I posted Chapter Four of The Promised King yesterday morning, so all of you who are dying to know what happens next can now go over and find out, well, what happens next. Or something like that.
Do your research.
PZ Myers provides a tidbit from the guy who goes by the handle “Hindrocket” on the Powerline blog, which parlayed one moment of fame/notoriety into somehow being one of the Most Respected Voices In All Blogistan. In this old item, Hindrocket weighs in on evolution and “Darwinism”. Dr. Myers “fisks” the Hindrocket post nicely, but this quote from Hindrocket caught my eye:
Karl Popper argued long ago that Darwin’s theory of evolution was never a matter of science; it was always about faith.
Hmmmm. It’s been a long time since I read Popper, but I dug a bit into Philosophy of Science when I was studying philosophy as an undergrad, and Philosophy of Science would likely have been my area of specialty had I gone to grad school in philosophy. I read enough of Karl Popper’s work to have at least some sense for what he was about, and this quote struck me as questionable. So I did a bit of digging.
I did a Google search on the terms “Karl Popper Darwin”, and the first item returned in that search was this bit of Creationist literature that includes this bit:
“Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory,” Popper says, `but a metaphysical research programme.”
Well, that certainly seems damning, although the article here seems more interested in the fact that Darwin and Popper were both Englishmen, as though it should be an inconvenience to evolution that someone from Darwin’s own country didn’t agree with Darwin’s theory. The article makes no effort whatsoever to dig into why Popper might have said what he said; it just plops that bit about Englishmen out there.
But anyway, if that’s the sole bit of Creationist reliance on Popper to deny the scientific nature of evolution, well, they’re not on very strong footing. To return to the Google search above, the seventh Google result produces this:
The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. A tautology like “All tables are tables” is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave the most offspring leave the most offspring. And C.H. Waddington even says somewhere (and he defends this view in other places) that “Natural selection … turns out … to be a tautology”. However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an “enormous power … of explanation”. Since the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here.
Yet similar passages can be found in the works of such great Darwinists as Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and George Gaylord Simpson; and others.
I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as “almost tautological”, and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems.
I still believe that natural selection works this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.
So: apparently the Creationists who are attempting to draft Sir Karl Popper into their cause don’t know what they’re talking about. Imagine that.
Share This Post
Ex-squeeze me?
“Panic” can be defined as the sensation one experiences when one goes to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and discovers that there is no baking soda to be found in the house. I mean, who doesn’t keep baking soda on hand? WTF?!
Anyway, I did a bit of Googling for substitutions, because I know that you can use baking soda and cream of tartar to substitute for baking powder, so I figured there had to be a substitute for baking soda. Well, all of the sites I checked said the same thing: there is no direct substitute for baking soda.
But I refused to be flummoxed, so I used baking powder anyway. The recipe called for one teaspoon of baking soda; I simply used one teaspoon of baking powder. And the cookies turned out fine. In fact, they actually rose to a greater degree than they have in the past, which was a welcome discovery; I like “poofy” chocolate chip cookies better than the “flat” kinds. So this experiment turned out well.
Share This Post
Hunter S. Thompson
Social Security
One nice thing about hanging out in Blogistan is that I can forego the pressure of having to formulate my own thoughts on a subject, when someone else can usually be counted on to come up with a pretty precise formulation of their thoughts, which conveniently happen to mirror my thoughts. So I can just go ahead, quote them, and have done. In the case of political blogging, this saves me trouble of writing political stuff when I’d much rather drone on and on about Star Wars. (Just you wait, readers. By the time the first week of June rolls around, you poor people will be sick of reading me babbling about Star Wars.)
Anyhoo, a while back David Sucher wrote about Social Security, and he managed to precisely phrase a position that happens to also be my own:
The idea of “privatization” — “it’s YOUR money” —seems to misunderstand the very purpose of Social Security i.e. it is NOT a private investment account and never was. But no matter, from what I understand, we should be saving more in the USA and perhaps Soc Sec private accounts will be part of a solution. But I can’t see how we will escape (or want to escape) a system which takes care of old people who made bad investment decisions. Call that the Nanny State if you like. I just call it having beggar-free streets.
That’s my position, and I’m sticking with it.
Share This Post
On Pizza
Reading this post by Alan at BuffaloPundit, I note something odd about pizza.
