Don’t encourage them!

Some anarchically-inclined friends of mine use to say that about general elections. “Don’t vote for politicians – it only encourages them.” It’s not usually a convincing argument for me – but when it comes to this “child discipline” referendum I think it is the only sensible advice.

So, New Zealanders can vote from the end of next month on the proposition: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

Wave goodbye to email?

I recently watched a fascinating presentation on Google’s new application – Wave. It will be available later this year but was launched for developers a few weeks ago. You can see the presentation of its launch in the video below.

It’s certainly impressive. Its developers describe it as the email we would have now if we designed it now from scratch – “intelligently designed” instead of the clunky “evolved” email we currently use!

Iran’s problem

This cartoon in today’s New Zealand Herald (see Cartoon: Theocratic monkey business).

Just in case we forget what the real problem is in Iran.

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Do you believe in a god?

Seems a simple enough question. Easy to answer yes or no. But apparently not.

Terry Eagleton, author of Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, claims it’s a meaningless question. He goes so far as to claim that no respectable theologian he knows would answer yes to that question!! Strange! I thought that’s what theologians spent their time doing – trying to justify the answer yes!

NZ Evolution Survey

This from Scepticon (see Evolution Survey).

“Just a quick post to spread the word about a survey covering the public acceptance of evolution in New Zealand and the effect (if any) of religious/spiritual beliefs on the the extent to which evolution is accepted in the wider community. The survey can be found Here, and the results will be presented around November 2009.

The survey is being conducted by Drs Marc Wilson and Peter Ritchie of Victoria University in Wellington. I hope to secure an interview with the two Drs closer to the release of the data to get their views on the implication of the findings. In the mean time go participate in the survey, it will only take a few minutes and will be time well spent.”

I have just done the survey – its pretty thorough but doesn’t take long.

Definitely worth doing – and I certainly look forward to the results.

Thanks Scepticon

Go to New Zealand Evolution Survery

The purpose of purpose

My previous post on Purpose seems, from the discussion, to have hit a raw spot with some people. Just to add fuel to the fire, have a look at this video of Richard Dawkin’s’ recent presentation during his March USA tour. Entitled “Purpose of Purpose” he discusses how the word is often used inappropriately. Along the lies of the theological “why” questions. Quoting Peter Atkins he points out that often “why” questions are just silly.

However, Dawkins does point out that humans are obsessed with purpose, and discusses why that may be so. He describes how purpose has evolved and why the human brain can derive humanitarian and religious purposes which are not necessarily seen as evolutionary adaptions.

Kiwi Science Blogging

Cr!key Creek has a post on science blogging in New Zealand (see Kiwi Science Blogging.). He says we should have more of them – I endorse that.

And The Chicken or the Egg blog has a round-up of NZ science blogs. There’s not many listed. Does anyone know of others?

A NZ blog ranking tool

I have had a couple of goes at ranking NZ blogs according to the visits recorded by the public sitemeter or statcounters. There are now about 50 blogs I which have data I can access.

This time I have put together a web-based spreadsheet which automatically uploads this data to provide up-to-date rankings – based on Google Docs. It displays the rank and average daily visit numbers for the previous 7 days. At this stage only data from Sitemeter and Statcounter are shown – that’s all I have been able to get it to work for. However, these are the most frequently used methods.

Below is a table displaying results for the morning of Friday 19th June. You can load the current page here: NZ blogs average daily visits.

Charity and linked data

Image via Wikipedia

I have been reading Peter Singer‘s book The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. It’s interesting – but somewhat challenging. It’s hard not to approach it with feelings of guilt (“I don’t give enough”) and self justification (“anyway charity doesn’t work”).

Singer deals with these issues and makes a good case for the effectiveness of charitable giving without it being burdensome to the average person.

Suppressing science

Cover via Amazon

Simon Singh, author of the book Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine has a brief article in the Times about the problems caused by libel actions on scientific integrity (see Think tank: Costly libel suits are stifling science). He knows what he is talking about as he is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) over a Guardian article of his. (The original has been deleted but a cached version is available online here)

Singh had commented that some aspects of Chiropractic treatment were “bogus.” The BCA objected and were offered a right of reply by the Guardian. While the issue could have been decided, or at least clarified, by discussion and presentation of evidence the BCA chose to sue. They chose to show their legal muscle instead of the evidence – to paraphrase a similar New Zealand situation (see Evidence should trump “legal muscle”). In that case The New Zealand Chiropractic Association responded to a critical article in the New Zealand Medical Journal with a threat of legal action if the article was not withdrawn.