Federalism

So, John Howard has released a new YouTube video, this time to announce that he's intervening in Tasie, to keep open a hospital that would have been downgraded by the state govt. That's no biggie, an extra injection of funds from the Federal govt is surely welcome, so long as it's guaranteed long-term.

What worried me is his skiting about the NT intervention, saying that the territory govt wasn't pulling its weight. He's right that Australians aren't fussed about whether it's state or federal govt that provides a service - that goes for me too - what scares me shitless is that a federal government can force it's way into services that state govts are already running. A right-wing govt like his is bound to fuck up that system even worse than the state govt was doing and then try to privatise the thing for ideological reasons.

This is worse than the NSW govt dissolving the City of Sydney and gerrymandering it's boundries.

Stranger than fiction

I just subscribed to a new blog, it's titled "Biologists Helping Bookstores: Reshelving pseudo-scientific nonsense since 2007". This guy goes around reshelving books that don't belong in the science section, particularly Behe's latest drivel.

Simple yet elegant. Don't try to censor their crazy beliefs, but call them what they are - applied religion, not science.

Stem Cells

Doonesbury makes an interesting point here.


Nevertheless, this argument doesn't address the issue of therapeutic cloning, which recently became legal in NSW. Personally, it seems a little inappropriate to be calling it "cloning" when it's not really making an identical person, only part of one. Bob Carr summed it up quite well:

...within five years it will be possible with nuclear transfer medicine to take an egg from her ovary surrounded by its nurturing cumulus cells. The nucleus from one of these cells is transferred into the egg, its own nucleus removed. The stem cells developed are injected back into the sufferer's bloodstream.

That's therapeutic cloning. No sperm. No fertilised egg. Nothing returned to the womb. No human reproduction.

In some ways this seems more acceptable than using the surplus IVF embryos if you think that making a new person is worse than just making new parts of the same person. (Not that I'm saying that IVF zygotes are people, when they don't even have brains, let alone consciousness.)

Creation Museum

A few days ago I took a drive to Kentucky with a few friends to see the Creation Museum. I must say I was a little disappointed. I mean, I was expecting Young Earth Creationism but what they presented was little more than general attacks on secuarism. I wasn't expecting anything as subtle as Intelligent Design but I have heard much better Young Earth Creationism than this (is "good Young Earth Creationism" an oxymoron?). They even did a timeline of secularism, condemning anyone whose Biblical interpretation didn't agree with Bishop Ussher's chronology. They even condemned Galileo for suggesting that the Bible needs to be re-interpreted in light of scientific discoveries. They failed to mention that it was the passages suggesting that the Earth stands still (esp. Josh. 10:12) that Galileo wanted to re-interpret, so that he could promote the Copernican system! I would have loved to ask the director what he meant by that panel, whether he would really have us believe in a geocentric universe just because Joshua commanded the sun to stop over Gibeon.

I amused myself by joking with one of my friends who happens to be a practising Jew (the rest of us were atheists). You see, this museum was none too subtle and didn't try to restrict itself to Genesis and talk about Creation myths and Flood Geology. They also ventured into the New Testament, which, to my recollection, has very little to say about dinosaurs. Yes, their tenants were the 7 Cs: Creation, Corruption, Castastrophe [the Flood], Confusion [Babel], Christ, Cross, Consummation. So I had good fun nudging my Jewish friend as she was grinding her teeth, reminding her that she's already half way there. (Of course she's not half way, she's no creationist.)

My biggest bitch was with their presentation of Archaeopteryx. They admitted that the fossil exists, denied that it was a true transitional form but gave no explanation whatsoever as to what else it could be. (Is it just another bird, or is it a reptile?) And that was typical of their approach to everything - sow the seeds of doubt without providing a better explanation, lest the people see who much weaker the Creationist excuses are.