Alan is a partisan of New York City-style thin-crust pizza. For those who don’t know what this is, the crust is thin, but not so thin as to be cracker-like. Instead, it’s just thick and doughy enough — and not one bit thicker or doughy-er, thank you very much — to be foldable in the hand whilst being consumed. It’s a unique texture for pizza, and even though Buffalo is in the same state as NYC, that style of pizza is very hard to find in these parts. So Alan reports on a few places here that make the authentic NYC-style product.
But what interests me is this (as I comment on his blog): everybody I’ve ever met who grew up on NYC-style pizza, with that type of pizza being their virginal pizza experience, loves it to the point of loathing every other kind of pizza that exists, anywhere. On the other hand, every person I’ve ever met who loves pizza but did not encounter NYC-style pizza first tends to love NYC-style pizza when they discover it, but they don’t drop every other style of pizza in its favor. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. Talk to a native eater of NYC-style pizza, and they’ll react with horror at the idea of consuming any other kind of pizza. But talk to a non-native eater of pizza, and if they’ll likely say, “NYC-style? Yeah, that’s pretty good. So’s Chicago….”
(For the record, I think we make pretty decent pizza here in Buffalo. But it’s not NYC-style. We’re a Great Lakes city.)
UPDATE: Alan adds more here, giving the background that supposedly establishes NYC-style pizza as the best: according to his account. NYC-style pizza is the closest thing you’ll get to what is served as pizza in Italy. So, I suppose if one defines “best” along the lines of “most authentic”, I suppose that there’s an argument to be made. Pizza may have become the great culinary specialty of Naples, but it’s not like the Neapolitans invented it — the idea of putting toppings on flatbread goes back way farther than the Neapolitans. So, even though I love a good Neapolitan pizza, I still see little reason to anoint it “the best” pizza possible. (Outside of personal preference, that is.)
However, I don’t always think that “most authentic” is the best indicator of “best”, and pizza is one of those times. Pizza is a dish that has sprung into so much regional variation that I think that quibbling about authenticity almost misses the point entirely. It’s like chili, albeit not quite to that degree — chili’s regional variation is so extreme that it varies not from region to region, but from pot to pot.
Finally, here’s an interesting history of pizza, that offers among other things this tidbit about offical Neapolitan pizza:
Today, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (the Association of True Neapolitan Pizza) maintains strict member guidelines for ingredients, dough, and cooking. This elite organization maintains that pizza dough must be made only with flour, natural yeast or brewers yeast, salt and water. Dough must be kneaded by hand or mixers which do not cause the dough to overheat, and the dough must be punched down and shaped by hand. Also, only wood-burning, bell-shaped brick ovens are permitted in pizzerias that belong to this organization. The pizza must be cooked on the surface of the oven (often made of volcanic stone), and not in any pan or container, with oven temperatures reaching at least 400-430° C (750-800° F). These ovens often have to heat up for hours before the first pizza is cooked.
I know that Alan will disagree, but for me, I love the fact that in Buffalo I can get pizza in just about any variety that exists. If I want a NYC-style pie, I can get one. If I want a good old Great Lakes region pizza, on fairly soft dough with lots of toppings, I can get that, too. I can even get those Californian seafood-topped pizzas, Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas, and more.
(Just don’t ask me about “breakfast pizza”. I can’t get into that, at all. I don’t know what it is, but that stuff just looks wrong to me, even though it’s basically a quiche on a pizza crust. I dunno.)
Share This Post
Clap clap clappity-clap
The major topic around the Classical Music portion of Blogistan lately has been applause at classical concerts, specifically focusing on whether or not the relatively-recent etiquette of withholding applause in a multi-movement work until the very end of the last movement should really be enforced. I don’t really have a strong opinion on this, since I rarely have the opportunity to attend live concerts any more (Maximiano Valdes was the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic last time I attended one of their concerts, for example). But generally, I don’t have that much beef with people applauding in between movements. It just doesn’t seem that big a deal to me.
What does seem a big deal is something I actually heard during an intermission in the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcast yesterday afternoon. I didn’t catch the names of the people speaking, but the subject of intra-work applause came up, and although the subject here was opera and not concert music, the consensus was the same: the strong prohibition of intra-work applause has contributed to the stuffy air around classical music that has at least partly led to its decline in popularity. This seems to me a pretty serious idea, one that should be taken fairly seriously.
I see some folks around Blogistan and elsewhere insisting that classical music should actually get more serious, all the better to actually dissuade “the masses” from attending. Elitism is a good thing, we are told, which strikes me as an attitude that sounds nice but in the real world would almost certainly result in the final death of classical music as a mainstream cultural current. The idea that classical music should proceed with its number of living adherents never exceeding (X + 1), where X is equal to the number of classical music lovers living right now, just strikes me as odd beyond consideration. One of the interlocutors on the Met’s intermission roundtable compared the current atmosphere at a classical concert to a “sacred ritual” that must not be interrupted, at any cost. That sounds fairly accurate to me.
