50-50 custody is the only fair way

Michael Newdow is now famous for losing his Pledge of Allegiance case because of having lost custody of his daughter, and now he attacks custody law. He is right. The custody standards used by family court are incoherent and create more problems than they solve. He says:

More to the point, what in the world are the "best interests of the child"? Is it "better" for a child to have a tuna-fish sandwich or to eat at McDonald's? Tuna is healthier. McDonald's tastes better. Tuna's cheaper. McDonald's is more fun. Tuna saves on gas. McDonald's gets everyone out of the house. Who's going to value all these factors and decide what's "best"? Whether it's a trivial issue (such as lunch), or one far more important, this multiplicity of factors is involved in the thousands of decisions parents make each day. Add to the mix the impossibility of predicting how care today will impact any given child 10 years from now, and it's clear that no one can determine what is "best." The suggestion that anyone—judges, child psychologists, court-appointed evaluators, etc.—can do this is pure arrogance; arrogance for which there is not one shred of evidentiary support. In fact, it may well be that every custody decision made by these people has been the completely "wrong" one. … How would anyone ever know?

Gmail is too creepy

If you want to know what is bad about Google mail, check out Gmail is too creepy.

I like the fact that Google has forced competing email providers to enlarge their tiny disk quotas. But it bugs me that Google has chosen to use the same domain name for both search and email, allowing both functions to access the same cookies. (That is, when you connect to gmail.com, it redirects to gmail.google.com.) So Google could correlate my searches with my email content, and sell marketing services based on what it learns.

A lot of people don't seem to mind because Google has pledge to do no evil. But I think that it is unrealistic to expect any corporation to keep such a pledge, even if there were agreement as to what it meant. Google is obligated to do what it can under the law to yield a return to its shareholders. If you want privacy protection, then either lobby your legislators to pass pro-privacy laws, or take your own preventive measures, such as using another email provider.

(This blog is hosted by Google. Thanks, Google, for the very nice free service.)

Lens prescriptions

I just learned that Congress passed a law that went into effect this year requiring optometrists to release contact lens presriptions upon request. Good. There was a loophole in California law where optometrists were required to release eyeglass prescriptions, and to release medical records, but they weren't required to release signed prescriptions that an optician could fill.

You can order contact lenses online, but the vendors are supposed to ask for some sort of proof of prescription. I just tried, so I'll soon see how well it works.

Update: The new law is described as a win-win here, but the NY Times explains that the online lens merchants are losing sales. It appears that the online merchants were doing much of their business by selling refills for expired prescriptions, and the new law requires them to validate the prescription. Furthermore, patients in only 8 states are allowed to have 2-year prescriptions, and everyone else is limited to 1-year prescriptions. So the law is actually a big windfall for optometrists, because everyone has to go get an eye exam every year.

Hardly anyone needs a new eye exam once a year. I am considering posting instructions on how to forge prescriptions.

George writes:

That would be forgery. Are you suggesting that people break the law just to some contact lenses for a few buck cheaper?

No, I don't think that it is against the law for a consumer to forge documents in order to get lenses for himself. Here is the 2004 federal law and the similar 2003 California law. Here are the 2003 House hearings for the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act.

The law requires prescribers to issue written prescriptions, and lens sellers to verify those prescriptions. It says that sellers cannot advertise that they are selling lenses without prescriptions. It says that the law can be enforced by the FTC and by California courts. California law says that optometrists and lens sellers have to be licensed, and misconduct can result in discipline or loss of license.

There are other California laws against forging government documents, and against presenting false documents to someone for the purpose of cheating him out of money. But I don't see anything in California or federal law against a consumer buying lenses with false documents. Nor do I think that these laws were intended to impose any penalties on consumers who just want to buy lenses for themselves.

There are several good reasons for modifying a prescription. One is buying replacement lenses after the 1-year expiration. Another is to get more choice. Optometrists do not want to spend the time explaining the many different types of lenses available, and the various trade-offs, so they just write the prescription for what they think is best. By taking control of the prescription, you can get what you want. Third, if you know a little bit about how lenses work, you can bypass the optometrist altogether. Unless your eyes have some unusual problems, it is pretty simple.

There is a lot of speculation about the real story behind Chalabi leaking the interception of Iranian messages. Eg, see Schneier and this BBC column. My guess is that we didn't really intercept Iranian messages as described to the public, but that the spooks had other reasons for telling the story and nailing Chalabi.

The Day After Tomorrow

Phyllis Schlafly trashes the movie The Day After Tomorrow on Eagle Forum and Imdb.

Even tho MoveOn.org promotes this movie as anti-Bush propaganda, I didn't see it that way.

Andy writes:

This comment by Roger was particularly baffling: "When did the movie say that man-made emissions were the cause of the disaster?" Does Roger think the movie is about something else?

