better weather forecasts for the war (completely undetected during the war itself).
  • There are two parts of the lower 48 states that you have to drive through Canada to reach by land (Point Roberts WA and Angle Inlet MN, the latter caused by a misunderstanding of the source of the Mississippi during treaty negotiations)
  • The subway system in New York City has 500 miles of abandoned track and tunnels. It has over 1000 miles of track in use. This of course does not count the above ground rail system that also existed and was removed (something like Chicago's I guess).
  • If you look at a map of the Pacific, you will see that the islands of Hawaii are all lined up in a row. If you include sea mounts and underwater knolls etc, the Hawaiian islands extend a great distance westward and then there is a sharp bend Northward as the island chain continues as the Emperor chain (the whole chain is called the Hawaii-Emperor chain, for obvious reasons). If you date all of these islands (about 50 I think) the dates get progressively older as you move along the chain, westward and then northward. The interesting thing to me is, what happened to cause the sharp bend?
  • Mummies were so plentiful in Egypt that the bodies were used as fuel for early steam locomotives, rather than burn scarce wood or coal.
  • "Mummy extract" was also put in patent medicines and sold to Victorians who wanted to stay young.

So I like to know a few unusual facts.

So in the case of bee inebriation:

  • bees are badly affected by pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals that man has introduced into the environment. They can appear drunk and dizzy, and even die. This is serious because it has a substantial economic impact of course.
  • bees also have brains and nervous systems that are similar in some ways to humans, and so their behavior when drunk is of interest to scientists in several research teams world wide, who get the bees drunk on purpose to see their behavior
  • some plants rely on getting the bees drunk so they fall inside the plant. When they are inside the plant, the plant glues some pollen sacks to the back of the bee, and then the plant partially closes to trap the bees until the glue dries sufficiently that the pollen sacks will not fall off, and then let the bees go to spread the pollen
  • Some bees like to drink more than others, and become notorious drunks around the hives. So the bees station "bee bouncers" outside the hives to keep the drunk bees from entering the hive and disrupting everything, and force them to stay outside until they sober up. If a bee is a repeat offender and gets drunk too often, the "bee bouncers" will chew the drunk bees legs off as a punishment.

And so on. So as you can see, bee inebriation is an interesting subject. Did you know that most of the bees we have here in the US are not native varieties, but were introduced from Europe to displace the native bees? The indians even referred to them as "white man's flies", according to some writing of Thomas Jefferson. So even bees can be interesting. And this is just a small slice of bee behavior, not counting on their navigational abilities, the behavior when exposed to smoke, the solitary bees, the stingless bees, bees that can sting multiple times, interactions with wasps, battles between bees, etc.--Filll 20:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] My worldview

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist
81%

Idealist
75%

Cultural Creative
63%

Existentialist
56%

Modernist
50%

Fundamentalist
38%

Materialist
38%

Romanticist
31%


created with QuizFarm.com

[edit] Second attempt

<img src="http://quizfarm.com/images/1113109003postmodernism.JPG"> You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

Postmodernist
75%

Idealist
63%

Cultural Creative
63%

Modernist
56%

Materialist
50%

Existentialist
50%

Romanticist
38%

Fundamentalist
38%

<a href='http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=23320'>What is Your World View?</a>
created with <a href='http://quizfarm.com'>QuizFarm.com</a>

[edit] Consider the following scenario

Now how would lawyers feel if the following were pushed by the public and by members of some small eccentric religious sect:

  • All criminals that had not been seen committing a crime by the jury had to be released immediately. DNA evidence was ruled inadmissable, and confessions, and fingerprint evidence, and circumstantial evidence and eyewitness accounts were all thrown out. Unless the jury sees the crime for themselves, there is no proof it did not happen, so we have to just assume the opposite.
  • Any criminal defendent is allowed to use miracles as part of his defense. So if my neighbor saw me killing the postman and burying him in the backyard, I can claim that he did not see me, he saw a vision, or that I was miraculously in Cleveland on the day of the murder, even though I have no evidence to support me being in Cleveland and in fact there are 30 pieces of evidence that I was home in Rochester instead.
  • Questioning a "miracle" defense, or questioning the discarding of DNA evidence or fingerprint evidence will cause the judge, jury or lawyers to be condemned and cursed roundly, and told by the general public that they are damned and will burn in hell forever for questioning the word of God himself-They are in fact, defaming God almighty by questioning the miracle defense or introducing evidence from the past which no one saw.
  • There were rumblings about changing the laws to require the introduction of the miracle defense, and the discarding of all past evidence. Anyone who disagrees with these principles is automatically suspect. Politicians opposed to the miracle defense and discarding of past evidence will be voted out of office. Judges opposed will be impeached and removed from the bench.
  • Lawyers and judges who disagree will be viewed as nonbelievers and atheists and blasphemers for doubting the word of God himself
  • The expertise of lawyers and judges will be called into question since it is irrelevant-they are all atheists anyway, so who can trust them?--Filll 21:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] That old time religion

