Random Thoughts

You aren't really somebody unless you have an aircraft carrier named after you and 40th US president Ronald Reagan has just that.   Now he will have a Miss California on board too; in this case, Carrie Prejean, who's arguably the most famous beauty queen who didn't actually win, thanks to openly gay judge Perez Hilton making no secret of the fact that her personal opinions on gay marriage had no place in any contest he took part in unless they agreed with his, thus making her a darling of both Christians and conservatives in the process. Prejean will tour the USS Ronald Reagan…

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time. - Larry Laudan, Science&Relativism p. x

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.- John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780

For every complex problem, there is a simple, easy to understand, incorrect answer. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, quoted in Robert Pennock, Tower of Babel, p. 367

The question of what the major current problems of Biology are cannot be answered, for I do not know of a single biological discipline that does not have major unsolved problems... still, the most burning and as yet most intractable problems are those that involve complex systems. - Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 131-132

That first early morning cup is wearing off; it's time for more coffee zen and a dose of science browsing to bring the day back into equilibrium: Who knew bugs could be beautiful? Bug Safari is one of the most enjoyable blogs in my reader. Cindy has a fine eye for a world that is invisible to most of us - head on over and see for yourself. Over at Staring at Empty Pages, computer scientist Barry Leiba takes on New Scientist's Eight Things You Didn't Know About the Internet with a fascinating eight-part series of his own. (Be sure to check out all eight parts - links are here.) Barry says that…

Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person's mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules of operation as well.- Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner, p. 15

"I seldom enjoy competition in real life. I find it fun only when I am up against somebody who takes things more seriously than I do." QDS

It is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did the come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization…

There are very few lovers of truth, for truth's sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end. - John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Ch. 19