Yes, I do think that the movie was about something else. The hero of the movie was a scientist who studied ice ages of the past, and had some theories about them. His theories had nothing to do with man-made emissions, as there were no significant man-made emissions at the times of the previous ice ages. Factoids supporting his quick-onset theory were things like finding a wooly mammoth that had been frozen with food still in his stomach. His theory was not that man-made emissions cause sudden ice age, because he didn't even look at man-made emissions. His theory was that ice ages of the past had occurred suddenly from natural causes.

The mainstream scientists and environmentalists had rejected his theory, and so did the VP. The hero didn't even really believe his theory himself, as he had not run the mainframe simulations that would support his theory.

The VP in the movie looked more like Dick Cheney than Al Gore, but he acted more like Gore. The VP acted like he was in charge of all scientific matters, was very interested in scientific questions, and thought that he was capable of deciding which scientists were right and which were wrong. It sounds more like Gore than Cheney.

Based on the publicity, I expected the movie to have a confrontation between a Cheney clone and some environmentalists, with the environmentalists being proven right. But there were no environmentalists who were proven correct. The climate changes are a surprise to everyone, and the VP adapts to the facts and theories as rapidly as anyone else.

There is new stun gun technology that sounds like science fiction. They are like fancy new ray guns that can be used against rioting crowds, and even stop cars.

Marilyn Zielinski writes that she knows lots of eligible women, and lots of eligible men, but it is much worse for the women because they find the men unsuitable. And why are they unsuitable -- it is because they wear out-of-style shirts!

I think that she is trying to say that the women are way too picky. No men are that picky. Can you imagine a man saying, "I don't want to date her; she wears cheap jewelry." No way. After they are engaged, she is going to wear whatever jewelry he gives her. Likewise, men are happy to let wives or girlfriends buy or select shirts for them.

Every time I hear one of these arguments about how all the good men are married, it is always rooted in some extremely finicky female opinions. In reality, there are plenty of good and available men out there.

The unemployment rate for electrical engineers is up to 7%, compared to 5.8% for everyone else in the USA. This is the first time I can remember that EE unemployment was higher than the average. In part, thank the California Democrats who brought us so many H-1B workers.

I am glad to see that Google has finally upgraded Blogger. This is my first post under the new software. Just testing.

High functioning autism

The NY Times has an article about adults who suddenly discover that they are mentally retarded. Often it happens after they have a child diagnosed with autism. Then they watch the movie Rain Man and think that they must have some hidden genius-level talents.

It goes on to say that some marriages have been improved by wives gaining an understanding of how their husbands are mentally defective. Here is an example:

"She'll say something about how terrible her clothes look," Mr. Jorgensen explains. "I'll say, `Yes, honey, those are terrible-looking clothes,' when really she's wanting some affirmation that her clothes don't look terrible."

This is really wacky. It is the wife who is confused about whether she wants an opinion or a compliment, and who lacks basic communication skills. Diagnosing autism in kids is a big fad, and now it seems to be spreading to adults. The movie Rain Man did not help, as it was a truly terrible movie.

Conventional wisdom says that Kerry's war record is a big plus for him. After all, he is a war hero, credited with 20 or 30 kills personally. But after watching him on ABC Good Morning America, I think that he is very weak on the issue. He is still lying about throwing his medals away. And worse, we still don't know where he stands -- is he proud of those medals, or is he ashamed of them?

I am having trouble with my other blog site. For now, you can access it here.

Google Blogger now has new features, for free. I have been posting elsewhere, but I plan to try out the new features.

Because of BlogSpot bugs, I am moving my blog to http://schlafly.net/blog/.

You get spam for the the Nigerian advance fee scheme? I get so much that I am inclined to block any email that has anything to do with Africa. According to this story, the spammers have cheated people out of $85M.

With all the talk about how terrible it is that innocent people may have been scheduled to be executed, remember this: There is no example in modern USA history of an innocent man being executed. Sure, it could happen. When it does, the anti-death-penalty will raise that example in every debate. But so far, it hasn't happened.

Blogger has been buggy lately. If this page has had problems for you, it is because of software and servers outside my control. I am currently investigating switching to other blogging systems, but all the ones I've looked at so far have other problems.

Meanwhile, I am having to replace my Microsoft mouse. Maybe I've had bad luck, but I've had problems with every Microsoft mouse I've ever used. I've never had trouble with mice made by Logitech and others.

The San Jose Mercury News showed a graph of the state budget on the front page today. It explains the California budget crisis better than anything. (I'd give the link, but the paper has a terrible web site.)

The graph shows Calif. revenues and expenses at about $60B in 1996, and growing rapidly. Then in 1999, at the peak of the dot-com boom, the state got a huge windfall in revenues. Immediately afterwards, state expenses accelerated upward sharply. Then in 2000, the dot-coms collapsed, and revenues leveled off. But expenses continued to skyrocket for a couple of years, reaching $105B. Now the state has a huge deficit.

