Food Porn: Something Resembling Minestrone

I haven't written about food in months, I think, so in the absence of something truly bizarre, I'll share something improvised. I like minestrone, but I suspect that it's probably one of those "throw in whatever you've got handy" dishes. Whether my suspicions are accurate or not, this is definitely a "hmmm... what's in the freezer and cupboard" sort of soup.

Ingredients in this little jewel include:

• 2-3 cups of beef broth (I didn't measure, it was about half the carton)
• 1/4 cup of beer (the bottle was open, so why not)
• a suitable number of turkey meatballs (from the grocery store's frozen case)
• a cup or so of multi-colored whole-wheat elbow noodles
• a can of diced tomatoes
• some frozen lima beans
• Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste

And the process is delightfully simple. Put everything in the pot, bring it to a boil over high heat, cover and simmer over low heat for about twenty minutes. That's all.

Dead Air

Remember how yesterday I said that there are two zombie movies coming out this month? Well, for your next installment of October YouTube goodness, I present the trailer for Dead Air.



I daresay everyone has already seen plenty of trailers for Zombieland by now.

Re: Your Brains

Tomorrow is the beginning of October, so I figure that a good way to start off the Halloween season -- particularly when it's going to be a month with not one but two zombie movies coming out -- is to share this video from Dragon*Con TV.



Bon appetite!

Skeptics' Circle 120

The latest issue of the Skeptics' Circle has been published at Pro-Science.

Warehouse 13 Finale

I’m sure everyone who reads the Saga knows by now that I watch SyFy. One of their better offerings of late has been Warehouse 13, a show about collecting supernatural artifacts and stuffing them into a giant warehouse for safe-keeping. So far, it’s had good characters, continuity, and writing.

It would certainly be unreasonable to expect this show to never have a bad episode, but there are different ways a show can go wrong. A good idea with a bad execution, for example, is different from a bad idea with a good execution.

I think that the Warehouse 13 finale was more of the latter. The actors and directors are doing great, but the script resorted to handing out idiot balls to the leads in order to railroad them to the cliff-hanger conclusion. I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly in Heroes, too.

So, Warehouse 13 writers, get some science fiction buffs who’ve read the Evil Overlord list and its counterpart for heroes to vet your scripts for stupidity before implementing them, eh? Smart people can still get into trouble, but they don’t have to walk into it foolishly, ok?

Syfy Original Movie "Lightning Strikes"

So I found myself watching Lightning Strikes on Syfy over the weekend. It's a Syfy original movie, so you know it's going to be bad. I don't want to go into too much detail, but there was just one stand-out-stupid incident that won't let me rest until I share my pain.

I suppose this could be considered a spoiler, but it's the first scene of the movie, so it's not spoiling much. A couple of people are driving down a road when the Lightning Storm of Evil breaks out. The lightning strikes are obviously targeted to threaten the car, but that's to be expected in a movie like this.

Then a prolonged lightning bolt strikes in front of the car, and as the car drives through it, the lightning cuts the car in half.

I kid you not: it cuts the car in half. But it's unnatural lightning, so that -- in itself -- wasn't what really bothered me.

For the rest of the movie, no one calls attention to the fact that lightning should not be able to do that to a car. When people say that a car is the safest place to be in a lightning storm, they aren't far off the mark. A car functions like a Faraday cage: the metal frame conducts electricity around anyone inside and grounds it through the tires. If you are in a car that gets struck by lightning, you may get blinded by the flash and deafened by the thunder, but you won't get electrocuted, and the car definitely won't get cut in half.

Would it have been all that hard for just one character, like one of the three storm-chasing scientists, to point out that this event was distinctly unnatural? Everyone acted like the only strange thing was that the lightning struck the car, not what happened to the car as a result.

Creationist Cut-and-Paste

I'm a part-time lurker at Ray Comfort's weblog, which is a haven for creationist idiocy*. Occasionally one of Ray's sycophants will post something they think is a real shocker that will instantly convert someone from “evolutionism”. Poster "Quasar" left just such a little jewel in the comments there around the beginning of September.

Just for fun, I'm going to see if I can find the answers to these “devastating” questions.

Students, give this test to your teachers. When they fail it, ask them why they are teaching this nonsense!

Teachers, give this test to your students if you really want them to know the truth about evolution!

1. Which evolved first, male or female?

I don't even think any research is necessary for this one; the nearest earthworm is a clue. Genetic information exchange actually evolved pretty early in the history of life on Earth; sexual differentiation evolved later, and both genders evolved together.

2. How many millions of years elapsed between the first male and first female?

Zero. That was easy.

3. List at least 9 of the false assumptions made with radioactive dating methods.

I get it! This is a trick question, right? There aren't any false assumptions made when using radiometric dating, if you're doing it correctly.

Here's a starter article on radiometric dating. It's obviously a pretty complex subject, so I wouldn't take the word of a creationist who knows nothing about it on what “false assumptions” are made.

4. Why hasn't any extinct creature re-evolved after millions of years?

Because that's not how evolution works. Species diverge like branches of a tree, each one evolving from different starting materials to adapt to a different set of circumstances. If you prune out a twig, you won't ever get the exact same thing again, since anything new evolving to fit the same niche will have a different starting point. That said, there's a surprising amount of convergent evolution: similar forms evolving to adapt to similar environments.

Questions like this one make it obvious that the questioner really has no understanding of the principles of evolution.

5. Which came first: the eye? the eyelid? the eyebrow? the eye sockets? the eye muscles? the eye lashes? the tear ducts? the brain's interpretation of light?

Oh, dear... not the evolution of the eye thing again. Darwin himself was able to answer this question back in the 19th century. Without doing any research, let's eliminate the eyelid, eyebrow, and eyelashes right off the bat: have you ever seen a fish with any of those? Me neither.

What you really need first is a light-sensitive cell, and almost any cell can react to sufficiently intense light. From there, it becomes a matter of specialization for light sensitivity, then development of light-sensitive cells in clusters, then an organ to start focusing the light.

