Answering creationists' questions on behalf of Bill Nye

This Buzzfeed list has been bouncing around Facebook, showing questions posed by creationists for Bill Nye* before the recent debate he had with Ken Ham. I don't know if Nye will actually go about addressing them himself, but if I might be so bold I'm going to answer them here on his behalf. The fact that these folks made it through a high school education without learning the answers to many of these questions left me too frustrated not to respond.

*On re-reading the article it seems the questions are posed to non-creationists in general, not Bill Nye specifically, but I'll leave the title and my responses as they are.

You can see all the original images at the Buzzfeed link, and I'll just transcribe the questions for this post.

1. Bill Nye, are you influencing the minds of children in a positive way? 

He encourages kids to use logic, think for themselves, and to get excited about the world we live in, so I'd say yes.

2. Are you scared of a Divine Creator? 

I can't speak for Bill Nye on this, but there are a couple good common responses. One is that if there is a God why would He give us logic and the ability to discern things about our world if He didn't expect us to use it? 

Another outlook is offered in this quote: “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” (It's often attributed to Marcus Aurelius, but I believe that's incorrect.)

3. Is it completely illogical that the world was created mature, i.e., trees created with rings, Adam created as an adult? 

A thing I made, because reasons

(Click for larger)

I was playing the lovely game FTL and as my hopes and dreams were being sucked into the void through a horrifying number of hull breaches I remarked to a friend, "Space is full of jerks."

His fantastic reply was simply "- Carl Sagan." This led to us modifying a bunch of Sagan's quotes. Billions and billions of jerks, jerks making apple pies from scratch, and of course, "Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group... of jerks."

The above picture was a parting shot of sorts. I giggled all the way through making it, and while I'll admit it's not quite the same comedy gold now that I've had adequate sleep, I'm still quite fond of it. And now it's my gift to you, internet.

The humor (as it were) comes from the fact that Sagan was of course an immensely positive person. And so that I don't feel like I'm entirely besmirching the man's memory, I've included a positive alternative below the fold.

Meteor over Russia

Obviously this story has been covered pretty much all over the place today, and given that I'm no astronomy expert I don't really have anything new to contribute, but there's also pretty much no way I could let this pass without mentioning it.

I first heard about it this morning, when my friend Tim—an enthusiast of both astronomy and Russia, so this thing was basically made for him—awoke me with a text about it. When I was finally able to drag myself out of bed the first thing I did was check Bad Astronomy to see what Phil Plait had to say on the subject. He was of course right on top of things and his initial post included several amazing videos, including this one showing the contrail of the meteor forming:

And this one in which the shockwave from the sonic boom and/or explosion of the meteor reaches the ground and shatters nearby windows (the wave hits at around 12 seconds and it's loud, so for the sake of your eardrums make sure your volume isn't up too high):

And here's a hole in a lake that may be where one of the fragments made landfall:

The whole thing is stunning, and thanks to the insanity of Russia's roads we have plenty of dashcam footage of it happening. For an expert's analysis of the meteor head over to Bad Astronomy: here's his original post, and here's his follow-up.

Moonrise

Here's a beautiful video of the moon rising with people silhouetted against it:

It's a little hard to believe at first, but the video is realtime and the moon really does move that quickly across the sky. It's a little deceiving, though, since the video was shot through a telephoto lens from 2 km out, so you're seeing a smaller portion of the sky than you might at first assume. That's also why the people seem so small against it: the moon is distant and large enough that it's going to appear about the same size no matter where you are on the surface of the Earth, but 2 km is very relevant to objects the size of human beings, so they seem quite small against the moon. Phil Plait explains that and more over at Bad Astronomy.

The music is lovely (I'm a total sucker for a pairing of strings and piano) and of course the view is amazing. There's something enchanting about watching the people mill about on the hill in silhouette; knowing nothing about who they are, but still feeling a bit of a connection because they're so readily recognizable as human. There's a young couple sitting closely side-by-side, children clambering on top of things. And while the people went up to that observation area to enjoy nature just as we are, they have no idea about the stunning image they've become a part of. All in all, it just really makes me smile.

Swim like an eagle

Human preconceptions of you are irrelevant when there's a tasty hunk of meat to be had.

(via 22 Words)

A nice little tour of the space station

Phil Plait posted the video below at his blog Bad Astronomy today, and I quite enjoyed it. It's not overly technical but also not too vague or over-glossing. It manages to strike a nice balance that provides an interesting overview of life on the station. I found the whole thing quite charming.

