Farrellmedia

2008-05-09T06:13:00.002-04:00

Scott Carson is back, with some 'warm' memories of life in academia. Okay, not quite so warm, but ...not surprising either.

2008-05-07T11:17:00.001-04:00

When No News is Good News:

Now, it might be thought an amazing coincidence if Earth were the only planet in the galaxy on which intelligent life evolved. If it happened here, the one planet we have studied closely, surely one would expect it to have happened on a lot of other planets in the galaxy--planets we have not yet had the chance to examine. This objection, however, rests on a fallacy: it overlooks what is known as an "observation selection effect." Whether intelligent life is common or rare, every observer is guaranteed to originate from a place where intelligent life did, in fact, arise. Since only the successes give rise to observers who can wonder about their existence, it would be a mistake to regard our planet as a randomly selected sample from all planets. (It would be closer to the mark to regard our planet as a random sample from the subset of planets that did engender intelligent life, this being a crude formulation of one of the saner ideas extractable from the motley ore referred to as the "anthropic principle.")

2008-05-06T12:32:00.003-04:00

In an otherwise engaging profile of British thespian and former director of the (new) Globe Theatre Mark Rylance, we learn yet again how unexposed to critical thinking a number of modern artists are.

In 1989, Rylance played Hamlet and Romeo four times a week each, in R.S.C. productions in Stratford-on-Avon. While acting there, he began to think about the authorship question. He thinks now that Shakespeare was likely a front for a small band of writers, perhaps headed by Francis Bacon, which included, among others, Lady Mary Sidney.

I know many theatre professionals are not that computer savvy, but you would've thought someone Rylance's age would've at least been curious as to whether anyone ever did an analysis of Shakespeare's writing compared to the usual suspects supposed to have written in his stead.

But no, I guess not. Cue The Place 2 Be...

2008-05-02T12:10:00.005-04:00

Apopos the story today that Barbara Walters, promoting her new book, told Oprah that she had an affair with former U.S. Senator Edward Brooke (the first African American senator and a Republican one at that), I went back to the archives to find this shot of my father (right) interviewing him (left) on Channel 5 back in the mid 1960s when the Boston Herald Traveler also owned the then WHDH-TV station.

I recall my dad telling me Brooke was (is) a good man (and a good source), and Brooke factors in his (as yet) unpublished memoirs.

Update: Dan Kennedy, weighs in:

Maybe it's because I'm old, but my first reaction was: "I knew that." It sounded very familiar to me when we talked about it on "Beat the Press" yesterday on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). When I started searching, I found this line from a March 5, 2000, Globe profile of Brooke by staff writer Sally Jacobs: "A regular at the lavish parties at the Iranian Embassy, he did the hustle with Elizabeth Taylor and squired Barbara Walters about town."

There's also this, from a Feb. 17, 1980, story on Walters by then-staffer Marian Christy:
Walters has dated Alexis Lichine, the wine expert who was once married to Arlene Dahl. She used to count among her friends former Sen. Ed Brooke and Secretary General of the Organization of American States Alex Orfila. Both Brooke and Orfila are married now and, for some years, Walters' closest friend has been Alan Greenspan, the financial wizard.
Do we not understand the plain meaning of this? Especially that Brooke became a "former" friend of Walters after he got married?

2008-05-02T08:47:00.002-04:00

Could Mike Behe jump ship? Larry Arnhart writes:

As I noted in my first post on Ben Stein's movie Expelled, the absence of Michael Behe was remarkable. After all, Stein interviewed most of the "senior fellows" at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. So why didn't he interview the most famous one and the one who has been the leading scientist for "intelligent design"?

It is now almost a year since the publication of Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution. The Discovery Institute funded the writing of that book, and it heavily promoted the book when it first appeared. But now if you go to the website for the Center for Science and Culture, there are few references to Behe's new book. The lists for "Essential Readings" and "Books by Center Fellows" include Behe's Darwin's Black Box, published in 1996, but not his new book. Ever since the end of November, the blog for the CSC has given almost no attention to Behe's new book.