It goes without saying that scientists have answered this repeatedly for over a century.

6. How many millions of years between each in question 5?

One scientific estimate predicts that you could go from eyespots to sophisticated eyes in about 350,000 generations. The amount of time would depend on the reproductive cycle of the species evolving the eyes, but it could realistically take less than a million years.

7. If we all evolved from a common ancestor, why can't all the different species mate with one another and produce fertile offspring?

I know that the writer has no clue about biology, but this one is just so pathetic. By definition, speciation requires populations to become so dissimilar from each other that members of one group don't mate with members of the other to produce fertile offspring.

8. List any of the millions of creatures in just five stages of its evolution showing the progression of a new organ of any kind. When you have done this, you can collect the millions of dollars in rewards offered for proof of evolution!

Kent Hovind never had millions of dollars to offer as a reward (in fact, his offer was only $250,000). Unlike the James Randi Educational Foundation, who make the account information for their Million Dollar Challenge public, Kent never offered any proof that he could actually pay a reward. Further, Kent made himself the arbitrator of what would constitute proof, and his standard of evidence would have required time-travel. Kent's now in prison for tax fraud, so... yeah.

But I got side-tracked. An organ in five stages of development. Trying to find something with illustrations took some work, but let’s look at whale flukes, shall we?

1. Pakicetus: An aquatic mammal with four legs and a thin tail.
2. Ambulocetus: An aquatic mammal with shorter legs and a stronger tail.
3. Rhodocetus: An aquatic mammal with a still stronger tail and legs diminishing toward flippers. This species would have little or no mobility on land.
4. Durodon: A large aquatic mammal with limbs utterly incapable of moving the animal on land; the tail is flattening and spreading into flukes.
5. Aetiocetus: A large aquatic mammal with distinct flukes; the hind limbs have diminished to nothing, and the forelimbs are purely flippers.
6. Modern whales

9. Why is it that the very things that would prove Evolution (transitional forms) are still missing?

Archaeopteryx? Tiktaalik? Australopithicus? Ambulocetus? Have you really never heard of any of these? There are all kinds of transitional fossils. I suppose you're one of those who thinks there should be "crocoducks".

10. Explain why something as complex as human life could happen by chance, but something as simple as a coin must have a creator. (Show your math solution.)

First, the Theory of Evolution does not say that life happened by chance. In fact, it doesn't address the question of how life started. It only addresses the question of how life diversified into the many species that we see today after it started.

Second, life is the result of chemical reactions. Many complex chemical reactions occur spontaneously.

Third, we know exactly where coins come from, since we make them ourselves.

EDIT: I should add that the simplicity of a coin actually helps distinguish it as something designed by humans. Human engineers typically make things as simple as possible to reduce the number of things that can go wrong. Nature, on the other hand, often produces things that are needlessly complicated because of all the ancestral baggage they carry.

11. Why aren't any fossils or coal or oil being formed today?

Umm... what makes you think they aren't? It'll just be a long time before the “fossil fuels” forming today finish forming.

12. List 50 vestigial or useless organs or appendages in the human body.

50? Damn... that's a tall order. Sure, the appendix isn't doing much, nor is the tail bone, but 50? I'm not sure that we actually have that many that are seriously vestigial (which isn't necessarily the same as “useless”, btw).

13. Why hasn't anyone collected the millions of dollars in rewards for proof of evolution?

Because there's no evidence that the money exists, maybe? Or because the evidentiary standards required by those offering the supposed “reward” are unrealistic?

14. If life began hundreds of millions of years ago, why is the earth still under populated?

What's your definition of “under populated”? There are plenty of people claiming that the Earth is currently OVER populated (at least by humans).

15. Why hasn't evolution duplicated all species on all continents?

Why is that something you would expect? It's certainly not something that the Theory of Evolution predicts. Would it really be that much of a burden for you to actually learn the theory before you propose all these questions? (But what should I expect? This is just another cut-n-paste routine.)

*I'm not saying that all creationists are idiots, mind you... they're mostly just disinformed, but it's hard not to throw labels at people when they pass around long-refuted garbage that someone probably sent them in a chain letter. The content of this Quasar's post is idiotic, even if Quasar isn't.

Dragon*Con 2009

I have returned from Dragon*Con and managed to figure out Picasa well enough to have a LOT of pictures uploaded. You can view the main album there, but here are a few highlights.



And I also managed to attend the Arc Attack concert at the Mad Scientists' Ball on Sunday night. We control the Lightning!

Zentra Happy Pills

I've been hearing ads for a product called "Zentra" on the radio lately. They make it sound like a medication to treat depression, but it's obviously not a medicine, because the commercials lack all the disclaimers that are required for pharmaceutical commercials, and the Zentra website has fine print that says, "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration." It's sold as a dietary supplement, so naturally the disclaimer also says, "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

On the other hand, their radio ad claims that "users have compared the effect of Zentra to falling in love" or "an overwhelming sensation that all is well in the world, and things are getting better" (paraphrased, I don't remember the exact terms from the ad, but they were similarly glowing). Note that the producers don't claim themselves that Zentra has these effects, they just say that some customers report them.

I can't even find an ingredient list for the stuff on the website. Since it's sold as a dietary supplement, I'm pretty sure it will just list an assortment of vitamins and minerals. They don't peddle it as homeopathy, but there's still no sign of a clinical trial or any other legitimate evidence to support that it actually does anything significant to reduce depression or improve mood.

This strikes me as a dodgy, sneaky ad campaign designed to separate people with mental health issues from their money by hinting -- if not actually promising -- that their product is as effective as real depression medication without the side-effects associated with real medication, which they make sure to say Zentra doesn't have.

Update:

Reader SKN990 directed me to the ingredient listings for the two Zentra supplements.

Zentra Complete utilizes a proprietary formula derived from b-vitamin molecules which an excellent source of energy, feelings of overall wellness and calm, improved memory, focus and concentration without the side effects of caffiene.

Zentra Daily (Day Time Stress Relief Formula) contains magnolia bark extract (standardized for honokiol), Phenibut, GABA, and Picamilon.

