Nerd Test

State Pledge

On 2007 August 7th, the same day that a judge heard oral arguments on our moment of silence lawsuit, our attorney filed a new lawsuit on behalf of my family and another North Texas family challenging the constitutionality of a new law adding the words "under God" to the Texas state pledge.

On 2007 August 28th, a few days after the school year started when the new state pledge law went into effect, another judge denied our request for a preliminary injunction. The case proceeds but a hearing date has not yet been set.

For a list of links to news stories on this topic, please see my new State Pledge webpage. Please also see the related blog entries by my wife Shannon and our attorney Dean Cook.

Mr. Cook informed me recently that the transcripts for the Moment of Silence oral arguments are now available, indicating that we might have a ruling from the judge soon. I hope to post a copy of the transcripts as I was quite impressed with what Mr. Cook said to the judge, particularly in his summary.

Media Moment

I have updated the list of news stories on the Moment of Silence webpage to include those related to the recent oral arguments hearing. I also posted some corrections to errors in the original story which were repeated by other media.

To the supernaturalists who sent us numerous e-mail, voice mail, snail mail, and blog comment messages recently, I respond by recommending the very short book Letter to a Christian Nation by neuroscience doctoral student Sam Harris. It reminded me of Age of Reason by founding father Thomas Paine.

Debate Transcripts

A judge will hear oral arguments for the Texas Moment of Silence case on July 20th. Tonight I uploaded the transcripts of the 2003 legislative debates. One of my purposes in having these debates transcribed was to show that this new law is really about mandating organized silent prayer in the public schools.

Peer Screwed

Today I heard a story about how some scientists deliberately planted an error in a draft paper to throw off the research of competing scientists who they knew would steal the information during the peer review publication process. In reading the history of science, I know of a number of famous cases where proper credit was not given where due for ideas taken from papers blocked or delayed for publication. I recently conceived of a pithy saying for this which I wanted to share with you:

Peer Reviewed is Peer Screwed.

The peer review system is flawed in that your peers are your jealous competitors, not fair and impartial judges of scientific merit. Instead of publishing, consider patenting. Patents permit you to publish your knowledge to the world with the patent agent serving as the unbiased reviewer to determine whether the invention is actually novel, useful, and nonobvious.

If your idea does not qualify as an invention, you can always self-publish it to your personal website. I am proud enough of the above non-invention to have added it to my webpage of quotes.

Update 2010 Oct 08 Fri

I just learned of a new trend toward Open Peer Review which might fix some of the problems in the peer review process as traditionally practiced.

Nerve Endings

In my previous entry about the book In Search of Memory, I wrote "one of the best ways to learn a science is to learn the history of that science". I recently finished reading another book in that category, Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse by Dr. Richard Rapport. Like In Search of Memory, Nerve Endings is a biographical work about the life and scientific contributions of a Nobel prizing winning neuroscientist. The author documents the 19th century debate about the existence and purpose of the synapse and the personal rivalry between Dr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Dr. Camillo Golgi.

The following excerpt reminded me how much I have enjoyed participating in reading and discussion groups over the years:

He delighted in his work, as always, and enthusiastically returned to an intellectual cafe society with other scientists, philosophers, writers, and politicians. Associations of friends who meet regularly to debate are called tertulia, a Spanish word without a direct English translation but a common feature of Spanish intellectual life. [p152]

Resveratrol

I had been drinking pinot noir to get my daily dose of resveratrol but recently I switched to taking it in 100 milligram (mg) capsules. I ordered my supply from the Life Extension Foundation. I made this decision after watching The Science of Living Longer: Part Three of the Charlie Rose Science Series.

Oral Arguments

It has been quiet for awhile but there has been a new development in the Moment of Silence case which we initiated a little more than a year ago. The judge has asked for oral arguments to be presented on June 1st.

I hope the judge strikes this down pretty quick as moment of silence bills have been popping up in additional states such as Illinois. To have millions of public school children waste a minute of education each day for a practice that has no secular purpose seems to me like a great sin.

The God Delusion

In my recent blog entry In the Absence of God, I recommended the NPR interview of Julia Sweeney on the subject of her atheism. I just finished listening to another worthwhile interview published today from the same source, Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'.

I found particularly interesting his thoughts on the evolution of morality. My religion Optihumanism, including what I am calling "genetic egoism", has been substantially influenced by my reading of earlier books by Dr. Dawkins. I ordered a copy of his latest today.

Word Clouds

My sister-in-law Heather wrote a blog entry introducing us to SnapShirts word clouds. My wife Shannon ran it on our website CroftPress and I ran it on my blog and CroftSoft. Here is what it generated.

Shermer Interview

I enjoyed reading an interview of Michael Shermer recently by the neo-Objectivist organization The Atlas Society in its magazine "The New Individualist" (TNI). Shermer and the interviewer cover topics on libertarianism versus Objectivism, neo-Objectivism versus orthodox Objectivism, socialist Humanism versus libertarian Humanism, and a little bit of what I have labeled "genetic egoism". In reading this article, you might see why I felt I had to come up with a new term, Optihumanism, to describe the set of beliefs that I hold at the intersection of libertarianism, Objectivism, and Humanism.

Vongo

If you are a Blockbuster Total Access or a Netflix subscriber, consider Vongo instead. I have used Vongo for a few weeks now and I am a satisfied customer. It lets you download movies off of their website to watch on your computer for a flat fee of $9.99 per month. I have been waiting for something like this for years. Things just keep getting better and better.