Plait mentions expecting to only watch a couple minutes of it, and similarly I almost didn't watch it at all. I spent countless hours as a child poring over illustrations of spacecraft and space stations, and so my first thought was that it would be nothing new, so why bother with it? But as soon as I started watching I was glad for it. It turns out it's actually been quite a while since I considered the simple wonder of being in space. Lately my thoughts toward space exploration have been centered on putting people back on the Moon, with Mars following soon after, and anything short of that seeming like a waste. But this video brought back a reverence for any sort of space travel that I'd forgotten. My dreams of being an astronaut are far behind me, but watching this video brought back some childhood fascination—trying to imagine weightlessness while hanging upside-down from the jungle gym and all that. I still wish we were making better progress toward the Moon and Mars, but seeing the size and details of the station and watching the presenter flit about in microgravity put an old sort of smile back on my face.

While watching the Geminid meteor shower the other night I related a similar account of renewed appreciation to my viewing buddy. I told her how for a while I came to disregard the night sky due to its inherent humanocentrism. The constellations are hugely arbitrary, and from any other vantage point outside our planet's orbit would be unrecognizable, owing to their distribution through three-dimensional space. And by my thinking, why focus on a happenstance arrangement of local dots when there are such grander concepts pervading space? There are billions and billions of entire galaxies out there, and while our stars do little but twinkle, elsewhere there's cosmic drama as stars are being born and dying violent deaths. But in the past couple years I've come back around to appreciate the naked eye's view from Earth. I still can't be bothered to commit all the constellations to memory, but I'm once again awe-struck when I look up on a clear night. First by the pure beauty of it, and also by the ponderings of the immense scales of distance and time involved that captivated me as a child. And instead of resenting the arbitrary nature of our point-of-view, I've come to embrace it a bit. You can probably blame Sagan for my newfound regard for our unique position in the universe, and if you haven't seen it already (or even if you have) I wholeheartedly recommend the video of Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" remarks found on the "Wisdom" tab on this blog. :)

Cephalopods because why not

Look on and despair. (Image source)

I'll ramble on about my love for cephalopods at the slightest provocation. They are, after all, the most-excellent of the invertebrates. Now I know there are some pretty fervent fans of beetles out there, and I'll admit their diversity of forms and downright beauty are impressive. And I personally know someone who studies the nudibranchs who would probably be aghast at my proclamation, and I can certainly see where he's coming from. But while both those groups are undeniably amazing in form, cephalopods are still the supreme creatures without backbones.

Why? Well, what it basically comes down to is that I don't worry about beetles or sea slugs taking over the world. For cephalopods I have no such peace of mind.

First of all, we'll never see them coming. Many of them have an incredible capacity to blend in to the environment. Some might call them "the chameleons of the sea," but frankly that's insulting because compared to cephalopods, chameleons are amateurs. Unlike what you might see in cartoons (or faked YouTube videos), chameleons cannot perfectly mimic whatever color or pattern is near them. While some species can indeed change color and while it is useful for camouflage (mainly in the ranges of green and brown), they certainly can't replicate complex patterns and the primary use of the ability is to convey emotional state. (Many of the videos you'll find online involve holding one up to a mirror so that it's fooled into thinking there's a rival in its presence, triggering the response.)

The good (or terrifying) news is that there actually are creatures who almost live up to that fictional prowess of chameleons, and which actually surpass it in some ways. Cephalopods such as cuttlefish and octopuses can indeed change their coloring to mimic their surroundings, and do a decent job of replicating complicated and artificial patterns:

As you can see, they go above-and-beyond chameleons both in the accuracy and subtlety of their colors and in the fact that they can actually change the shape and texture of their skin to blend in more completely. Here's a short clip of an octopus blending in amazingly well before being spooked.

Some go even further, and imitate the shapes and behaviors of other living things:

Moment of Science: Evolution & Natural Selection

Part 4 of my Why I'm an atheist series involves refuting the claims of the so-called Intelligent Design movement. While writing it I realized that it would be necessary to make sure we're all on the same page regarding the ideas of evolution and natural selection. Summarizing these concepts was taking up a larger and larger portion of the post, so I decided to split the effort off into its own post here. Originally the title of this post included it in the atheism series (as betrayed by its url), but I've since decided that it would probably be less confusing as a standalone post, given that it does not deal directly with my irreligiousness.

Let's get something straight right off the bat: the terms “evolution” and “natural selection” are NOT synonyms. The first is an observed phenomenon, and the second is an explanation for it. Simply put, biological evolution describes changes among generations of livings things; natural selection is a mechanism for how those changes come about.

More specifically, evolution is the idea that the countless species we see around us today arrived at their current states through a gradual progression of forms. This stands opposed to assertions such as the Biblical creation, which state that all modern species were created instantaneously in their current forms. With today's evidence, the fact that life on Earth has evolved through successive forms over billions of years is essentially undeniable if one approaches it with intellectual honesty. The claims of the Old Testament (or those of any other religious text that describes all life having arisen more-or-less at once) just do not line up with the world we perceive around us.