Zentra Complete (Night Time Stress Relief Formula) contains Vitamin B12, Sulbutiamine (a vitamin B1 derivative), and Pyrithioxine (a vitamine B6 derivative, also known as Pyritinol).

A study published on PubMed does show reduction in some stress indicators in rodents from a mixture of honokiol and magnolol (another compound extracted from magnolia bark), although I have no idea how the dosage in the mice compares to the dosage in Zentra for humans.

Phenibut apparently also has real effects on mood in mice.

GABA is gamma-Aminobutyric acid that apparently functions as a neurotransmitter, although I can’t claim to understand neurochemistry well enough to properly interpret the extract of the article.

Picamilon is a combination of GABA and niacin (vitamin B3), and one study describes it as a known nootropic: a drug that enhances cognition, memory, attention, motivation, and concentration.

A study of sulbutiamine says, “Sulbutiamine has no antidepressive effect but it can… facilitate the rehabilitation of patients in their social, professional and family life functioning.”

Pyrithioxine is lab-created variant of vitamin B6 that apparently does have some effect on chemical activity in the brain, as well.

All-in-all, it looks like Zentra could legitimately affect a person's mood and relieve depression. I do not see any studies or evidence to support the glorious language used in their advertising, however. Some of the ingredients are listed as over-the-counter or even prescription medications in some countries, although Zentra is being sold as a dietary supplement in the US with claims that it is perfectly safe to use. Given that some of its contents really do seem to have chemical effects in the brain, I would hesitate to say that it's perfectly safe, although it is probably quite low in risk (especially at the doses they're probably recommending).

In a nutshell, if Zentra affects mood as much as their advertising implies (and they make it sound like heroin with their talk of "blissful" sensations), it's probably not perfectly safe. On the other hand, if it's perfectly safe, it's probably not as effective as they want you to think.

• Honokiol study
• Phenibut study
• GABA study
• Pyrithioxine study that describes Picamilon as nootropic
• Pyritinol study

A Quotation

"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path toward error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." --Charles Darwin

Kinda prophetic, actually when you realize how many false "facts" you get thrown at you every day by creationists.

Skeptics' Circle 116

Yep, I'm in the Skeptics' Circle again, this time hosted at Beyond the Short Coat. Of course, if you're finding out about it here, you've probably already read my entries, but you should read all the other skeptic goodness, too.

Why Fighting Creationism is Important

Some people are far more eloquent than I, and they have also learned video editing.

Is this transparent or what?

How about another scam email? This one wants me to give away my email account password. Of course, the most obvious giveaway was that it didn't even have a Charter return address. The shoddy grammar and total lack of the usual Charter branding in the formatting of the email don't help.

This message is to inform all our CHARTER email account owners that we are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center.We are deleting all unused CHARTER email account to create more space for new accounts.

To prevent your CHARTER account from closing you will have to update it
below so that we will know that it's a present used account.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
Email Address:...............
Password:..................
Date of Birth :.................

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account will lose his or her account permanently.

Thanks For your understanding.
Charter Communication

No, you may not have my email address, password, and date of birth for use in your identity theft schemes, moron.

Lim Yang: Parter in Crime

It's about time I made use of a scam email that's been sitting in my mailbox since March.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent, A deceased client of mine, that shares the same last name as yours, who died as the result of heart-related conditionin March 12th 2007. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake.

I have contacted you to assist in distributing the money left behind by my client before it is confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank where this deposit valued at Nineteen million dollars (US$19million dollars) is lodged. This bank has issued me a notice to contact the next of kin, or the account will be confiscated. I will like you to acknowledge the receipt of this e-mail as soon as possible via my private email [deleted].

Best regards,
Lim Yang
Attorney at Law

Yeah, right. A lawyer is going to be dumb enough to ask a stranger to help him embezzle money from a bank just because I happen to have the same last name as his client.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- people with millions of dollars in the bank have estate plans; any fortune they have in a bank account is not going to be left hanging with no one to claim it. The deceased in this particular scam had three years to figure out how to dispose of his millions upon his death.

People who send these emails count on the world being full of gullible morons to receive them.

Darth Hammer

Saw this first from Elwyn on his LiveJournal...


EMBED-MC Hammer Vader Busts a Move - Watch more free videos

My brain hurts, now.

Food Porn: Jamaican Escovitch

Sometimes I think I watch the Food Network too much. Earlier this week, I watched an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and the dish in question was Jamaican Escovitch. It just sounded so good that I had to make it, and I must say, it turned out really well. In fact, it may be the best fish dish I've ever eaten, let alone prepared myself.

So I looked it up on the internet to see how it's made. I have a few tweaks (using tips from the chef in the Throwdown episode), so here's what's in mine:

• 3 tilapia fillets (about 3/4 of a pound)
• 1 large onion
• 1 medium carrot
• half of a Scotch Bonnet pepper, seeded and cut into thin strips
• 1 teaspoon of minced garlic
• 1 tablespoons canola oil
• half of a bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp Allspice berries (optional)
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/8 cup water
• 1-1/2 limes, sliced into wedges
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/4 cup peanut or corn oil
• 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns (optional)
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/8 cup brown sugar

With the exception of adding the brown sugar when adding the water, vinegar, and lemon juice, the process is pretty much what you can read at GroupRecipes.com, so I'll let you follow the link for that part so they can get their hits.

And incidentally, Bobby lost.

UPDATE: As suggested at GroupRecipes.com, Escovitch does make a nice cold lunch.

Food Porn: Aloo Matar

Yes, yes... I've been a terrible blog slacker. I haven't been out doing much of interest frankly, so I haven't had much to post about. But, the Saga can't be left to decay indefinitely, so when I made a tasty Indian dish, it was time to produce a new Food Porn entry. It amuses me how many perverts find their way to the Saga this way, only to be disappointed by the lack of nekkid wimmin.


So, let's discuss the ingredients. This is from a recipe on AllRecipes.com, but with minor tweaks. I've highlighted the changes below.

