Of all the cemetery pictures I have taken this summer session, I think this is my favorite.

 

Lies, damn lies, and quote mining.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am heavily involved in the evolution/ID-creationism debates online. Even though I am no scientist, rather instead a budding historian, I am staunchly on the evolution side of the debate. However, this being said, I enjoy the back and forth discussion over evidence and have found it possible to agree to disagree peacefully with people on the other side of the debate. There is, however, one tactic used in the debate primarily by creationists, although I have seen evolution supporters use it as well, that never fails to offend me both as a historian, and as a human being. I honestly hate to single out the creationist side of the debate for the use of quote mining. However, in my participation in the debates on line, 95% of the quote mining is from the creationist side of the debate.

This tactic is quote mining. Quote mining simply is taking a snippets of a book or article radically out of context to use to support your position. Take this quote that village atheists use to tweak Christians, that the bible says “there is no god.” However, what is really said is from Psalms 14:1 “The fool says in his heart “there is no god””. The added context changes everything in that statement. Or take this quote from Charles Darwin that the notion of the evolution of the eye is absurd :

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

However, this is taken hugely out of context the full quote is here:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."

What quote mining accomplishes is two things, first it sets up a false argument from authority because it has been taken so far out of context, and second it is a egregious lie by omission.

If you suspect a quote mine, here is what to look for. First, who is the quote from, any quote from Darwin, Gould, Eldredge, or Dawkins (who by the way I feel is a prick of the first order) that is talking about the weakness of the Theory of Evolution, is immediately suspect. All of the above were strong supporters of evolution, and any quote from them talking about Evolution being wrong is absurd. Next, very often when giving these quotes, there is almost never a link to the full text from which the quote is taken, or even a proper citation giving source and page number. When challenged on this the response is often “Go look it up yourself.” Umm no, that is not how it works, by doing this it appears you have something to hide.

The reason this offends me so much, is how dishonest it is. Quote mining is lying pure and simple. If you need to lie to support your arguments, the your arguments are in trouble, the run down the curtains, shuffle off this mortal coil and join the bleeding choir invisible, trouble. It also offends me as a historian because of the precedent it sets. For example, a quote miner set loose on the works of Martin Luther, could produce mis-quotes from Luther stating that the Catholic church was right all along. Also, as a up and coming historian who works a great deal with primary sources it offends me to see them used it such an un ethical manner.

I would like to thank the Talk.Origins archive for their quote mine project.

Sine qua non

Sine qua non. Translated from Latin it means “without which, not.” In colloquial English it means deal breaker. In my recent job search, my own sine qua non, was that I would be able to go to school while working. I have succeeded in this quest, and am now working and going to school full time again. Granted with the inclusion of my Sine qua non, my job search took longer, but in the end, I got what I was looking for, and am happier for it.

The only downside, from working full time and going to school is that I am fucking tired a lot of the time. Granted, this may be because of the fact that I have not gotten used to the new sleep schedule. I get between five and seven hours of sleep in an afternoon/evening. However, I have only had this schedule for a week or so, so in a few more weeks, everything should be golden. Also, I am retaining what I learn in class, so that is good.

I should be updating this more often, as I have the feeling that I will have a lot more to write about. In general, I tend to avoid writing/speaking when I have nothing to say.

Last weekend

Last weekend was a good time, I took my daughter to the renaissance festival. Normally when I go to faire, I hang out with my friends at the White Heart or the Dragon inn. However since I had my daughter with me, I did not want to do that since she would have been bored out of her skull, and besides it would not have been fair to her. So while I did pop in to the taverns from time to time to visit with friends, most of my time was spent seeing what faire had to offer. We went to shows, I played games with my daughter, we even took in the joust. All in all I have not had this much fun at faire in years.

I had a geek proud poppa moment at faire. The thing Morgan was most excited for at faire was the joust. All of the way there and back she could not stop talking about it. Furthermore she has said that she wants to become a knight, not a princess, a knight. She wants to wear plate mail, joust, and fight with a sword and shield. After I explained to her what it was, Morgan said that she wants to become a heavy fighter in the SCA. My wife and I have talked to some SCAdian friends of ours who fight, and they said that they would gladly make Morgan their squire when she is old enough. A medieval history geek is born, and I couldn’t be prouder.

One thing annoyed me last weekend, and it always annoys me. It is those parents, and if you have gone to faire you’ve seen them, who bring their kids to faire and force them to stay in the bars. It’s not fair to those kids, there is nothing for them to do while mommy and daddy drink and socialize with their friends. I have seen this scenario played out again and again: parents force their kids to stay at the bar, the kids get bored and act up, then mommy or daddy gets mad at the kids for acting up, because they are bored. If you go to faire with your kids, you go to faire for your kids. There is plenty for them to do to keep them entertained while at faire, it just means you have to leave the bar for a while. Guess what, your friends will still be there when you get back from the show, or where ever you took your kids around faire . Seriously, if all you are going to do at faire is hang out at the bars, then find a sitter for your kids, you both will be happier for it.

Been a while

I am pleased. I put together my new telescope today, and after some trouble figuring out how to work the equatorial mount, went viewing the stars tonight. My list of objects viewed is as follows:

The Moon
Jupiter
The Pleiades (M 45)
Aldebaran
Vega
Altair

The only problem was that the light pollution of the harvest moon, and the lights were I live, made viewing difficult. However viewing should be better as the moon wanes, and I know several places in the area were general light pollution is lessened.

I cannot wait for the winter constellations to start rising earlier. The Crab and Orion nebulas will be easily visible, as well as a myriad other objects. I know there are just as many in the summer sky, but I know the winter constellations better, and it will be easier finding guide stars.

In his book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Carl Sagan quotes the poet Edward Young “The undevout astronomer is mad.” Now I do not wholly agree with that statement, as I am not a religious person; however, I can agree that looking through the telescope can be humbling. I think you really cannot get a concrete idea on the immense size and age of the universe without looking at distant objects in the night sky. It is easy on an abstract level of course to say that the universe is big, and it is just as easy to say that the universe is 13.5 billion years old. However when you start to study astronomy, and look for yourself the abstract becomes concrete, and it is humbling. Because in a universe of 13.5 billion years, what is our life span of 70-100 years but less than a blink of an eye?

All in all, I am reminded of a tea shirt I used to see at cons, with the picture of the milky way, with an arrow and a circle pointing to one of the spiral arms, with the caption “you are here”. However, there is another thought, that for all of our insignificance in the cosmos we are, as far as we know unique, and I think that counts for something.

going to be one hell of a friday

Was just told in my Greek art and archeology class that the midterm will be pushed back to Friday. Well, good, except that I already have a midterm on Friday ten minutes after my Greek art and Archeology class is complete. This is just lovely, really I mean it. I swear by the time Friday evening comes round I will be drooling mess, ugh so not looking forward to it. At least Crisy has promised me a nice dinner on Friday night.

On the good news I am doing well in both of the classes that I have midterms in, and more importantly,I think, I understand the material, so all in all things should go well.

So once the midterms are over, Saturday I will start my big research paper for my Intro to the study of history course. The rough Draft is due 4/2 however they only want about five pages double-space. So all in all I am busy busy.