Why I'm an atheist, Part 3: Science & Certainty

In Part 2 I discussed the notion that the moral codes on which we actively collaborate are better suited to our way of life than those handed down from ancient times which are supposedly divinely inspired.

But why am I so certain that there is no deity giving us these moral mandates in the first place, you might ask. Well here's one more thing that I'm not saying when I say I'm an atheist: I'm not claiming to know with absolute certainty that there is no god or other supernatural entity in the universe. Maybe that sounds more like what you'd call agnosticism, but the fact of the matter is that the ideas of “atheism” and “agnosticism” are not mutually exclusive, and in fact most people who identify as atheists are also agnostics. The latter term is an acknowledgment that our knowledge of such matters will never be perfect. And at least in my case, it's an embracing of the logical methods of science as the best way to make statements about the nature of the universe. Science doesn't claim to know anything with absolute certainty, but its methods are the way to ensure that we're as close to the truth as is humanly possible. Science breaks a situation down to its constituent parts and makes sure we give each one due consideration before drawing any conclusions. 
 

"Launching little green idiots into space."

That was my reply when somebody asked me what I was doing the other day. And lo, I was telling the truth, because I was playing the alpha build of the fantastic game-in-progress Kerbal Space Program. Read on for all the details and pictures of things blowing up.

Space: as beautiful as it is pants-shittingly horrifying (notice 2/3 of the crew in the lower right). (Image Source)

Spread the infection!

This one's been around for a bit, but I just came across it again and decided to share it here. The good stuff's after the jump!

A match-up for the ages: Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson

So I was watching some talks on YouTube from the recent Skepticon convention when I saw this video as a related item. It had me at the title; it didn't matter what they were talking about, I knew it would be great (and it was). If you've got an hour and a half to spare, it's well-worth a listen. The visuals aren't essential, so just put it on in the background while you go about some other task if need be.

I especially enjoyed Tyson's passionate remarks on science education toward the end. All I can do is reiterate the truth of his arguments: our culture is separating curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking from learning and pretending that fact-memorization is enough. Being able to recall the presidents and the different types of biomes is great and the facts have their uses, but our citizens need more than that to stay competitive in international economics and politics or to solve the problems that face us as a global society.

Another thing that struck me is his comment that our country may have reached the end of its greatness when we congratulate ourselves for depicting destroying an asteroid on a screen instead of starting preparations now for the very plausible time when the danger presents itself to us in the real world.

But don't let my cynical comments dissuade you; I'm just a grumpy person, and on the whole the talk is very positive and light-hearted, not to mention funny. And aside from it being enjoyable listening experience on its own, I'd say it's a great opportunity to make yourself a stepping stone toward learning something new. Do yourself a favor and look up at least one of the topics they touch on that you don't understand that well and see where it takes you. :)

Lovecraftian biology

A friend of mine mentioned that presenting science topics with Oatmeal-style goofy images might make them more entertaining. But instead I turned some science into a tale in the style of H.P. Lovecraft, because I'm not good with directions.

Our story takes place in a small, insular community nestled among the trees. It's a place often overlooked, but the residents are fine with that. They're content to go about their own business within the community, and don't much care for outsiders. They work with a singular devotion to maintain their homes, raise their children, and provide for their kin.

Little do they know, however, that lurking in unknown spaces—spaces beyond their comprehension—is a mindless horror that seeks to use their bodies and their minds for its own sinister purposes. Its terrible spores have drifted unseen, but soon they will find a suitable host and begin the community's monstrous transformation.

Bloody maths

Ladies and gentlemen—a view of Canobie Lake in Southern New Hampshire, if it were filled with blood instead of water:

I tinted the clouds red because I figured they'd reflect the lake a bit,
not because I was trying to make the scene even more sinister. :P (original image)

You may be assuming I'm a bit of a creep for creating that image (and I am), but lemme explain:

I was listening to the song "3rd Planet" by Modest Mouse the other day, when I was inspired to take one of the lines far too literally. Dozens of browser tabs, piles of conversions, and way more hours than I'd planned later, and we get the image above and this post.

The line goes, "When it occurred to me that the animals are swimming around in the water in the oceans in our bodies; and another had been found, another ocean on the planet, given that our blood is just like the Atlantic."

It's lovely imagery, but it got me wondering: how does the volume of blood inside all living human beings compare to the volume of large bodies of water like the Atlantic Ocean?

Crabs in glass houses

I love being able to see things that are usually hidden, especially when it comes to animal behavior:

Via

Hermit crabs have always struck me with a bit of charm thanks to their quirky little second-hand protection behavior. I think it's particularly interesting how the behavior blurs the line between simply seeking shelter and the loftier concept of tool use.