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup of canned tomatoes with green chilis, pureed
• 1-1/2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

I discovered after getting home with the groceries that I didn't actually have the canned tomatoes I thought I had, so I used the tomatoes with green chilis; a little extra heat wasn't going to bother me. I actually have garam masala around somewhere, but I didn't feel like hunting for it right then, and the curry powder was handy. I wasn't particularly careful with measurements, and I naturally used a good bit more cilantro than the recipe called for.

The process is pretty simple and already described on AllRecipes, so I won't steal their hits by repeating it here. This recipe makes enough for four people, so I should have lunches for a couple of days.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

So, William and Juliana and I went to see Transformers 2 on opening night. I have to call this one another big win. As with the first film, the humor gets more sitcommy than I like at times, and this time it really pushed the limits of my tolerance, but the pace of the movie is still fast enough for me to get over that pretty quickly. There are also times when Michael Bay and the writing staff are clearly channeling George Lucas and James Cameron.

Please don’t be fooled into thinking this is a kids’ movie. You probably wouldn’t want your kids using some of this language in school, Megan Fox is definitely “Miss Fanservice” (with a little additional help, too), and the violence is intense. Incidentally, this movie is over two hours long, and probably the last half is a protracted battle, so expect to be very wired when you leave the theatre.

On the other hand, this movie is extremely pro-military. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines must see Michael Bay as their number one advertising assistant, and the Coast Guard is probably wondering why they get left out.

Joining the Evil Alien Conspiracy

Because Hulu now has episodes of Babylon 5!

Something to Keep in Mind

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
--Thomas Jefferson

And Now for Something Completely Different

Good old-fashioned Star Trek destroys Star Trek: Enterprise. Yay!

Poor Water Stanley

There's nothing quite so amusing as a good scam letter. I've let this one linger in my email box for a while, but finally gotten around to it.

Dear friend, As you read this, I do not want you to feel sorry for me, because I believe everyone will die someday.

So this time, instead of an appeal to my greed, I'm getting an appeal to my sympathy. At least it's not a disaster exploit.

My name is water stanley a merchant in London, United Kingdom.

For a British national, he has appallingly poor English grammar. That's also a rather odd name for a Brit (I would have expected Walter rather than "water"), and if memory serves, the British typically capitalize their names. These little details don't necessarily mean the writer isn't British, but they do raise my doubts.

I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and have been in the hospital for a very long time. It has defied all forms of medical treatment,and right now I have about few months to live, according to the medical experts. I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not even myself) but my business and wealth. Though I Am very rich, I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and only focused on my business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world.

The appeal to my sympathy continues. Most of us want to feel like we've been generous and helped our fellow human beings, but we feel like we haven't had the opportunity to be as generous as we would like. "Water" is plucking at those harp strings.

I believe when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it till date. Now that God is calling me, I have willed and shared most of my properties and assets to my immediate and extended family members, including few close friends. I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul, so I have decided to give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth before Gods call.

"Water" puts out an appeal to my religious sentiments, as well. I'm not exactly the most susceptible person in the world to such appeals, and there are plenty of evangelicals who might tell him that good works don't carry any weight with God, but there's no shortage of people who might feel the pull.

So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in the U.K, Algeria and Malaysia and some other countries. Now that my health has been deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore. I once asked members of my family to close one of my accounts and distribute the money which I have there to charity organization in Bulgaria and Pakistan; they refused and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them.

Betrayed by his greedy family; that's really sad. If only there were estate attorneys in the United Kingdom who specialized in helping wealthy people arrange for their assets to be distributed as they wanted at the time of their deaths. So sad.

The last of my money which no one knows of is the huge cash deposit of twenty eight million united states dollars ($28.000.000) that I have with a Bank. I would want you to help me collect this deposit on my behalf and distribute it to charity organizations in your country. I would want you to keep 20% of the funds to yourself and share the rest to charity organizations in your country. Reply this email as soon as possible if you are capable to handle this transaction on my behalf. My regards and Love to you and your family members. God be with you,

Water Stanley

Oh, I'm sorry, there is going to be an appeal to my greed. "Water" is going to trust me, a complete stranger, to donate over 22 million dollars to charities of my choice, keeping only about five and a half million for myself.

Once again, a scammer who hopes I'm stupid enough to believe there are absurdly wealth people who have no idea how to handle money. Do not fall for this crap, people! The rich don't get that way by being idiots.

Silly TV: Deadliest Warrior

Spike TV has been running a new show lately that I find amusing, in an MST3K sort of way. The show is Deadliest Warrior, and it purports to determine which of two historical “warriors” would prevail if they had to fight.

Each week on Deadliest Warrior, a new episode will pit two of the most feared warriors civilization has ever known against each other. Along with the use of 21st century science and the latest in CGI technology, each episode enlists warrior-specific world-class fighters and experts to provide insight into what makes these combatants tick, analyzing every facet of their unique skills of destruction, culminating in a head-to-head final fight between two legends of the battlefield that will produce the deadliest warrior.

Recent match-ups include “Gladiator vs Apache”, “Viking vs Samurai”, and “Knight vs Pirate”. The general setup of the show is to get some “experts” to evaluate the weapons used by the warriors in the contest, feed this information into a “state-of-the-art computer program”, and get an “objective” conclusion about the result. Each warrior has special advocates pulled in to argue for their side during the evaluations, and the smack-talk flows thick.

I’m surprised that they don’t hit any of the “classic” matchups that I would expect: “Pirate vs Ninja” or “Knight vs Samurai”, for example. They seem to prefer throwing opponents with radically different fighting styles against each other. The outcome of such a contest would really be determined more by the circumstances of the fight than by the equipment of the combatants. For instance, in “Gladiator vs Apache”, the outcome would largely depend on whether the battle was more like a woodland ambush or an arena bout.

Alas, the show never addresses the circumstances of the fight. The evaluation revolves entirely around the amount of damage the combatants' weapons can do to various ballistics gel dummies, pig bodies, and other human analogs. It goes without saying that the choice of weapons assigned to each combatant will significantly affect the outcome of a contest.

