I Love the Music Industry

Posted by Johnny at 1:19 p.m.

Because I get to take photos like this:

Left to right: Candace, Some Happy/Lucky Guy, Liz, Toby.

My facial expression: "Allll right.."

YAIDRx2 (Or SQRD...either or)

Posted by Reid at 1:04 a.m.

Intelligent Design - the idea that life is so complex that it could not have come to be without the help of divine intervention. To put it more "scientifically", life appears to be irreversibly complex. According to ID lore, certain things cannot come to be as a whole through selection of their parts since their parts are not in themselves useful. Instead, these entire parts must be created before hand by an intelligent source, and then it's off to the evolutionary races. Hell, according to some, the eye could have never evolved...too bad these people haven't looked at flat worms.

Those are ancient eyes on it's head. Sure, it can't see everything we can, but it has an advantage over other creatures - it can see lights and dark. It a world without sight, this would be a huge advantage. Any moderate tweaks of sensitivity would provide another advantage, and the perpetual evolution machine takes off. Not that this eye is reduced in complexity and still yields a benefit to the species.

The other common example given for irreducible complexity is the flagellum (pictured below). How could this possible work at all without all the pieces first being in place? Well, it wouldn't have to. If I could only swim with one arm that would be better than no arms, although it wouldn't be as good as it could be if I had flippers. Nonetheless, my chances for survival goes from zero to something.


Where did those parts come from though? Like the proteins and stuff?

Flagellum use dyenin arms and tubulin. These are essential to cellular function with lysosomes and organelles. So these were already kicking around...all that was needed was some externalization.

All arguments against evolution seem to fall short, and often the inadequate speak. Sadly, their voices are being heard and people are spreading "The Word (TM)". The only argument that the non-evolutionists have anymore is that we don't know how the chemicals came together in the first place...well, we don't know precisely, but we have an idea. Another rant possibly? If people push their stupid ideas, then yes.

Never forget, evolution does follow The Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Yet Another ID Rant (YAIDR)

Posted by Johnny at 9:56 p.m.

Haha, it seems like this is a touchy subject for me. Nothing like Intelligent Design to get the blood boiling.

Read this article if you have the time. If not, don't worry, because I'll be quoting it.

Jeopardy!
A: The US Congressional Record indicates that this person was quoted as saying that the Columbine school shootings happened "because our school systems teach our children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud."

Q: Who is Tom DeLay?

That is correct. Tom DeLay, who actually holds a degree in biology, attributed the Columbine shootings to the teaching of evolution. WHA?? It's a good thing this "biologist" has done such a good job as a congressman, otherwise people would question his intelligence (and the validity of his degree).

Now, the article makes an interesting point:

Meanwhile, public policy regarding Intelligent Design has been defined by people like President George W. Bush. Talking about evolution versus Intelligent Design, Bush recently declared that "Both sides ought to be properly taught so people can understand what the debate is about." The sentence represents a clear misunderstanding, because it assumes that there are two "sides" and that there is a debate.

This is something that I never actually thought about before. I was buying into the ID hype as much as any idiot, believing that ID was the other (wrong) side to the theory of evolution. I was forgetting something very important: science is not a system of beliefs.

Let me repeat: SCIENCE IS NOT A SYSTEM OF BELIEFS.

When you teach science, you teach the currently accepted theories, and in high school textbooks, these theories are typically about 40 years behind current research. This means that when you teach the origin of life in a science classroom, you teach the Theory of Evolution. This is the theory that is widely accepted by scientists across the world, and one that has been proved scientifically many times ([1], [2], [3], to cite but a few fairly credible sources).

Now, Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. It is basically a rejection of evolution on the basis that anything that doesn't include God is immoral, thus evolution is immoral and should not be taught. "But we can't teach nothing in science class, nor can we teach pure Creationism in science class because of that stupid First Amendment (burn the witch!), therefore, let's just pretend that evolution was meticulously pre-planned by God. There. Now that's science."