I was inspired to look up some info on hermit crabs after seeing the above image, and came to find out that despite their name, they are actually quite social creatures. The fact that they often fight over quality shells didn't come as a surprise, but they apparently also exhibit cooperative shell-acquiring behaviors, which I thought was terribly interesting. Here's a video of it:

Apparently when a hermit crab comes across an empty shell too big for it to use, it may wait nearby instead of moving on. Eventually a large number of crabs may gather around it, and the smaller ones will start to climb onto the backs of the larger ones. Then, when one of the crabs decides to make use of the empty shell, the next biggest will use the now empty shell of the first, the third smallest will climb into his, and so on down the line. It's been dubbed a "vacancy chain." I imagine some fighting would still occur if more than one crab of the same size joined the chain, but the generally cooperative nature of the behavior adds another layer of charm to these odd little critters for me.

Perspective, Part 2

Just came across this, and it seems like a perfect follow-up to the last post.

Having established how far away from the Earth our moon is, we now have a lovely point of reference for this video, which shows us how different planets in our system would look in our sky if they were the same distance away as our moon:

O_o

Perspective

To me, the most important thing that scientific inquiry gives us is a perspective of our place in the universe. I find myself drawn to fields within the sciences that give us a striking image of how we as individuals, a species, and a planet fit into the world at large; I enjoy biology, sociology, and astronomy, but can't get nearly as fired up about chemistry or mechanical physics, for example.

Of those, astronomy of course offers some of the most dramatic examples of scale and the biggest challenges to our human-centric impression of the universe. A lot of these are on such a huge scale that it's hard for us as mere apes to really understand the ramifications. However, I came across the video below the other day, and thought it was a nice example of a common misunderstanding of scale that's a little closer to home.

If you'll humor me, make a circle with one hand to represent the Earth and then use your thumbnail on your other hand as a stand-in for our moon. If your thumbnail is about 0.5 inches wide, then you should make your "Earth" about 2 inches from pole to pole. Now, hold your hands apart at a distance that you think accurately represents the distance from the Earth to the moon. If my math is correct* then you're on the money if you're holding your hands about four and a half feet apart. If you were way off, you're not alone, as the video below demonstrates:

You can just ignore the bits after about 1:20 in. The comparisons he starts to draw aren't really that clear or compelling, and as the folks in the comments have made aggressively clear, the bit in his slide where the light distance to the nearest star is multiplied by the number of stars in the galaxy is all sorts of wonky (first of all, it doesn't make any sense to multiply those two values, and secondly most current estimates of the number of stars in our galaxy lean toward 400 billion rather than 100 billion).

Misgivings about the end of the video aside, hopefully the distance he had to walk away (and the distance you had to hold your hands apart) helped your concept of distances in space, either by giving you a handy (lololololol) model for the distance if you were already aware of it, or by giving you one of those lovely little moments of sudden awareness if you weren't.

And if you're an easily entertained doofus like me who sent your thumbnail moon crashing into your Earth hand in a life-obliterating cataclysm, then you're welcome for the extra 30 seconds of apocalyptic fun.

*That can be quite an assumption given that my brain is allergic to numbers. But here's how I got it: moon's diameter ~2,160 miles, average distance from moon to Earth ~239,000 miles. If your thumbnail is 0.5 inches, then that's about 4,320 miles to the inch. So 239,000 miles divided by 4,320 miles/inch = 55.4 inches = 4.61 feet. Also, diameter of the Earth ~8,000 miles, so about 2 inches. That's a whole bunch of rounding, so the distance in inches is by no means exact, but a decent approximation, I think. If there's a problem with my values or arithmetic, please let me know.

Just a quick piece of awesome

A volcanic eruption as seen from the International Space Station.

 

A unique method of mammalian communication

As you probably know, crickets rub together surface structures to generate sound and communicate with other members of their species. It's become something of a mundane piece of trivia at this point, but it's really pretty cool when you think about it. 

The oral communication we're more familiar with also involves rubbing pieces of integument against each other to make a noise; the two big differences are that our communication involves the forced passage of air from our pulmonary system over these noisy bits, and that all the structures involved are internalized. The fact that crickets have gone an entirely different route by instead recruiting locomotive structures and that it all occurs externally can strike you as pretty alien to our methods in the right frame of mind.

Though, in the end, that degree of difference isn't all that unexpected between ourselves and insects. But what if there was a cricket-like method of communication a little closer to home? Enter the striped tenrec of Madagascar:

Genetic drifting

Okay, so neither genetic drift nor drifting are involved in this, but I couldn't resist the stupid joke, because it's about evolving cars:

Play it here!

It's called BoxCar2D and could be a fantastic tool for teaching a biology class about how natural selection works.