I now suspect that my early predictions last year have come true--the folks at the Discovery Institute now realize that Behe's new book subverts their rhetorical strategy, and that it was a big mistake for them to promote it.

Interesting to consider whether this might lead eventually to Behe rethinking his whole commitment to the Discovery Institute. Imagine the ID movement's worst nightmare: Michael Behe and Ken Miller on the same side, touring the country in support of good science education.

2008-05-01T08:21:00.005-04:00

Amy Welborn has a thoughtful post, the gist of which is (if I read her right), that culural Catholicism, the traditions and approach to the faith born of specific cultures and times, is dead. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. And it may explain why, when I received a brochure from the Carmelite Monastery in Wyoming, soliciting donations, I found myself laughing out loud at the snap shots of heavily cowled monks driving tractors (how the hell could he see where he was going?) and playing touch football. All I could think of was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It just looks beyond parody.

Not that I'm against retreats from the rat race of everyday modern life. Or dedicating your life to prayer, work and the ascetic life. Far from it. But it seems to me this is exactly what Amy's talking about. Why automatically think the solution to a problem in Wyoming in 2008 is to dress up like people in Europe from 2012? Too many groups and movements in the Church are thinking culturally first (hey--let's go back to doing it the way medieval monks did it) rather than thinking the Gospel through in terms more respondent to our culture here and now--and creating something wholly new.

At least rethink the cowls? Anything wrong with taking a cue from the Chinese and donning simple, plain outfits they wear in the rice fields? Or maybe something wholly new?

2008-04-30T09:05:00.006-04:00

PZ Myers, with more on how he was suckered into appearing in Expelled.

We were not indulging in metaphysical speculation � we were actually addressing the stated purpose of our interviews, which we were told were specifically about the intersection of science and religion, not about the scientific validity of intelligent design. We would have given very different interviews if we'd been asked about ID; that's a subject both of us can discuss at length without mentioning religion at all, as the primary objection to it is that it isn't science, and good science refutes it. It's a little annoying to be constantly told that we were straying from the central premise of this movie, when we were actually doing our best to address the subject of the nonexistent movie for which we were told we were being interviewed. [bold emphasis mine]

The most damaging thing about this propaganda film, is that now even among scientists, there is misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that was deliberately intended by the cynics and spinmeisters behind this production. "We sit in high places and fan discord" ought to be the motto of the ID movement. Along with "Science leads you to killing people."

When Christians deliberately make cynical arguments in bad faith, they scandalize their religion. This film will haunt creationists I hope until the day the ID movement dwindles out of existence. Saint Augustine once said "God doesn't need my lie." No, but I would venture that He does suffer for it.

Speaking of Augustine, this might be a good time to flash his lament.

2008-04-30T08:58:00.001-04:00

Dan Kennedy on Roger Clemens' latest woes:

I'm a Red Sox fan, and Clemens had some great years in Boston, including his astonishing 1986 season, when he nearly led the Red Sox to a World Series victory. But there were questions about his heart even then, with Clemens and then-manager John McNamara carrying on a years-long dispute over whether Clemens had asked to come out of the disastrous sixth game.

My enduring memory of Clemens, though, dates back to the 1990 playoffs. Clemens was facing his nemesis, Oakland A's ace Dave Stewart. And he started yelling at the umpire, who threw him out of the game in the second inning, enabling an Oakland sweep. Clemens's performance was gutless, but at least he didn't let Stewart beat him. He beat himself instead.

Greatest pitcher ever or not, Clemens has never been the one guy you wanted out there in a big game. The Red Sox would have to wait for pitchers like Pedro Mart�nez, Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett to learn what clutch pitching was all about.

The Mindy McCready story may be unfair, but it's hard for me to work up much sympathy. Besides, Clemens has bigger things to worry about. If the perjury investigation leads to criminal charges, then he's more likely to wind up in prison than in baseball's Hall of Fame. It's quite a comedown, but he brought it all on himself.

