Moonshine and Moonshine

I like to spend this time of day catching up on my news. One of the sites I visit is my customized BBC homepage where I have the science and nature articles placed right in the center of the page where it’s the first thing that catches my eye. So I learn a few things about finding an exoplanet only twice the size of the Earth, I read about finding n-propyl cyanide in space, and then I scroll down to the extended selection of science and nature articles and see an article asking if the lunar cycles affect the taste of wine.

In a good mood after having enjoyed learning a thing or two new about the way the universe works, I don’t immediately sniff out the fact that it’s woo woo because I’ve come to trust this newsource for interesting stories, but after the first few paragraphs I start banging my head against the desk. Back in the 1950s, some German woman published a calendar based on the theory that the position of the moon and the stars effects the way wine tastes and that some days were more favourable for tasting great wine than others. I don’t think that it can be described any better than this:

Her theory is that wine is a living organism that responds to the Moon’s rhythms in the same way that some people believe humans do. The so-called “lunar effect” has been widely dismissed as pseudo-science but its followers think that as the Moon exerts such a huge impact on the tides, it must follow that it affects the water in the human body and therefore human behaviour.

The article then goes on to state that the idea is not as “eccentric as it sounds” because “all wine experts tend to agree” on wine tasting differently based on the lunar cycle.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that those wine experts don’t know much about astronomy or physics. You can look up the formula, but gravitational influence is determined by the mass of the two objects multiplied together and divided by the distance sqaured. So, the more massive object is more influenced by a source of gravity. I haven’t seen any pictures of the German woman, but I’m willing to bet that she’s really not that massive. I mean, it’s the Earth’s oceans we’re comparing here.

You’ve also gotta love the reason why David Motion is now a believer in this:

“We tried eight wines on Tuesday, which was a leaf day and then the same wines again on Thursday, which was a fruit day. And it was totally conclusive.

“It wasn’t that the wine tasted bad on the Tuesday but it was much more expressive on the Thursday. It was more exuberant and on-song. It was like the heavens opened, the clouds parted and the wine just expressed itself.”

Wow, didn’t they do a great job trying to isolate variables? And didn’t they go through rigorous double blind proceedure? And isn’t that just the most objective way to measure this?

The article finally gives the last word to an expert who actually seems to know a thing or two about science and sums this up in better words than I think I could manage:

But Jamie Goode, a wine scientist and author of online magazine wineanorak, thinks too much is made of planetary alignments and the lunar calendar.

“But I’m not going to say it’s absolute nonsense. Wine tastes different on different days but the differences are not that huge and the differences are more about atmospheric pressure.

“And we are part of the equation when it comes to tasting wine. We are not measuring devices. The taste of the wine is something we generate in response to the wine.”

People taste wine with expectations, and part of that could be the knowledge that it is a “good” day for wine, he says. Mood also influences

Don’t get me wrong. I always enjoy reading about a new pseudoscience. It gives me some amount of mental exercise in skepticism. I can’t tell you how much of this was tongue-in-cheek, but this definitely comes across more as astrology than astronomy.

Science

While reading my biology textbook (Campbell-Reece, 6th edition), I found this useful description of how molecular systematics is making taxonomy a dynamic field. I thought I’d share it on here so that people can refer it to the next creationist or post-modernist that you meet who attempts to claim that science is completely useless because it’s something-scientists-believed-was-true-fifty-years-ago-is-different-now:

As emerging technologies such as molecular biology and fresh approaches such as cladistics produce new data or stimulate scientists to reconsider old data, hypotheses sometimes bend or even break under the pressure of the closer scrutiny. New hypotheses or refinements of the old ones represent the latest versions of what we understand about nature based on the best available evidence. And evidence is the key word in this disclaimer that even our most cherished ideas in science are probationary. Science is partly distinguished from other ways of knowing because its ideas can be falsified through testing with experiments or observation. The more testing a hypothesis withstands, the more credible it becomes.

I think that it should be inexcusable for anyone to not understand this when challenging well-demonstrated “theories”. Evidence, evidence, evidence my friends.

Answers in Genesis Ads

Somebody explain this to me…

Is the kid giving me a death threat for being a non-Christian, or is the kid killing people because he’s a non-Christian?

The latter would make more sense. Answers in Genesis can’t be stupid enough to put out a mass death threat to all non-Christians. Then again, it’s Answers in Genesis we’re talking about. I should probably go with the interpretation that makes the least sense.

And someone explain this other one to me…

Forcibly converting everybody to fundie Christianity = stopping prejudice?

God damn it. What happened to the Answers in Genesis I used to love where I could just laugh at them uncontrollably? Now they’re just confusing.

I want my old Answers in Genesis back!

A Few APOD Favourites

Because APOD = Sciencegasm.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology I just made up out of thin air, sciencegasm is that feeling you get when you realise “OMFSM WTF I had no clue that the universe could do that sort of thing”.

So, yeah. Here’s a few recent stuff from APOD that is awesome. Click on the images to get to the descriptions.

That's an astronaut!

And last, but not least, proof that the sun > lava lamp.

more about “APOD: 2009 April 5 “, posted with vodpod

Duuuuuuuddddeee

more about “Duuuuuuuddddeee“, posted with vodpod

We’re part of this information field… consciousness… it’s like a property of the continuum… it’s like the old physical physicist’s concept of the ether. It permeates everything.

Dennis McKenna

Because that’s how science is done!

Nobody can really say but that model in some ways appeals more to me.

Dennis McKenna

Because that’s how science is done!