As a quick example, we’ll look at one contest: “Samurai vs Viking”. Each warrior comes to the fight with four weapons, with each weapon assigned to a category: long-range, mid-range, short-range, or special. The weapons assigned to the Samurai are the katana (short-range, the classic Samurai sword), naginata (mid-range, a pole-arm used for both slashing and thrusting), yumi (long-range, a type of bow), and kanabo (special, essentially a weighted club). The Viking comes to the fight with a great axe (short-range), long sword (mid-range), spear (long-range), and shield (special).

The show’s methodology is to directly compare the long-range weapons to each other, the short-range weapons to each other, etc. The evaluators give an “edge” to one warrior or the other for each weapon type, depending on which weapon did more damage in their tests. I don’t really know how their “state-of-the-art computer program” works, but I’d have to guess that it starts the combatants at long-range and performs some kind of test to see if one warrior kills the other. If there’s no kill, it advances them to mid-range and tests again, and so on until it finally gets a kill at short-range. The program runs through the entire procedure 1000 times, and the warrior with the most wins is declared "the deadliest warrior" (shown in a dramatization that apparently does not try to simulate the computer outcomes in any meaningful way).

I immediately see a problem with their evaluation, though. They evaluated the Viking shield based on how much damage it could do with a shield punch, compared to the damage that could be inflicted by the kanabo. It goes without saying that the kanabo is a more practical way to deal damage than a shield punch, but the usefulness of the shield as a defense was never really evaluated.

For instance, they compared the yumi to the spear and concluded that the Samurai would have the advantage at long range. Now, I won’t dispute that the yumi has superior range and accuracy, but the Viking shield apparently wasn’t factored into the long-range portion of the contest. Bows were a well-known weapon to the Vikings, and any Viking with a grain of sense would put his shield up in front of him upon noticing that his enemy was armed with a bow, allowing him to close the distance in relative safety.

The shield would remain a factor at mid-range. If the Viking succeeds in blocking a stroke from the naginata with his shield, he can move inside it’s range.

And the shield continues to be a factor at short range. Here, the Samurai may decide to draw his katana, but the Viking has no incentive to abandon the protection of the shield to use the two-handed axe. In close combat, the Viking would probably continue using the long sword, if he had one (the reason many Vikings carried axes being that they were much less expensive than swords). The shield continues to afford extra protection for the Viking, allowing him to attack without being as vulnerable to counter-attack, and there’s a very real possibility that a katana slash would bite into the edge of the shield and stick, trapping the blade. Effectively disarmed, if only briefly, the Samurai would be extremely vulnerable in such a situation.

I’m not saying that the Viking should have won this match; I’m just saying that many factors affecting its outcome were overlooked. For instance, in their heyday, Samurai were primarily horse archers, not footmen. A Samurai on horseback with his bow would have a considerable advantage, as he would be able to maintain his distance and repeatedly attack his opponent with little danger of a counter-attack. As I said, the circumstances of these fights would have a huge effect on their outcome.

Even their weapon-to-weapon comparisons are dubious. For instance, their comparison of the Pirate cutlass to the Knight's broadsword resulted in an “even” evaluation, despite the fact that the cutlass is exactly the sort of weapon against which the Knight's armor (listed among his assets) would be most effective.

And let's not even start on their characterizations of which warrior had honor, discipline, and courage on his side; they don't really affect the outcomes, anyway.

So Deadliest Warrior is really a show about smack-talk and breaking things, not a serious scientific evaluation of historical combat practices. The outcomes seem to be based much more on popularity than on any real science, since getting a desired outcome is easy to achieve simply by choosing which weapon comparisons to make to give the desired results.

"Intelligent Designer" comes back in the comments

"Intelligent Designer" (Randy) finally got around to responding (see the comments) to my response to his refute...

Our different perspectives about the nature of DNA do indeed account for some of our disagreement. I don’t consider DNA to be a hodgepodge of genes in no particular order interspersed with vast amounts of gibberish. Instead I think that the majority of DNA appears to gibberish because the current scientific understanding of DNA has barely scratched the surface of what is really there. It only makes sense that scientists would figure out what the protein-coding sequences of DNA do first. It doesn’t make sense to jump to the conclusion that the rest of it is junk.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that you are right about the nature of DNA. Even in that case my argument is still valid. As you recall my calculation regarding the probability of information used a 151 character sequence. The average length of a gene is 1210 base pairs and is hardly equivalent to the three of four letter words used in your example.

Randy has taken the safe approach by claiming that the DNA that is currently considered "junk" by geneticists will eventually be found to be important. It's safe because it's a position that can't be falsified. There's no way I can possibly prove that "junk DNA" will never be found to have an important function. He can lurk in that nebulous "one day we may discover its importance" realm forever, because he has until the end of the universe to be disproven. All I can say is that since he can not show that "junk DNA" has a function, there's no evidence of a function. Generally speaking, the burden of proof is on the person who asserts the existence of a thing, not the person who denies it. To use a cliche, I can assert that there's an invisible, intangible dragon living in the shed behind my house, but do you have any reason to believe my assertion? Without any evidence that junk DNA serves a purpose (beyond adding to the medium in which mutation and subsequent selection can work), there's no reason to assume we will eventually find one. So "Yes", Randy, it does make sense to assume that DNA that has no known function is junk.

As to the rest of his case, no I don't see the validity. The average length of a gene may be 1210 base pairs (I haven't done a fact check on that), but the current average length of a gene is irrelevant. There are certainly many shorter genes, and there's no reason to assume that the current average must apply all the way back to the original molecule that started the process of evolution. I've already linked to a good explanation of abiogenesis, which works with self-replicating molecules that are composed entirely of junk DNA. You can get the ball rolling with pure static, so you don't need to have hundreds of base pairs in some kind of functional code for evolution to begin. From abiogenesis forward, any DNA strand that forms the simplest of productive genes is gravy.

