To wear the mantle of Galileo, you must also be right

The makers of the film Expelledclaim that supporters of Intelligent Design are persecuted and hounded out of their jobs because of their beliefs, which are religious beliefs, and therefore this is religious persecution. In general, their examples are of people who are incompetent, unproductive, or simply misrepresenting the facts altogether. But there’s more… A commenter at the Twin Cities Pioneer Press gives some counterexamples. David Edwards from Runcorn, U.K., has this to say:

…the basic premise of this film, namely that scientists who dare to question an existing paradigm have their careers trashed, is garbage. I can name three scientists who did precisely that and whose careers flourished afterwards. Two of them won Nobel Prizes. Look up Barry Marshall, Stanley Prusiner and Lynn Margulis. None of whom were “Expelled” - instead, their work became part of mainstream science.

Creationists and IDists whinge about being denied a place at science’s top table, yet perform NO experimental laboratory work, perform NO critically robust research, submit NOTHING to critically robust journals for peer review and examination of the arguments. They want the privileges and imprimatur of science without doing any of the work. Instead, they spend their tax-exempt funding on propaganda, misinformation, continued carping about evolutionary biology despite the fact that evolutionary biology has been responsible for advances that have helped keep people alive via the subsequent development of medical technology, and have NO positive argument. All that they have is carping, and the PRETENCE that their ideas are somehow “scientific” whilst anyone who has read the Dover Trial transcripts knows that they are in fact a front for RELIGION. The FACTS and the EVIDENCE are on the side of REAL SCIENCE.

To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted: you must also be right.

Using Madcap Flare with FrameMaker

Andrew Brooke has written a detailed critique of using the XML-based online-help system Madcap Flare with Adobe FrameMaker publishing software to create both online help and technical documentation from a single file. This is known as single-sourcing. The ideal is to write once, then export many subsets of the content into a variety of formats.

Andrew’s review focuses on using Flare with imported FrameMaker files, a task most writers will have to do if they switch to Flare for their online help. Apparently, there are still a few glitches in the process.

Andrew Brooke is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communication in Toronto.

Embryo bill in U.K.

 I want to quote from Cogita Tute’s post about blogging against theocracy. There’s a Human Tissue and Embryo Bill coming up in the U.K.. “Cogita” urges us to vote for it:

Vote for it. The arguments against it are based on a logical fallacy mixed with an unsupported assertion.

Logical fallacy; slippery slope - i.e. if we do this now then we will end up growing man-pigs etc.

Unsupported assertion; A blob of cells 14 days old is a human being with all the rights a full grown human has. This is not even supported by the bible - even though it is those of certain faiths who seem to be claiming this.
Argument for it; it may lead to cures for lots of nasty diseases.

Religion versus science? Yes. Religion trying to control science? Yes.

Besides, I like the picture.

GrrlScientist on Clarke’s magic

Scienceblogger GrrlScientist was just a girl when she first heard it. Now she muses on what Arthur C. Clarke’s aphorism meant to her and for her career in science.

He was the one who said,

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Tantric magic: FAIL!

Another form of magic bites the dust in India when a rationalist challenges a tantric black magician to kill him with magical curses.

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment….

Everything started, when Uma Bharati (former chief minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh) accused her political opponents in a public statement of using tantrik powers to inflict damage upon her….

India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side…. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged Surinder to try and kill him. …

The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him. “No, I am an atheist,” said Sanal Edamaruku.

… Read all about it and see more pictures.

(hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula)

UPDATE: Bill Poser, over on Ed Brayton’s article about this on Dispatches from the Culture Wars, had the best suggestion for follow-up:

The way to really nail this down is to lay charges of attempted murder against Surinder Sharma. He can either admit guilt or admit as his defense that he is a fraud.