Most people don't know about the method for getting scientific theories accepted, but in short, it's long and arduous. Here's a nice summary:

Consider how real-world science gets done. Suppose you have a novel scientific claim. You do some research on it, either theoretical or experimental, which you then attempt to publish. You submit an article to journals, and the journals send it out to idiots called peer reviewers, and those idiots tell you why you’re wrong, and then you have to fight with them and tell them why they’re idiots, and it goes on and on. If you’re lucky, you get published. What happens next? If your work is interesting, other people will begin to look at it and do follow-up research. If it’s really interesting, you’ll build a scientific consensus, which may take ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years. Only then does your work get mentioned in high-school textbooks. In my own field of physics, the material in today’s textbooks is easily thirty to forty years out of date—as it should be, because that’s how science works.

Now, you would think that if the ID proponents wanted their "theory" to be published in high school textbooks, they would have been going through this process of journal articles, idiot peer reviewers, follow-up research (or any research), etc.... This is not so:

Demonstrating that the ID strategy is dishonest requires a somewhat longer argument. The dishonesty of ID lies in its proponents pointing to a controversy when there really is no controversy. A friend of mine did an informal survey of more than ten million articles in major science journals during the past twelve years. Searching for the key word evolution pulled up 115,000 articles, most pertaining to biological evolution. Searching for Intelligent Design yielded eighty-eight articles. All but eleven of those were in engineering journals, where, of course, we hope there is discussion of intelligent [engineering] design [practices]! Of the eleven articles, eight were critical of the scientific basis for Intelligent Design theory and the remaining three turned out to be articles in conference proceedings, not peer-reviewed research journals. So that’s the extent of the "controversy" in the scientific literature. There is none.

Well, there you have it. A big fucking goose-egg for the number of ID theories published in scientific journals, waiting for peer review (or having completed peer review).

I challenge the proponents to answer me this: If you want to challenge an accepted scientific theory, why aren't you using science?! Putting this lame "theory" on an unfair fast-track into high school textbooks is not going to help anyone, especially the students. Here are some shocking statistics about the United States:

In a 2001 National Science Foundation (NSF) survey of scientific literacy, 53 percent of American adults were unaware that the last dinosaur died before the first human arose.

Ok, this is somewhat believable. In fact, I was just having a conversation with someone (who shall remain nameless) the other day about her beliefs. I asked her if she was a Young-Earth Creationist. Not knowing what I meant, I asked her how old she believed the world to be. Still not getting it I gave her some options: 4.5 billion years, or less than ten thousand. "Oh! Haha, it's not billions of years old! Hahaha," was her reply.

"But what about the dinosaurs? They died out a couple hundred million years ago. You don't honestly think that humans crafted and planted dinosaur fossils to make everyone question the age of the earth, do you?"

"No.. I always thought humans and dinosaurs lived together."

Most of that was paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Here is the most disturbing statistic I've heard.... well, in a very long time:

Just 50 percent of American adults knew that the earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it. When I first saw that finding, I thought there had been a trick question whose wording might have thrown respondents off track. So I went back to the original survey and looked at the question. It read: "The Earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it. True or false?" That seems clear enough. And yet half of the American public got it wrong.

WHAT FUCKING CENTURY IS THIS? This reminds me of a Simpsons episode I saw today:

(On Television, Principal Skinner tied to a stake with a crowd of townsfolk surrounding him, some carrying torches)

     Skinner: I'm telling you people, the earth revolves around the sun!
 Abe Simpson: Burn him!  [lights the pyre]
Photographer: What a story!  [takes a photo]
 Abe Simpson: [chasing photographer] You've stolen my soul!

I mean, FUCK. I thought we solved this problem in the 16th/17th century. But I digress...

As I near the end of this rant, I want to make sure my point is clear:

• There is only one scientific theory that can explain the origin of life on Earth, and that is Evolution. This is not a point of contention in the scientific community and there is no controversy.
• A scientific theory cannot be replaced by a non-scientific theory, nor can they be taught as alternate theories. The non-scientific theory is just that: Not Science.

So what can I conclude from these two points? Intelligent Design is not scientific (see above rant for proof), and thus it cannot be taught alongside or in place of evolution in a science classroom.

If you want your children to be instilled with religious beliefs, make them go to Church!