The Ticking Time Bomb Challenge

I’m hearing this argument on talk radio a lot lately.

You are a government agent who has discovered a plot to set off a nuclear weapon in the US. You have captured one of the terrorists involved in the plot, and you are convinced that your captive knows where to find the bomb. You are also convinced that the bomb will go off in just a few hours, so time is of the essence. Would you torture the captive to make him tell you the location of the bomb?

This argument is designed to get you to admit that the federal government should not publicly outlaw “aggressive interrogation” techniques like waterboarding. If you say “yes”, you agree that such techniques should not be forbidden; if you say “no”, you put the well-being of one terrorist ahead of the lives of thousands of American citizens.

Let me go on record as saying that the government should unequivocally outlaw torture. Not only is it unethical, it’s an unreliable means of getting information. Victims of torture do not necessarily tell the truth. Generally speaking, they tell the torturer whatever they think will make the torture stop, whether it’s true or not. In the hypothetical situation, the interrogator really doesn’t have a way to tell if the captive is lying; anything the captive says could lead agents on a wild goose chase, making it even less likely that they’ll succeed in stopping the bomb.

But let’s say that I really am convinced that my captive has the information needed to save thousands of American lives and that I’m convinced I can get that information from him in time to do something about it. In that case, yes, I will use “aggressive techniques” to extract the information. I will not, however, complain when I’m sent to prison for torturing the guy. If the information was worth his pain and suffering, then it’s also worth my personal freedom.

Can we give this argument a rest, now?

Overachievement

This is a picture I took on my last trip to Pennsic, made into a poster with the BigHugeLabs motivational poster maker.



The Ashleys should get a kick out of it.

Reclaiming the Blade

This is apparently due for DVD release soon (if it isn't out already).

SciFi’s Ghost Hunters

I have roommates who find Ghost Hunters amusing. I suppose it is, if you like watching a study of how not to conduct proper scientific research.

If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), which consists of a couple of plumbers and their friends, go to “haunted” locations and attempt to verify whether paranormal activity is occurring. Needless to say, these people have little idea how to properly conduct such an investigation, and their methods are ripe for confirmation bias.

Normally, the TAPS crew visits a location in response to a request from the owners or residents. Their first action upon arriving is to question the “witnesses” of “paranormal” events, asking what they thought they saw and where they thought the saw it. With these “hot spots” identified, they set up cameras and microphones to record activities in those particular locations. The team then spends the night at the site, wandering through the hot spots, trying to provoke reactions from “spirits”, and recording any “significant” instrument readings or “personal experiences” consistent with the stories they were told. Need I mention that they do this in the dark, making them all the more susceptible to “chills” and other spooky feelings.

Like I said, their method is ripe for confirmation bias. Any unexplained noise or “chill” or draft is easy to attribute to paranormal activity. They do dismiss many events that can easily be traced to something mundane, but they seldom actually dismiss claims of a haunting (if ever - I've never seen it happen), because there are always a few “personal experiences” for which they found no specific mundane explanation.

The most obvious thing that their method lacks is any type of control, and I mean “control” in the scientific sense often associated with drug trials. In a drug trial, some test patients get a placebo instead of the drug being tested, so they have the same experience as the other patients, just no actual chemical. The patients don’t know whether their drug is the real thing or a placebo, so they can’t prejudice the results of the test with their knowledge (it's well known that receiving treatment -- even placebo treatment -- affects the expression of a patient's symptoms).

TAPS could do something similar in their investigations. First, they need some blinding. The investigators who spend the night in the site looking for evidence of paranormal activity can’t be the people who interview the original “witnesses”; knowing where events are supposed to happen taints the evidence. Second, they need to create some “placebo hot spots” – attribute some paranormal activity to locations on the site where the witnesses haven’t actually reported anything. Write out the full list of “hot spots” and “placebo hot spots” – with no distinction between them of course – for the investigators who will spend the night at the site. Finally, have a third team of investigators (more blinding) to analyze the evidence that the on-site team gathered without actually speaking to the on-site team first, again seeking to minimize confirmation bias.

If the experiences of the site's witnesses are connected to actual paranormal events, you would expect the true “hot spots” to generate significantly more instrument readings and “personal experiences” than the placebo “hot spots”. If there’s no significant difference between the two, then you can safely dismiss the activity in the “hot spots” as investigator error.

But Ghost Hunters would never institute such a rigorously scientific method of investigating a “haunted” site. That would inevitably result in an endless string of negative results, and they won’t be able to generate ratings with results like that, so they will undoubtedly continue to use the useless protocols they currently follow.

Nostalgia

Some YouTube whiz crashed Airwolf into Star Wars. I am amused.

Skeptics' Circle 108

The 108th Skeptics' Circle has been posted, and since I'm a participant, I figured a link was in order.

Wine at the Grocery

There are a couple of bills before the Tennessee legislature that, if passed, would permit grocery stores in the state to sell wine. Naturally there are lobbyists on both sides of this bill, but some of them are full of hot air.

Chuck Groover is the senior pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Mount Juliet. He argues that making wine available in more places will lead to more alcoholism.

“Convenience for a few should be the last justification for making higher alcohol-content drink, wine, more accessible to the public by allowing sale in grocery stores.”

Fine, Chuck. Why don’t you show us some statistical evidence that alcoholism rates are higher in states where wine is available in grocery stores compared to states where it isn’t?

Statistics from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism show that Tennessee does, in fact, have one of the lowest alcohol consumption rates in the country. Average consumption in the US is 2.27 gallons per person per year, while the average consumption in Tennessee is less than 2.00 g/p/y. Is it because Tennessee doesn't allow wine to be sold in groceries?

Wikipedia conveniently has a comparison of alcohol laws by state, so let’s examine them.

Other states at the bottom of the consumption rate chart with Tennessee include Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia. Of these, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia (five out of nine) allow wine sales in grocery stores; Kentucky and West Virginia even allow distilled alcohol sales in grocery stores.

States that forbid wine sales in groceries include Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. Of these, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Wyoming (six out of fifteen) are at the top of the NIAAA charts with consumption rates greater than 2.50 g/p/y.