2008-04-28T13:44:00.007-04:00

Science Leads You to Killing People?
My freshman year in college was when I decided I wanted to write about history and science. In the spring semester of that year, I was taking the second half of Owen Gingerich's celebrated Science A-17 (The Astronomical Perspective) as part of my core curriculum. Gingerich, who most recently authored this little gem, was an indefatigable lecturer. Alums from his former years would show up on the day he gave his lecture on Newton, just to see a guy in his 50s climb onto a home made rocket and blast himself across the stage to demonstrate Newton's Third Law.

One of the requirements of the class was to view some documentaries during selected week nights in the Science Center. And sometime during that semester, I saw three or four episodes from Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man. There was one episode I will never forget, and fortunately someone posted it to Youtube.

It bears watching again in light of the hideous comment made by Ben Stein, as he's doing the media tour for Expelled.

Ben Stein minced no words in his interview with TBN: 'Science leads you to killing people.'

No, it's actually something else that leads to killing, and Brownowski was far more eloquent:

I like to think that one of the reasons Stein's movie is bombing (it plummeted over 50% this past weekend, according to Box Office Mojo), even among its carefully targeted audiences, is because the large number of Christians out there, Evangelicals and Catholics (and Mennonites like Professor Gingerich) and other denominations, who go to work every day as doctors, nurses, technicians, school teachers, pharmacists, geologists, botanists, and engineers of all stripes, who utilize science every day of their working lives to help people from all walks of life, are frankly insulted by the claptrap peddled by Stein.

This clip is for them and all people of good faith and good will.

UPDATE: Derb weighs in.

2008-04-28T12:35:00.002-04:00

Darwin Catholic: "I try to keep a wary eye on explanations that are too ideologically convenient." Amen.

2008-04-27T20:58:00.000-04:00

Allen MacNeill, with a great piece on Lynn Margulies:

It's very gratifying to see Lynn Margulis finally getting the recognition that she deserves. As the originator of the serial endosymbiosis theory (SET) for the origin of eukaryotes, Lynn's work provides an excellent example of how ID should (but currently doesn't) proceed. During the late 1960s, Lynn published a series of revolutionary papers on the evolution of eukaryotic cells, culminating in her landmark book Symbiosis and Cell Evolution, in which she carefully laid out the empirical evidence supporting the theory that mitochondria, choloroplasts, and undulapodia (eukaryotic cilia and flagella) were once free living bacteria (purple sulfur bacteria, cyanobacteria, and spirochaetes, respectively).

Her theory was greeted with contempt and scorn by almost all evolutionary biologists (sound familiar?), who believed at the time that all eukaryotic cellular organelles evolved by gradual elaboration of invaginations of the plasma membrane. But Lynn didn't give up, or continue to simply restate her original theory (sound familiar?).

2008-04-25T21:36:00.002-04:00

I'm flattered (and somewhat humbled) that Mark Shea (who's been blogging a heckuva lot longer than I have) gives a rat's behind what I think about anything.

2008-04-24T23:39:00.005-04:00

The "Expelled" producers are being sued for copyright infringement.

Ironic. They had enough money to pay extras to fill a theatre at Pepperdine to look like real students listening to Ben Stein, but they were too cheap to pay a license fee for John Lennon's music.

2008-04-22T15:22:00.000-04:00

Waiting for ~~Godot~~ Rose. Pretty funny...

