Monthly Archives: December 2009

In the new year…

December 31, 2009   caraleisa   No comments

aap ko nia saal mubarik ho – I learned this from a Facebook friend in Pakistan just moments before midnight there, which was 2pm here. It means Happy New Year in Urdu. I wish we would all speak to one another with messages of joy and peace…

It’s the end of 2009, the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. I remember when 2000 seemed so unreachably far into the future, yet here we are nipping at the toes of 2010 … and it’s not where I’d hoped the world would be. I once dreamed that by now there’d be no more war, that the merciless, endless antagonism of religions would have long ended, and that humanity would be living in peace and prosperity around the globe, and possibly even in colonies in space. Instead I find us fighting in two wars, radicalism has gone berserk and mass terrorist killings no longer shock us, but they still deeply sadden us and leave us feeling helpless.

I wanted to start the new year by thinking of the good things that have happened, and by trying to put the bad behind me. With that in mind, some pleasant surprises — I sure never thought I’d see a black president of the US in office anytime soon – though 30 yrs ago, I would have thought it would have happened long before now! Same with equal rights for all – we’re still fighting that battle for all minorities; blacks, gays, atheists, and all women still battle the glass ceiling. But we had a woman and a black man competing for the nomination of a major political party. Baby steps, but still steps indeed!

The news is far more upbeat in some of the sciences – our understanding of DNA, although there’s still so much to learn, has already benefitted humankind, and promises to end much suffering. Particle physicists think that they have identified the most elementary particles that exist – those which cannot be broken down further, for all parts of the Standard Model – the theory of what everything is made of in the hope of finding a Grand Unification Theory. We’ve discovered that in this universe alone, our Milky Way Galaxy is but a speck in the vastness of space-time. We’ve SEEN evidence of dark matter, and have learned how to capture neutrinos. Environmental sciences aren’t faring as well… our relentless consumption of resources continues to wound our home, and it may end up making earth inhospitable for us if we don’t rein in our gluttony.

In the fields of communications, we’ve experienced explosions of technology beyond our wildest dreams. Iphones, wireless internet, medical information exchange, instant information is available to us anywhere, anytime. Despite the attempts of governments to control the media, to conceal protests and atrocities, the internet has given us all a way to get the word out, and to get help and support from a growing world community that DOES CARE. Communications around the world have the potential to truly bring freedom to all – already it has ended much suppression, and with time, I believe it will make the world unite far more so than it is now. We are all neighbors, and it’s much harder to fight with our neighbor than some faceless entity.

On a personal level, 2009 has been a mixed year for us. Early on, we lost a very close friend to cancer, and I lost my favorite aunt as well – losses I still think about almost every day. We’ve had a number of health issues ourselves, and yet, we’re managing to cope and move on.

The most wonderful, dazzling event of all – I became a grandmother for the first time when my daughter, Crissy, and her husband Jon had Tyler Chase on August 1. If we could all let the joy of an infant’s smile infect us with love and happiness, we’d ALL be better off! My son Derek graduated from Antonelli Institute and is now the third photographer in the family. Lee has a job and coworkers he truly loves, and my stepdaughter Lynise is a joy to know. My mother is still alive at 92, and in a nursing home which is truly wonderful and gives her superb care. I continued to expand my personal horizons with my artwork and my writing, which bring me great satisfaction and pleasure. Lee and I have taken a number of courses in topics we love – cosmology, particle physics, quantum mechanics, chaos… truly exciting! I’ve made some amazing new friends on Facebook, and connected with treasured old friends I’d thought lost forever.

So despite the very valid despair we all feel at some of the situations around the world, there are other reasons to give us hope. We earthlings have much to learn, and far to go, but we ARE stepping forward, ever so slowly… I hope that one day we will evolve enough to add to the description of earth’s humans that we took care of each other.

So… I wish you all peace, health, happiness, love and prosperity in the new year and beyond. May our best dreams come true, and our nightmares vanish … may tolerance and compassion rule our hearts, and reason guide our minds. Love and thanks to all my FB friends who’ve made this past year such fun, and extra hugs to you who have lifted me up with your kindnesses and friendship!

Happy New Year!

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Creationist Kent Hovind’s PhD thesis is a jumble of juvenile jabber…

December 10, 2009   caraleisa   No comments

For those who blessedly don’t know, Kent Kovind Hovind is a leading voice in the young-earth creationist movement. He claims to be a scientist, however his MA and PhD degrees were granted by Patriot Bible University, which is an unaccredited fundamentalist Christian Correspondence school, authorized ONLY to issue ‘religious degrees’.

From Wikipedia:

Various criticisms have been made of Hovind’s dissertation, including charges of incompleteness, low academic quality, poor writing, poor spelling, and ungrammatical style. The lack of quality was described, in part, by the fact that “the pages are not numbered; there is no title; of sixteen or so chapters in the index only the first four are finished; misspellings are rampant (“Immerged” for emerged and “epic” for epoch “tentable” for testable are three examples); and the single illustration was apparently cut out of a science book with scissors and fastened to the thesis with glue or tape.”

Hovind’s “dissertation” has been a closely guarded document; contrary to the accepted practice of releasing PhD theses, Patriot and Hovind have refused to share his thesis. However, it is available here.

I read the first dozen or so pages and skimmed through the rest. I played a game – I rolled my scroll wheel to a random page and read it. Unbelieveable. Each page is truly a gem of inconceiveable irrationality. I would not have allowed my children to hand in something this poor in middle school, much less expect such a pitiful effort for a doctoral thesis.

Hovind’s ‘science’ is laughable. He has no grasp whatsoever of what evolution is, yet he argues against it a la the Kirk Cameron school of wide-eyed disingenuity.

It has either not been proofread, or proofed by someone as ignorant as Hovind himself. Any page is replete with mistakes and/or absurdities – usually both.

The last sentence on p63 into p64 is: “Microevolution is small little variations between the species that have been in the genetic structure by.” Yep, that’s it.

On the same page (pages are unnumbered but it is page 64 on the pdf) in ONE sentence he says, “In Scientific America… Allen Goode said … “ and he provides a short but supposedly direct quote. The magazine is Scientific American, and I believe it is Alan Guth who wrote the May 1984 article on Inflation that Hovind quoted. If he had the document to make the quote, he had the name of the publication and the name of the author that he could have copied. This degree of sloppiness is apparent throughout, though even if this had been a grammatically stellar document, the so-called science within it would make it unworthy of even a bad comic strip.

From Pdf page 11: “I would like to trace the history of evolution from the fall of Satan from heaven, through the last six thousand years, to modern day evolution, and explain what those teaching this doctrine have planned for the future. To really understand the history of evolution, we have to understand the author. Satan is the master-mind behind this false doctrine.”

Don’t miss the illuminating discussion of the light spectrum on pdf pages 80-83, including his POEM about atheists and blind men. It reduces me to speechlessness.

Ah yes, such brilliant scientific methodology, exquisite deduction tactics… eloquent prose.

Don’t take my word for it. Read it… if your stomach can take it. It would be funnier if it weren’t that there are people who actually believe what this fool says.

It is a national embarassment.

I give you “DOCTOR” Kent Hovind.

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