Where’s the connection, Chuck? I don’t have a big stake in this vote, but your reasoning (that wine sales in grocery stores increase alcoholism) doesn’t hold up to statistical analysis. More than half of the states at the low end of the alcohol consumption scale permit wine sales in groceries, and over a third of the states at the high end of the consumption scale forbid wine sales in groceries.

Perhaps Pastor Chuck should confine himself to Biblical arguments instead of making unsupported claims about the effects of wine availability on alcoholism rates.

Incompetent Design: Am I Refuted?

Randy Stimpson certainly thinks that he has definitely refuted the arguments I made about “specified complexity” way back in 2005.

I pointed out in my original article that two phrases of a given length (in which the same set of characters are available) are equally unlikely. Randy thinks that in my rebuttal of the probability argument against the Theory of Evolution, I somehow missed the point. I don't see how I did; maybe he's trying to introduce a new point.

To save length, I'll use my own character strings. Let's compare, shall we? If you read my previous article, these will be familiar.

WETHEPEOPLEOFTHEUNITEDSTATES
OMECIHUATLACEUCUCYOTICIHUATI

My first trick was to put these phrases side-by-side, noting that the odds of drawing either at random was the same. I would ask, which of these contains “information”, though. Randy has added some criteria for information.

1. It consists of properly spelled English words.
2. It is grammatically correct.
3. It makes sense.

Put that way, the first phrase obviously contains information; it lacks space and punctuation, but there's obviously a sensible phrase of English words in there. Of course, if you read my other article, you know that the second phrase also makes sense, it consists of two obscure (but related) words that I chose from another language. I was attempting to point out, at the time, that patterns and “information” are contextual: the first phrase is much more obviously information to an English-speaking audience than the second, but they both contain information. Now let's look at a really random string.

VJVUFORMHLBFBXIXSBNEUISLAFJHY

This string is not one that I carefully constructed. I set the caps lock and then just randomly pecked around the keyboard, only restricting myself to staying on the letters area and not hitting the same key twice in succession. Even so, I still managed to get a properly spelled English word by accident. Does that mean that this string contains information?

Randy's problem is that he thinks DNA must be constructed exactly like English sentences. Every word must be spelled correctly, the word order must be correct, and the sentence must be coherent when everything comes together the first time. Unfortunately for him, DNA doesn't look anything like that. DNA looks much more like my third string: it's mostly gibberish, but every once in a while there's an actual gene found in the DNA strand. An actual piece of DNA might look more like the following string.

DSSADIINUNITEDSDFIOVOFRNTHEVNMCVUIWECVNJSTATESASEWNMPEOPLEASDF

Sure, it looks like gibberish at a glance, but if you sort through it carefully, you'll find all the words you need to make my first phrase in there (although you may notice that “THE” only appears in it once). This structure is analagous to the human genome. The great majority of the human genome doesn't code for anything, and the portions that do code for actual proteins are scattered all over it, not neatly organized.

Randy asks “What is the probability that a random character generator would produce a grammatically correct sequence of characters that makes sense?”, but it's not an accurate analogy, because DNA isn't a sequence of characters that make sense. It's a hodgepodge of genes in no particular order.

A more accurate question might be “What is the probability that a random character generator will produce a sequence of characters that forms an English word?” Notice that I accidentally came up with one within eight characters (honest, I did not put “FORM” in there on purpose).

Now, suppose that you have a rather faulty mechanism for reproducing your strings. Letters occasionally get added, removed, or substituted. In fact, whole sections can get moved around, duplicated, or deleted. Through many copies of copies, words will form. Some will get broken again, but some will stick around for a while. Suppose you start throwing out strings that don't have a particular word: you'll stop having strings that lack that word. As more words emerge, they, too, can become necessary in subsequent copies. After many copies of copies, what might you have? Something like my fourth string, perhaps?

To Randy I can only say, I don't think I'm the one getting it wrong.

Food Porn: India, Italy, and the Carribbean

I've had some cooking pictures sitting on the camera for a while, and I've finally gotten around to downloading them, so here's a mass food porn post. First, we made moong dal, a lentil curry, a while back. At least, we made it with red lentils; various recipes on the internet call for split peas and moong beans. The recipe for this one comes from a book, 50 Great Curries of India, by Camellia Panjabi.

I think I'm okay sharing the recipe, since I had to do a bit of substituting. Besides, this is a free plug for the book, right? Anyway, the ingredients include...

• 1 cup of red lentils
• 1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilis
• roughly one cubic inch of ginger root, peeled and chopped
• 3 teaspoons of minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon of powdered tumeric
• salt to taste
  
• cilantro to taste (which is a lot, in my case)
• 1 tablespoon of butter

I brought five cups of water to boil in a large pot, then added the lentils, tomatoes, ginger, most of the garlic, some salt, and the tumeric. When it came back to a boil, I lowered the heat, covered it, and let it simmer for half an hour. Then, I tossed in cilantro and let it simmer a bit more while I browned the remaining garlic in butter. The "golden brown and delicious" garlic then goes into the pot, and the curry can be served over rice. Better yet, put the moong dal and rice in a tortilla.

Second, I was scrounging for lunch one day and found we had some packaged gnocchi in the cupboard. A bit of net searching and a further check of on-hand ingredients later, I was able to make this sage-parmesan gnocchi (with a bit of grilled chicken thrown in).


And finally, tonight I really wanted to do something with some black beans that were already cooked, so I found a recipe for Jamaican Curried Rice. In the spirit of "fusion", it too goes well in a tortilla.

And I actually remembered to take some pictures of the process for this one.

D&D: For Lack of a Better Topic

When in doubt, I can always write about D&D games. Last night, the storied picked up exactly where it left off; they had defeated the twigblights, but they were still a long way out in the woods.