Points I can’t disagree with even though I’ve as of yet never done drugs:

1. Drugs can sometimes enhance creative ability.
2. We are all, in a sense, “one” with the universe.
3. Psychedelics = subjective super happy fun time!

I’ll leave you guys to think whatever you want about their shamanism and their relativism.

The JREF: It’s Back!

The JREF’s YouTube account is back.

Still have no idea what happened, but I imagine if you keep an eye on Phil’s Twitter account and the JREF’s Twitter account we’ll find out soon enough.

Update:

Good to hear from Randi that it was not a malicious vote-botting attack or a false DMCA after all.

I Wrote a Poem!

So, for an extra-credit assignment after reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in my humanities class, we were told to write something in the style of Chaucer, couplets and all. After showing it to the Atheist Blogger he told me that he loved it and to put it on my blog…so I am.

Oh, and I totally stole the character name of Mary Malone from His Dark Materials because I’m just that uncreative.

And, after you’re done reading, you might want to check out the segment with me on the new Mindcore podcast. You know you want to because Rodrigo is awesome and I once cited him in a paper I wrote for world history.

“Reality will kick your ass.” -Roy

Roy’s a good friend of mine. I once broke into his house while he was sleeping and tried to drag him out of his bed. Bastard was too heavy.

This YouTube video that he made about why critical thinking is important was so awesome that I just had to post it here:

“Dora the Fashionista with Stylish Purse and Stilettos”: A Fashion Lesson from a Girl Who Doesn’t Know Nothin’ About Fashion

So here’s the deal. Dora the Explorer is expanding into new horizons and audiences and a “tweenage” version of the popular, young cartoon character has been unveiled which will be made into an “interactive doll” (whatever that means).

Parents are pissed. They think that the new Dora is too “sexed up” and the description of her in the above linked article does not help:

Next fall, Dora the Explorer may be trading in her androgynous bob and shorts for big hair, pumps and a miniskirt.

Even better is the petition that is now online, with over 11,000 signatures already, which declares in the opening rant:

Alas, we saw the signs. The cute flower lip gloss, the pinkified look, the sudden separation of Dora and Diego shows. We could have, should have predicted this after we saw the likes of Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobby, and Trollz (now with the ubiquitous commodified girl power “z”), all made over in the cute sexy way that marketers sell maturity to girls–the sassy wink, the long flowing hair, the thin waist, the turned out hip pose of practiced lingerie models.

Oh noes! I sense a slippery slope coming up…

What next? Dora the Cheerleader? Dora the fashionista with stylish purse and stilettos? Dora the Pop Star with Hoppin’ Dance Club and “Juice” Bar? We can expect it all, because that’s what passes as “tween” in the toy department these days.

Aahhhhh! And then God will smite all of America and there will be plagues of locusts and blood raining from the skies!

Hold on. What exactly does this new sexed up Dora doll look like?

This:

OMG, like, she looks like... such a whore!

Oh kay… Now, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about fashion. If an outfit requires more than one minute of thought to put together it’s not worth it for me, and the same goes for hairstyles, but those are hardly pumps and a mini-skirt, k?

She happens to wearing a type of shoe known as “ballet flats” (i.e. these) which I should think are more conservative than sexed up. Hell, even some mary janes have a bit of a heel.

That is not a mini-skirt. It’s… well, I don’t know the term for this, but the point is she’s wearing it over leggings. She has her legs covered and they’re not covered in nylons or fishnets. It’s leggings. I have personal feelings about the aethetics of girls wearing leggings which I will not comment on (because who am I to comment on fashion?), but the key thing is she has her legs covered and it’s not nylons or fishnets. It’s leggings which are sort of like… skin-tight-ish capris.

I think when it comes to leggings, the place where even the prudest of parents should draw the line, which happens to be where my school’s dress code draws it, is when it’s just leggings and a t-shirt and nothing really to cover anything below the waist.

What are you dressing your girls in anyway? Heel-length dresses and petticoats? Are you members of the FLDS or something?

Back to the petition:

We don’t need any more tween dolls teaching girls that growing up means turning into a fashionista, excited about secrets and crushes and going shopping.

What’s wrong with fashion, secrets, crushes, and going shopping? I hardly get excited about shopping, fashion, and secrets, but I don’t have a problem with being dragged out to the mall once in a while. My only qualms with that would be if were the only thing tweens get excited about. There is, after all, a whole other universe out there.

Any other complaints?

We don’t need dolls that replicate the thin ideal. The APA Sexualization of Girls Task Force report shows that teens only rarely achieve this body type and when they don’t they are vulnerable to depression and body image problems.

Body image is a valid concern, but are you bloody kidding me? I can’t really tell in real life people, or from animated people but she hardly looks like a size 0. If anything the dress-thing, while fashionable, may make her look like she’s not entirely flat around the belly.

Sure, all of the above are valid concerns, but I think that they’re obviously misplaced in the case of the new Dora. Feel free to disagree with me. Like I said, I don’t know nothin’ about fashion either way.

But I can sympathise. Fashion is not the most important thing in the world. Not by a long shot. I’m going back to reading about science now.

Make a Difference

Having long ago signed up for the Expelled e-mail list and not received much from them since it came out on DVD, I was surprised when I found an e-mail titled as a “insider update” and was amused to find this:

I’ve got a better idea.

Make a difference… give your creationist friend, science teacher, or professor a copy of one of these books:

Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne

Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters by Donald Prothero

Science, Evolution and Creationism from the Big Science Academy National Academy of Sciences

Or, you can poke around Amazon.com for books about evolution yourself. Hell, buy some creationist books for your science teacher anyway so that they can have a good laugh. Expelled was just boring. Don’t put them through that. Have them read Answers in Genesis instead.