End of discussion, end of "controversy."

A Brief History of Prime

Posted by Reid at 10:51 p.m.

It's a pleasure to be posting on the blog that I have, at times, checked more than 5 times in a day to see if anything interesting has been posted. From the dablings in the pleasure of women, to his epic performances, I have been entertained day in and day out. I am excited for this blog, not only as a colossal time user during exams, but for the discussions and rants that will likely take place.

I figure that as an opening post I would give a brief run down on some similarities that Johnny and I have, and where we both come from.

We met in High School, grade 12 specifically. It was Chemistry 30 with Zoller. We sat next to each other and had a passion for loathing the incompetence of people in the class. I often hear people make comments such as "____ is so stupid", to which I often think "look who's taking". In high school, however, Johnny and I were the ones being like "Wow, so many people are so stupid". We figured that nobody knew how to use their brains - and were we ever right.

At university, with what are suppose to be the brightest of the bright, not much has seemed to change. Sure, the people get better marks and their comments aren't as bad as they used to be, but people still ask for profs to solve logs in lecture. They still don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" if Word doesn't catch it for them. I am not overly good at english, but I would deem such mistakes unacceptable, especially from a university student.

People also think they know how to think and that they should be doctors because they want to use their brains. Sure, you don't need logs or english to be a good doctor....right? And they know how to think, as shown by the answers given in class. Given the question:

"Why does treating heavy metal poisoning with EDTA lead to kidney toxicities"

I heard the answers:

"Because it binds to hemoglobin"
and
"It's binding to calcium ions"

Yes, they know how to use their brains. EDTA binds to heavy metals as a chelating agent, and though it will bind to both calcium and iron, neither of these would lead to kidney toxicities. Using the knowledge or chelating agents, which they should have had from their A+ in Chemistry, an acceptable answer would be:

"The metabolism in the kidney breaks down the EDTA leaving the heavy metals to remain in the kidney cells. Heavy metals are known to be toxic to cells and will lead to cell death in the tissues where they are concentrated"

........fools.

So where does this lead us? Well, I said it was a brief history of prime (prime being "First in excellence, quality, or value"). Johnny and I expect excellence and quality thoughts, not just from ourselves but others. And when someone has something below par, we don't let it go ;). The most legitimate comment may be deemed as stupid here, but just because we claim to know doesn't mean we remember our chemistry...although we will likely look it up if we've forgotten.

Reid

This blog just became less mediocre - welcome Reid

Posted by Johnny at 10:45 p.m.

Folks, one of my 2 readers has joined me in the fight against... something. What's the opposite of mediocrity? Whatever. The point is that Reid is now an active ranting machine. I can't wait to make witty comments on his posts, like he's done for so many of mine.

Now, to find more readers...

Proof of Attendance

Posted by Johnny at 1:07 p.m.

This is photographic proof that I attended BSD 2006. In case you didn't figure it out, my head is circled in green and Kevin's head in blue. Don't I look drunk/stoned?

BS Fuckin' D

Posted by Johnny at 9:28 p.m.

Wooo!

Now that that's out of the way... WOOO!

Ok, for real this time. Yes, BSD was today, and yes it kicked serious ass. I got in at about 12:30 and was drunk by 1:00. I was glad I only had 2.5 hours of sleep the night before because it made me a really cheap drunk. 5 beers and a couple Smirnoff Ice later, I was rocking out sausage-fest style with Kevin and some other people.

There were lots of women there, and many of them were prodding and grabbing us in special places, but nothing else transpired (*sniff*). I was cheering Sara on, though, because it looked as if she was in the process of hooking up with someone. GO SARA!

My favourite band of the day was Five Star Affair. They FUCKING ROCKED, complete with trumpet and didgeridoo. Not to mention the lead singer and the bass player were two smoking hot chicks. By the time they made it into the crowd, I was too drunk to make any conversation so all I could say to the singer was, "You fucking ROCK! I LOVE YOU!" Just imagine me saying that with a heavy slur.

Man, I can't wait until BSD next year - technically, I'll be a student so I should be able to go (and maybe take a day off work). Yeah, that'll be sweet.