Now the governor is announcing budget cuts and tax increases. It is obvious that he has been extravagantly overspending for 2 years, and postponing the pain until after all the guilty parties could be re-elected in Nov. 2002.

Too bad the Republican challenger Bill Simon wasn't smart enough to expose what Gray Davis was doing. That chart should have been on his campaign materials, as it shows how completely irresponsible Gray Davis has been.

Because we have had deficits for a couple of years, the debt is now about $35B, as I understand it. And this does not even include the billions of dollars that Gray Davis has wasted in his re-regulation of the electric utilities.

The Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show had more gadgets bridging the gap between TV and computers. But I still don't see much that would be useful to me.

I'd like a small box for about $300 with:

• audio-video inputs
  
• audio-video outputs
  
• hardware MPEG 1,2,4 encoder and decoder
  
• 100Gb hard disk
  
• firewire or USB2 access to hard disk
  
• maybe a remote control for easier playback
  

This is similar to a Tivo or ReplayTV box, except that I really don't need the program guide, monthly service contract, tuner, set-top box controller, etc. I would like to easily plug the box into my PC to view a program on my PC, or to write a video recording to a CD-R or other medium, or transmit it on the internet.

I can get all of the above in a PC or Mac with a TV tuner card, but that is also overkill. I just want a simple appliance for recording digital video in a convenient and uncrippled manner.

Andy sends this:

Here is my final exam for my Critical Thinking in Science course. I've taught 21 homeschooled students in this course, and most will ace this exam. I doubt top college students could score even a 70% on it.

CRITICAL THINKING: SCIENCE FINAL EXAM
Test conditions: You can use any written or electronic resources. Assistance by other persons is only allowed to clarify meaning.

Multiple Choice (2.4 points each, for a total of 60/100 points):

1. The oldest discovered writing is:
(a) about 5,500 years old.
(b) about 10,000 years old.
(c) about 50,000 years old.
(d) about 1 million years old.

2. What do the Piltdown Man and the Haeckel embryo drawings have in common?
(a) They were innocent mistakes by evolutionists, who corrected them quickly.
(b) They reflected the advance of science by evolutionists honestly searching for the truth.
(c) They won Nobel Prizes.
(d) They were frauds that evolutionists refused to removed from textbooks for many decades.

3. Who declared, "These lower races … are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilized Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives."
(a) Attila the Hun, a brutal warrior, in 450.
(b) Ernst Haeckel, the German Darwinist recently featured in many American textbooks, in 1904.
(c) George Washington, the first American President, in 1795.
(d) Napolean, the French emperor, in 1810.

4. The Toutle River canyon of Mt. St. Helen's, similar to the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale, was formed by a flood:
(a) in a single day in 1982.
(b) over a three-month period in 1982.
(c) over a three-year period from 1979 to 1982.
(d) over a 10,000-year period so that erosion had time to occur.

5. "Survival of the fittest" is flawed because:
(a) Everyone survives.
(b) It is circular because the "fittest" are defined as those that survive.
(c) It contradicts itself.
(d) It appeals to emotion.

6. The eminent evolutionist Dr. Colin Patterson did not include any transitional forms in his 1978 book Evolution because he admitted that:
(a) there were too many to choose from.
(b) transitional forms, which Darwin said were essential to his theory, have never been found.
(c) pictures of transitional forms are difficult to reproduce
(d) everyone knows that transitional forms must exist so there was no reason to include them.

7. A "materialist" insists that magnetism guides migration, even for butterflies, because:
(a) magnetic detectors have been discovered in the brain of a butterfly.
(b) magnetism guides human movement also.
(c) science has disproved all other possible causes, including design.
(d) materialists reject intelligent design and believe only in material-based causes.

8. The countries having the highest and lowest levels of belief in evolution are:
(a) Most (evolution belief): former Communist East Germany. Least: United States.
(b) Most: Poland. Least: England.
(c) Most: United States. Least: France.
(d) Most: Mexico. Least: Canada.

9. The evolutionary claim that simpler species transformed by themselves into more complex and more ordered species is contrary to the following scientific facts:
(a) mutations are harmful, not beneficial.
(b) The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that disorder increases over time.
(c) the world is sparsely populated, making it practically impossible for mutated species to find and mate with each other.
(d) all of the above.

10. "Critical thinking" requires:
(a) questioning experts.
(b) skepticism of claims motivated by personal gain.
(c) demanding public access to data behind research claims.
(d) all of the above.

11. Which of the following scientists rejected evolution and accepted Biblical creation?
(a) Lord Kelvin, the great physicist and designer of the first successful transatlantic cable.
(b) Louise Pasteur, ranked as the greatest chemist and microbiologist.
(c) James Maxwell, ranked with Isaac Newton among the greatest physicists.
(d) All of the above.

