I started watching Ze Frank. It's cool, but the videos are fucked up. They don't actually end which means that iTunes doesn't ever put the play count up. If you have Smart Playlists set up, they don't fall in to them. Annoying. The whole thing that podcasting needs is better management of listened (or watched) podcasts. I have a flow set up that makes it easy to archive watched podcasts, but Ze Frank doesn't fit with that pattern. 
I meant to link to link to this article about a drunken Jackie Chan climbing up on stage during a concert and trying to conduct the band, then trading insults with the audience. He's got a lot of chutzpah, that Chan man.
Fuller: Warmup 
Tomorrow at Skeptic's in the Pub, Professor Steve Fuller from the University of Warwick will be talking about ID and the Dover trial last year. He testified for the defence.
Here are a few of the problems in a very brief form that Fuller makes.
Firstly, in his testimony he talks of how science can use design as a "heuristic" - whereby you are "imagining yourself in the mind of God", and that newer sciences like computer science make this a useful tool. But there is a clear difference between claiming that the idea of design is useful as a heuristic model and that it is true. The whole point to Dawkins' Watchmaker book is that things appear to be designed, but natural selection is the process whereby design explanations fall away as unnecessary.
Another aspect of Professor Fuller's testimony that I found hazy was when he was discussing the "big tent". The "big tent" is a phrase that is used by both ID proponents and critics (although how and where each use it depends on venue) to describe the theories that are subsumed within the ID philosophy. Paul Nelson has an article entitled "Life in the Big Tent: Traditional Creationism and the Intelligent Design Community" (Christian Research Journal, 24:4, 2002 or Exhibit 429 in Kitzmiller v. Dover) where he describes how "[u]nder the canopy of design as an empirical possibility, however, any number of particular theories may also be possible, including traditional creationism, progressive (or "old-earth") creationism, and theistic evolution. Both scientific and scriptural evidence will have to decide the competition between these theories. The "big tent" of ID provides a setting in which that struggle after truth can occur, and from which the secular culture may be influenced". Fuller believes, though, that ID is a "big tent" in the same way that evolutionary theory is a "big tent" - multiple lines of evidence converging to support a single theory. It is not the ability to "bring together all of these vastly different [scientific] fields under one umbrella theoretical framework", it is the ability to unify theological directions.
Fuller never quite defines what he means by "God" - as someone trained in the philosophy of religion, my first question is always "what do you mean?" when anyone says "God" - there seems to be a certain amount of disconnect between the ideas of God as designer and God as some kind of universal binding principle of natural law.
Towards the end of Fuller's testimony, he claims that ID needs support - "if you think about this sociologically, how do you expect any kind of minority view with any promise to get a toe hold in science?" Fuller has also made similar arguments elsewhere, including on the Warwick podcast.
Barbara Forrest (who also spoke at the trial) has demolished this argument before it was even made. ID does not need any more resources - it already has ample if it truly needed to buy some research labs. According to Forrest's book, the CRSC at the DI was founded on a grant of $1m from two foundations. The DI gives out fellowships of $40-50k and short term fellowships of $2.5-15k. They get funding from groups like the Stewardship Foundation, Maclellan Foundation and Fieldstead and Co. In '97, the DI got £270k in funding for grants to fellows, and between 1991 and 1997, the DI annual budget shot up from $120k to $1.2m.
According to tax returns from '98-2000, the DI got $300k p.a. from Fieldstead & Co. for a five year period, $400k from Maclellan in '99, £200k from the Stewardship Foundation and have an estimated budget of $1m. Dembski has a $100k grant from the Templeton Foundation to write a book which, at the time of Forrest's publication, was titled "Being as Communion: The Metaphysics of Information". (Forrest, p. 148-9, 153) These organisations which fund the DI and the C(R)SC aren't short of money - Howard Ahmanson sits pretty with $47bn, and Stewardship and Maclellan Foundations have $95m and $42m in the bank respectively (p. 264-5). These are the folks who decide on presidents and have James Dobson, the LaHaye family, Ralph Reed and Reverend Moon in their phone book.
The DI isn't short of money. The DI is also not short of opportunities to get its message across - ID has been the subject of conferences from 1992 onwards with titles like "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?", "Mere Creation", "Naturalism, Theism and the Scientific Enterprise" and "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe". There are enough pages produced each year by ID supporters to fill a large dumpster (best place for some of the dreck), and there's videos, articles in Christian magazines and all the other goodies. Plus then there's Ann Coulter. I'm sure if they wanted to set up a laboratory, they'd be able to find some poor grad student to give $50k to and an expense account to buy gold-plated bunsen burners and all the other kit for. If Behe stopped writing such understated gems as "until Dembski, thinking about how we detect design was like writing before the alphabet or calculating before Arabic numerals" (Dembski, Bridge Between Science and Theology, p. 9), he might be able to uncover some more prized gems about those little biochemical beasties that we apparently can't explain except for their design. If they need money, they can get it. If they need researchers, I'm sure that an add on Craigslist Seattle might grab them enough to prove their case.
Fuller seems to subscribe to a principle whereby wishful thinking and an admittedly high regard for scientific history and sociological development get in the way of the variety of logical problems which the Kitzmiller decision and various other ID critics have pointed out. Jones accurately describes how Fuller sees Dover as a possible affirmative action programme for ID even though ID has yet to produce (and I'm going to mix a marketing metaphor with Jones' previous metaphor) anything except sizzle when what is wanted is steak. Fuller mixes a not-quite-critical approach to ID advocates with a sometimes interesting sociological take on the subject. The result? Well, it doesn't convince me, and it didn't convince Judge Jones. I await tomorrow evening with a certain excitement.