Pat Robertson:

  • He calls church-state separation a “lie of the left”
  • thinks Christians like him should lead the world.
  • His 1991 book The New World Order was based on a host of anti-Semitic sources, although Robertson has always been pro-Israel for end-times theological reasons.
  • The same book opines that former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush may have been unwitting dupes for Lucifer.
  • On his TV show, Robertson once charged that Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians represent “the spirit of the Antichrist.”
  • In a Sept. 13, 2001, diatribe, he asserted that the terrorist attacks on America happened because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of church-state separation.
  • Over the years, the failed presidential candidate has often dallied with brutal dictators. He celebrated Guatemala’s Pentecostal strongman Efrain Rios Montt, lauded Frederick Chiluba of Zambia as a model for American politicians, hunted for gold with Liberia’s Charles Taylor and did business with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. (He was caught using relief airplanes owned by his charity, Operation Blessing, to ferry diamond-mining equipment in and out of Zaire.)

Robertson Quote: “The fact that [the courts] are trying to ignore this country’s religious heritage is just horrible. They are taking our religion away from us under the guise of separation of church and state. There was never any intention that our government would be separate from God Almighty. Never, never, never in the history of this land did the founders of this country or those who came after them think that was the case.”

Dr. James C. Dobson:

  • lauded corporal punishment for children at a time when many child-rearing experts were recommending against it.
  • refers to church-state separation as the “phantom” clause in the Constitution.
  • He frequently lambastes gays, legal abortion and the teaching of evolution in public schools.
  • In a 1996 radio address, he attacked the concept of tolerance, calling it “kind of a watchword of those who reject the concepts of right and wrong….It’s kind of a desensitization to evil of all varieties.”
  • Two years before that, an FOF magazine attacked the Girl Scouts for being agents of “humanism and radical feminism.”
  • More recently, Dobson lashed out at a pro-tolerance video produced for public schools that featured popular cartoon characters, among them SpongeBob SquarePants, because the group that produced it put a “tolerance pledge” on its Web site that included gays.

Rev. D. James Kennedy:

  • His “Coral Ridge Hour” mixes fundamentalism with strident attacks on public education, gays, evolution, legal abortion, “secular humanism” and other Religious Right targets.

Alan Sears:

  • He was the first Religious Right figure to assert that the cartoon character SpongeBob Square­Pants might be gay
  • has criticized the 1959 comedy film “Some Like It Hot” for promoting cross-dressing.

Sears Quote: “One by one, more and more bricks that make up the artificial ‘wall of separation’ between church and state are being removed and Christians are once again being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to equal access to public facilities and funding.” (January 2004 e-mail alert)

Donald Wildmon: Wildmon, 68, has flirted with anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews control the entertainment industry. The AFA’s Journal has also reprinted articles from The Spotlight, an anti-Semitic newspaper. In December, Wildmon said evangelicals may stop supporting Israel if Jewish leaders don’t stop criticizing the Religious Right.

Wildmon Quote: “Anti-prayer/Anti-Christian groups – like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State – have teamed up with liberal judges on the U.S. Supreme Court and are stripping away our religious freedom.” (Fall 2000 fund-raising letter)

Family Research Council:

  • Recently, it has led the Religious Right effort to attack the federal courts and strip judges of their ability to hear church-state cases, sponsoring a series of anti-court rallies called “Justice Sunday.”

Quote: “The [Supreme] Court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity. It represents more of a threat to representative government than any other force – more than budget deficits, more than terrorism.” (“Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference, March 7, 2005)

Jerry Falwell:

  • His newspaper labeled the children’s show character Tinky Winky a stalking horse for the gay-rights movement in 1999. *He has asserted that the Antichrist is alive today and is Jewish.
  • Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” and opined that God had lifted his protection and allowed “the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”

Falwell Quote: “Separation of Church and State has long been the battle cry of civil libertarians wishing to purge our glorious Christian heritage from our nation’s history. Of course, the term never once appears in our Constitution and is a modern fabrication of discrimination.” (“Falwell Fax,” April 10, 1998)

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon:

  • . He has been criticized for acting as a front for gambling interests on at least two occasions. An aide to disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff once called Sheldon “Lucky Louie” in an e-mail when the two worked together on a lobbying project on behalf of the legalized gambling industry.
  • For many years, Sheldon carved out a niche for TVC by engaging in unrelenting gay bashing. When other Religious Right groups began moving in on this turf in the 1990s, Sheldon diversified, ramping up his assaults on church-state separation, public education and the federal judiciary.

Sheldon Quote: “A dangerous Marxist/Leftist/Homo­sex­ual/Is­lamic coalition has formed – and we’d better be willing to fight it with everything in our power. These people are playing for keeps. Their hero, Mao Tse Tung, is estimated to have murdered upwards of 60 million people during his reign of terror in China. Do we think we can escape such persecution if we refuse to fight for what is right?” (“The War on Christianity,” column, TVC Web site, Dec. 13, 2005)

Source: [1] --Filll 16:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

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