2008-04-22T12:13:00.001-04:00

Leon Wieseltier opens with the sound of church bells, an invitation to think about more than music:

I was reminded of the evolution of my relationship to the ravishments of other traditions when I read about the controversy at Harvard about the broadcast of the Muslim call to prayer in Harvard Yard. It was sounded from the steps of Widener Library--where a great Jewish scholar once spent many decades in the groundbreaking study of early Islamic philosophy--for several days during Islam Awareness Week. (Is anybody not aware of Islam?) The sound of the adhan in the quads startled many people, and provoked ferocious opposition. An editorial in the Crimson denounced it as an infringement upon the liberty of others, who were forced to listen to an affirmation of a faith in which they do not believe. What troubled the eloquent authors of the editorial was the text of the summons, which included the words "I bear witness that there is no lord except God" and "I bear witness that Mohammed is the Messenger of God." "This puts the adhan in a different class of expression than, say, the sounding of church bells or the displaying of a menorah," they maintained, "because it publicly advances a theological position." Indeed it does, though it is important to add that almost all of the alleged victims of this aural coercion could not understand a word of it. For all they knew, they were listening to a recipe for kanafi. And the menorah is, in its fiery silence, a religious symbol of a religious holiday, even if most American Jews prefer to think of the occasion historically or commercially. Is the sight of it, therefore, an optical coercion? As for church bells, see above. Moreover, the secular integrity of the setting was long ago surrendered. In the middle of it stands an imposing Christianish chapel, which, despite its hospitality to people of all faiths, could never be mistaken for a synagogue or a mosque. Years ago I was among a company of Jews--I think it included the dean of the faculty, though I may be mistaken--who festively carried a Torah through Harvard Yard, and this was no more "halacha at Harvard" than the adhan is "sharia at Harvard." Even before there was multiculturalism, there was respect for human variety and pleasure in it. An open civil space will always be cacophonous. There will be affirmation and alienation, sometimes even within a single individual; and there will be indifference, which is in its way one of the accomplishments of pluralism. When I was at college, the arrival of spring was reliably announced by the defiant blasting of "Sympathy for the Devil" from dorm-room loudspeakers turned toward the campus. I did not share the theological position that it advanced, but I was exhilarated. In a Dionysian frenzy I played frisbee until dark.

2008-04-22T10:12:00.002-04:00

Coming Soon! Just got my advance copy of Cory Doctorow's new book, Little Brother. If you want some advance buzz on the book, start here. Tor Senior Editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden was kind enough to send me an advance copy--even though (as usual) I was late to the sign-up.

This one's cutting to the front of my pile. Will blog about it when I've finished it.

2008-04-22T08:34:00.003-04:00

The only humble contribution I can make to earth day is to note that a Hibiscus we were given a year ago not only survived the winter, but is blooming again.

(Of course, we had some help.)

2008-04-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

Absolutely Priceless...

2008-04-19T07:28:00.002-04:00

The Times pretty much nails it:

Prominent evolutionary biologists, like the author and Oxford professor Richard Dawkins � accurately identified on screen as an �atheist� � are provided solely to construct, in cleverly edited slices, an inevitable connection between Darwinism and godlessness. Blithely ignoring the vital distinction between social and scientific Darwinism, the film links evolution theory to fascism (as well as abortion, euthanasia and eugenics), shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with black-and-white film of Nazi gas chambers and mass graves.
Every few minutes familiar � and ideologically unrelated � images interrupt the talking heads: a fist-shaking Nikita S. Khrushchev; Charlton Heston being subdued by a water hose in �Planet of the Apes.� This is not argument, it�s circus, a distraction from the film�s contempt for precision and intellectual rigor. This goes further than a willful misunderstanding of the scientific method. The film suggests, for example, that Dr. Sternberg lost his job at the Smithsonian�s National Museum of Natural History because of intellectual discrimination but neglects to inform us that he was actually not an employee but rather an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term.
Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn �Expelled� is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.

Thanks to the producers, the conflation of Christianity with dishonesty and sleaze will continue for a long time. Thanks, guys.

2008-04-18T13:35:00.005-04:00

More deep thoughts from Richard Dawkins:

Entities capable of designing anything, whether they be human engineers or interstellar aliens, must be complex -- and therefore, statistically improbable.

Actually, these are the same 'deep' thoughts we've heard before. Bill Vallicella was on the case, but is worth revisiting.