Showing that they are, in fact, catching on, the party conducted a thorough search of the darkwood grove and turned up quite a bit of loot left behind by previous victims of the twigblights. This new wealth secured, they set about retracing their steps back to the village of Myre, which Eileen again managed without incident (with her +11 on Survival checks, she only needs to roll a 4 to navigate, even in pretty bad circumstances).

Arriving back in Myre, they found their contact, Alian, who arranged for them to travel back down river with some “lumberjacks” who were floating logs downstream to the lumber yards of the city of Reicha. The lumbermen had a barge loaded with smaller wood that floated in the mass, and there were a couple of canoes on board that they used when they needed to move around the river to break up log jams or keep logs from floating away. The number of logs wasn’t the huge, river-clogging mass that you might see from clear-cutting with modern equipment, but there were still quite a few, and the barge had to stop periodically to keep the whole shipment together. This meant that travel back downstream was considerably slower than their original trip upstream.

(Note: I really know next-to-nothing about how a real log flow would work, but my players don't either, so... yeah.)

Well, one of the stops to break a log jam seemed to be taking forever, and the barge captain sent someone out in the second boat to see what was taking so long. The party decided to help, but the remaining boat wouldn’t hold them all, so they decided to go log-skipping to shore and move up along the bank to where the first boat was trying to clear the log jam. Hilarity ensued as, one by one, the party members failed their Balance checks to stay standing on the floating, bobbing, rolling logs. Everyone ended up swimming at some point, and a couple of rescues were even necessary for people who went under amid the bobbing logs (hooray for strong-swimming half-orcs).

When everyone was finally on shore, they traipsed upstream to where the boats had met at the log jam. There, they found the first boatman dead, apparently stabbed from behind with a rough wooden stake. Suddenly alert to danger, Eileen spotted some kind of creature hidden among the floating logs and took a shot at it with her sling. She missed, and it took off, crawling away among the floating logs, it’s passage only marked by the occasional disturbance among them.

Krag (the half-orc) broke up the log jam, and the party returned to the barge, now watchful for danger. There were no further incidents that day, but Eileen spotted the creature again during her watch that night. She woke Krag and the others, but the creature again fled before they could try to engage it.

The trip downstream continued the next day. One of the boatmen went out to clear another log jam, and Wellby (the halfling ranger) spotted the creature on shore, apparently up to no good. Wellby took a shot with his bow that landed solidly on target, and the thing again fled. Wellby and the others set off for the shore, hoping to track the creature down, and that’s where the night’s session ended…

D&D: A Walk in the Park

We had another D&D session on Monday. Krag the half-orc barbarian had been dominating the arena battles (predictably enough), so I figured it was time to change to an environment that would favor other characters.

Consequently, the group was approached by someone they had met on their previous body-guarding assignment. This individual, Lucius, wanted them to travel to the Hawkwood Forest northwest of the city and determine why some foresters sent to harvest from a darkwood grove had not returned.

The party’s Halfling ranger, Wellby, handled most of the negotiations. Amusing though he can be, it may not be the best idea to have a pathological boaster with a charisma penalty handle your negotiations. He claimed that the party sorcerer, Kechara, could call lightning from the sky, something that Lucius promptly asked to see demonstrated. As Kechara could not, in fact, do any such thing (yet), the negotiated fee for their services suffered somewhat.

The fee settled, the party traveled up river to the village of Myre, situated at the edge of the forest. Their contacts there were Alian, a local “leather merchant” who relied totally on his apprentice to do any actual leather working, and the huntress who had actually spotted the darkwood grove in question. Her directions to grove were not exactly precise: “Travel upstream to the first tributary from the north bank, follow that to the rocky strand with the waterfall and turn west on the game trail until you see a hill with a limestone outcrop. From there you’ll be able to see the grove.”

Those simple directions would require a DC 15 Survival check for every landmark to avoid getting lost, not to mention a DC 15 Knowledge (nature) check to recognize the darkwood grove from a distance when looking for it from the hilltop. I figured this would be a chance for either the druid, Eileen, or Wellby to shine. As it turns out, Eileen has a Survival check of around +11, so navigating to the darkwood grove was a piece of cake for her. I was hoping the party would blow at least one of the Survival checks, as I was going to inflict a random encounter on them every time they failed one, but Eileen never missed a step.

The threat at the grove was a group of Twigblights, small plant creatures from the Monster Manual II that like to fertilize themselves with fresh blood. These are CR 1/3 creatures, and knowing the devastating nature of Krag, I threw ten of them at the party (although they didn’t all enter combat at the same time). According to the encounter calculator, this would be a “very difficult” fight, but it turned out to be only moderately difficult, at most.

So the most interesting part of the evening turned out to be earlier, in Myre, when Wellby got drunk, annoyed pretty much everyone, and was knocked out by a frustrated Krag. To relieve their frustrations, the other party members dumped Wellby into a horse trough to sleep off his drunk. Upon waking, he decided to break into the inn and “tea bag” Krag, but didn’t move quietly enough. Krag flung him across the room, where he was pummeled into submission by irate inn patrons and sent to the village lockup for the rest of the night.

After a Long Absence

Yes, it’s been very nearly a month since I last posted. A rather full month, as it turns out. Early in February, I got laid off. This was particularly annoying, since during the interview process the company had explained at length that they wanted someone who would stay full time rather than run off after other opportunities within a few months. Nonetheless, when the economy started to sour, I rather suddenly became less of a necessity and more of an expensive luxury.

Fortunately, I hadn’t burned any bridges with my previous employer, so I was able to get another job offer within a week. I’m now back with my previous company, earning more than I earned from them before, but not as much as I was getting from the company that laid me off. Still, I’ll be able to pay the bills, so I’m not going to complain overmuch.

That said, the upheaval has upset my life somewhat, and having various cars suddenly need repairs hasn’t helped. The most annoying downside, however, is that I won’t be able to go to Gulf Wars this year. This will be the first Gulf Wars I’ve missed since I started seriously playing in the SCA, so I’m more than a little bummed. Maybe things will settle down enough for me to go to Pennsic, instead.

Saltare came and went during the job crisis, and I did manage to go to that, so I have a few pictures to share.