My problem is this: sometimes I want my music to be a quasi-religious experience, while other times I want the kind of “Everybody groove!” atmosphere of other events. There are times when music is an intensely private affair to me, when I could be sitting in a crowd listening to the same work, and yet thinking that I’m the only one who gets it. There are times when I want to simply put on the headphones and exist in my own personal sound-world. And yet, there are times when I want to hear some music with other like-minded people. And I’m not sure which rules should apply in each case.
I guess that what I want, really, is for classical music to have the most inclusive atmosphere possible. I’m tired of telling people that I love classical music only to receive a faintly cloudy stare in return, as if they can’t comprehend someone actually loving that old musty stuff, or getting some kind of weird admiration thing going on, like “Gee, I’ve always wanted to learn about classical music, but I dropped my piano lessons when I was ten and I wouldn’t know where to start!” I just want to say, “Start anywhere!”.
In fact, that’s what I do say. It’s just music. That’s all it is. I figure that if we can get ten percent more people to just listen to some classical music, and ten percent of those go on to develop a lifelong love of it while most of the rest simply like it for a change of pace, then that’s a net win for classical music. I certainly don’t want to encourage any continuation of the “Hoi polloi need not apply” attitude in classical music. If loosening the rules of concert etiquette is part of getting more people to listen, then bring it on.
UPDATE: In comments, my good friend Chris — a cohort of mine in college musical life, as well as a former roommate (who lived to tell the tale!) — says this:
I always thought that when the conductor quit waving his arms and left the podium, you applaud.
That reminds me of something that was said on the Metropolitan broadcast I refer to above: one of the guys speaking complained about how audiences at the Met and, presumably, operatic performances in America in general don’t even wait for the conductor to stop conducting: as soon as the curtain starts to descend, the applause begins. The problem here is, of course, that sometimes — maybe even often times, although I’m not sure, given my incredibly limited experience with live opera — the music goes on for a brief time as the curtain falls.
This reminds me of another strange phenomenon I’ve always noticed, in the movie theaters: whenever people start to sense that the end is near, there’s this rustling sound throughout the theater as people gather up their stuff, put on coats, stretch their legs out, et cetera. It’s really annoying. The last scene of a movie is often where the emotional payoff comes, but too many people seem to have an attitude of “OK, I get the point, what’s next!”. But it can become amusing to watch people do this when a movie goes past a point that seems like a perfect ending spot, like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, as they gather their stuff, start to rise from their seats, and then sit down again, only to rise again, sit again, and so on.
This is part of why more and more I find the private experience of music and film in my own home, via CDs and DVDs, a lot more satisfying. I don’t get a whole lot of the “communal experience” from being in the theater; instead, I observe people applauding too soon or bolting up as soon as the first pixel of the first credit appears, and I just want to ask them: “Do you acknowledge the artistic and emotional experience that you just had, or was this mere timefiller for you?” This kind of thing breaks the illusion of the communal experience for me, because I see all too little evidence that we have communally experienced anything at all. I often feel like I have experienced something, whereas they have merely passively watched something.
Share This Post
Ewwwwwww!!
If, like me, you enjoyed the nifty citrus-y taste of Orange-flavored Tic-Tacs, you might be tempted to try the new Lime-flavored Tic-Tacs.
This would be a mistake. Believe me. These things are one of those Godawful products that make me wonder if anyone at the Tic-Tac factory even has tastebuds, or if the incredibly ghastly taste of these things is one of those secrets that no one at the Tic-Tic factory will speak of, for fear of angering the boss by trashing his pet “new idea”.
Anyway, Lime-flavored Tic-Tacs taste bad, folks. Real bad. Trust me.
Share This Post
Get thee to a Nunnery! (Or at least to Chapter Four)
Two Sundays having elapsed since the last Sunday on which a Chapter of The Promised King was posted, and thus the appointed Third Sunday of the Month having been reached by the due passage of time:
Be it therefore known throughout all the land that Chapter Four of The Promised King has now been placed in its proper position of prominence upon the primary page of the blog-novel.
Thus all readers of this blog are entreated to get them hence to that blog, that they might read Chapter Four of The Promised King.
(Oh, and I took the liberty of fixing a continuity error in Chapter Three, which Will Duquette was nice enough to point out in an e-mail missive.)