1. The explanandum, that which is to be explained, is organized complexity as such.
2. God is at least as complex as that which is to be explained.
Therefore
3. Any 'explanation' that invokes a supernatural designer explains "precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer." One cannot be said to have explained organized complexity as such if one postulates an unexplained explainer that is at least as complex as any being among the explananda.
4. If the response to the foregoing is that 'God was always there,' then one could just as well say that 'DNA was always there' and be done with the matter.

Now I may be dense, but I cannot see that this is an argument that any theist should lose sleep over.

Why should anyone accept premise (1)? Why should anyone accept that organized complexity as such needs explaining? A plausible principle is that, if x explains y, then x is not identical to y: Nothing explains itself. This is especially clear if the explanation is causal. For it seems self-evident that nothing can cause itself. (I interpret causa sui privatively, not positively: I take it to mean 'not caused by another' and not 'self-caused.') Now if nothing can explain itself, and if organized complexity is to be explained, then some of the organized complexity must remain unexplained, that portion residing in the ultimate explainer. It follows that one cannot reasonably demand that all organized complexity be explained. If this is right, then it is no objection to God to say that his complexity � assuming he is complex � has no explanation. For if one wants an ultimate explanation, then one must accept an entity whose own existence and complexity has no explanation in terms of something distinct from it.

As Bill goes on, this kind of philosophizing makes no impression on fundie materialists. By definition, they simply want to deny, not discuss.

It seems to me that we have a stand-off. We have two diametrically opposed positions each of which is rationally defensible. The theist interprets the order (organized complexity) and existence of nature as deriving from a transcendent mind-like Source, an intelligent, providential ground of finite being and its intelligibility. On this approach it makes no sense to try to explain all being and all organized complexity in terms of simpler and simpler, stupider and stupider, material elements. The theist finds in himself consciousness, self-consciousness, intentionality, purposiveness, moral awareness, aesthetic sensitivity, etc., and he cannot for the life of him understand how any of this can be made sense of in material terms. So he interprets what he finds in himself as a key to the ultimate makeup of the world. The naturalist, of course, adopting a ruthlessly third-personal point of view, will have none of this. For him, there is no explanation apart from materialist explanation, and what cannot be reduced to this form of explanation must be simply denied. [emphasis mine]

But on the other hand, since Dawkins keeps repeating the same point over and over again, maybe discussion is possible.

Some day.

2008-04-18T10:52:00.001-04:00

Rod Dreher once again sums it up nicely:

I had to sit back and read this three times for its full impact to sink in, and to deal with the emotions it brings forth. From the Boston Globe:

"I asked him to forgive me for hating his church and hating him," said Olan Horne, 48, of Lowell, who gave the pope a picture of himself as a 9-year-old boy, just before the Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham started molesting him. "He said, 'My English isn't good, but I want you to know that I can understand you, and I think I can understand your sorrow.' "
This is what so many have been waiting for, for so long. Not even John Paul, for all his courage and charity, could bring himself to do this.

2008-04-18T10:48:00.000-04:00

Indeed. A great play in the annals of baseball.

2008-04-17T15:51:00.001-04:00

Good one.

2008-04-17T13:20:00.000-04:00

These so-called producers are turning out to be even dumber than I thought:

With the revelation that the producers of Expelled did not obtain permission to use a short segment of John Lennon�s song �Imagine�. Given that they reportedly used the snippet about �imagine there�s no religion� with various nasty visual content from Communist China, it seems unlikely that they will manage to work out a deal with Ono to license the song at this point. Premise Media (PM) is arguing that the snippet meets the requirements for a �fair use� exclusion, or that they have an �educational� movie, or whatever in order to set aside the issue.

2008-04-17T12:17:00.001-04:00

For the Record:

Correction: Because of a columnist's habitual laziness and ignorance, and a cowardly editorial attitude toward said columnist, a column that ran over two weeks ago was incorrect in stating that the corpse of Humphrey Bogart watched the L.A. Dodgers in the Coliseum. Bogart was comfortably interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.