It's been a busy couple weeks.

Posted by Johnny at 8:10 p.m.

And I've accomplished so little. Oh well, I'm almost done my final networking assignment and I've already submitted my last (and only) Prolog assignment. All that's left to do is 2 massive group projects, both due on Wednesday.

Now that you're up to speed on the boring part of my life, here's the less boring part: the girl situation.

Ok, to start, Kathryn completely snubbed me at this student leader appreciation thing last week, which is somewhat unlike her, but not impossible to believe. I won't get all bitter and start recalling previous snubs that occurred while we were dating, but I won't not mention them either.

Second of all, "soon-to-be-married" admitted to me that she was leading me on the last couple weeks and apologized for it. Apparently she doesn't get hit on too often and was flattered at my expressed interest. It wasn't a big deal to me at all - I thought she was just being nice.

So where does that leave me? Single and looking. Very single and looking. I don't know why I put "very" in front of that sentence, but whatever. Once I get my business cards printed out, it will give me a great excuse to give cute musicians my phone number: cheap studio time.

I don't have enough time to do a full post complete with mildly amusing comments on weird news items, but I will later this week.

Worst or best week since January? You decide.

Posted by Johnny at 8:59 a.m.

Well, I finally got what I've been waiting for since the end of January: a reply from Amy. And no, the results were not what I was hoping for. She's apparently in a relationship (long-distance) right now, so that's the end of that.

While I thought I would be fairly upset about this scenario, I'm actually feeling pretty good. I finally said what I have wanted to say to her for a reallllly long time, and although I got rejected, rejection doesn't really bother me anymore (thanks to someone we all know - see every pre-Amy personal post on this blog). Of course, the initial impact of the reply was disappointing, but I'm actually smiling about it now.

I think the period of time between sending the email and getting the reply really helped me get over Kathryn, and by what I accomplished on Wednesday night, I think I'm in a pretty good frame of mind. She really wants to keep in contact with me and keep the friendship and I feel the same way.

So what am I going to do now? Well, I'm going to start putting all of my non-scholastic effort into dating. As much as that really pisses me off, it's really the only way to find a girlfriend. At least I'll have money in the summer to be able to afford going on dates.

I can officially say that I regret nothing and I'm quite happy.

Funny story....

Posted by Johnny at 9:22 p.m.

First the background details:

I'm subbing in on drums for my friend Liz in the vocal jazz group that she manages because she has tendonitis. We had a rhythm sectional tonight at the university, but it was only she and I and a piano player...

The piano player was very attractive. Cute girl, really nice, great piano player and singer (more on this later). So I thought, "meh, what do I have to lose?" and I asked if I could buy her dinner after the rehearsal. She agreed without putting up any kind of a fight, but she just wanted some Pita on the Run because she had to work on a paper that night.

So I bought her dinner, sat at one of the 2-seaters in Mac Hall and we talked for quite a while. Things seemed to be going really well and I thought we were hitting it off. Then we somehow got on the topic of doing weird things in a drivethrough. She told me this story, most of which I forget, where she was going through McDonalds with someone who had a sock puppet.

The story itself isn't so much important, but this is what she said: "So, I was with a guy, who was my boyfriend at the time ...." Johnny's mind: yes! She's single! Woo! ".... And is now my fiance...."

Johnny's mind: MOTHERFUCK!

Yeah. That was short-lived. Apparently she's engaged to this guy in Victoria and is moving there sometime in the summer to do her music education degree.

I couldn't figure out why she accepted my invitation to dinner in the first place, most likely knowing my intentions and knowing that she is engaged. Kind of puzzling. Oh well. I'm just happy that I had the confidence to ask her out in the first place - this is a good sign.

And, as it turns out, she's written a couple songs and is very interested in recording herself at RnJ Studios this summer. So in losing out on a weekend date, I gained a potential client. She even played for me afterwards and she sounded pretty good. Her piano is better than her singing, but Reid and I have creative ways around that.

Well, that was my story. The lesson I learned is that I actually have to look at girls' hands before I ask them out. I didn't think I would have to do that as a 20-year-old, but apparently I do!