12. Six leading scientists in England, including the eminent physicist Sir Fred Hoyle, studied the Archaeopteryx fossil and concluded that:
(a) it is a transitional form.
(b) it is a fake.
(c) it is not a transitional form, but represents an authentic species.
(d) none of the above.

13. Limestone is formed from sea life. Its existence at all elevations and all parts of the world demonstrate that:
(a) every part of the world has been completely flooded.
(b) only some parts of the world were flooded and they must have moved to other parts of the world.
(c) only some parts of the world were flooded and the limestone must have spontaneously generated in other parts.
(d) we do not know, but the world could not have been flooded because evolution must be true.

14. The theory of relativity represents:
(a) an ongoing effort to tailor a theory to fit emerging data.
(b) a slight modification of Newton's theory of physics.
(c) application of the insights of astrology to physics.
(d) a mathematical system based entirely on two assumptions of unproven validity.

15. Testability and falsifiability are essential elements of what qualifies as scientific. The following satisfy the requirement of falsifiability and thus can be considered scientific:
(a) the claim that life exists in outer space.
(b) the claim that black holes exist in outer space.
(c) the claim that a species once evolved from a simpler ancestor.
(d) none of the above.

16. In the famous double-slit lamp experiment, photons are propelled towards two slits before landing on a screen on the other side. The position of the observer:
(a) cannot affect the result because science does not care if someone is watching.
(b) cannot affect the result because photons lack intelligence.
(c) does affect the result depending on whether the observer detects which slit each photon passes through.
(d) none of the above.

17. Materialists reject which of the following in physics:
(a) action-at-a-distance, utilized by quantum mechanics and Newton's theory of gravity.
(b) gravitons, which are undiscovered agents of gravity in the theory of general relativity.
(c) black holes, predicted by the theory of general relativity.
(d) the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

18. Most current scientific dating techniques, including the popular Carbon-14 test, estimate the age of material by measuring the amount of a key element in it. The accuracy of these techniques is based on three basic assumptions that:
(a) we somehow know the initial level of the key element in the material.
(b) there has been no contamination affecting that level over time.
(c) rates of decay of the key element have been forever constant.
(d) all of the above.

19. The following argument is flawed for the reason given:
(a) "It rained after the rain dance, and therefore rain dances cause rain." Flaw: circular?
(b) "You must believe this. Everyone does." Flaw: non-sequitur?
(c) "You must believe this. The newspaper said so." Flaw: over-reliance on authority?
(d) "I need to do my homework. So give me a candy bar." Flaw: begging the question?

20. The Nash Equilibrium in the Prisoners' Dilemma is:
(a) neither prisoner confessing.
(b) only one prisoner confessing.
(c) both confessing.
(d) there is no Nash Equilibrium in this situation.

21. A card with both sides black is put in a hat with a card with one side white and one side black. One of these cards is pulled at random from the hat. Its front side is black. The chance that its backside is also black is:
(a) 1/3
(b) 1/2
(c) 2/3
(d) 1

22. In connection with the famous Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925,
(a) evolutionists proved their theory and won the case.
(b) Hollywood truthfully recounted what happened.
(c) John Scopes was imprisoned for teaching evolution.
(d) evolutionists lost the case, Tennessee remains relatively free of evolution indoctrination, and Gore's home state elected Bush as President.

23. Evolutionists redefined "evolution", which previously meant an evolving process, to mean:
(a) a specific process by which disorder can convert to order.
(b) a specific process by which simplicity can convert to complexity.
(c) "change over time," which occurs without any evolving process, such as Creation.
(d) "change over time," which adds greater clarity to Darwin's definition of "evolution".

24. The claim that the world is the product of pure chance is:
(a) something that is a realistic possibility.
(b) disproved by the world's overwhelming beauty, because beauty cannot result from pure chance.
(c) something that cannot be rejected by reason.
(d) none of the above.

25. Charles Darwin claimed that every living species, including whales, evolved. He asserted that the ancestor of whales was:
(a) sharks.
(b) dolphins.
(c) black bears swimming in the sea with their mouths open.
(d) none of the above.

Essay Questions (10 points each, for a total of 40/100 points):

Write about 50 words each in response to the questions below:

A. Common claims by evolutionists are: (i) everyone believes in evolution; (ii) science magazines, museums and professors accept evolution; (iii) the enormous commonality and diversity in life demonstrate evolution; (iv) over billions of years, it must have happened; (v) no one has ever disproved evolution; and (vi) evolution, defined as "change over time," is a fact. Explain the flaws in each statement.

B. Pick two or three specific political issues and describe how belief in evolution can influence viewpoints on those issues.

C. Do you think the world is more like a work of art or more like a working machine? Describe artistic aspects of the world that you particularly like, and how they contradict evolution.

D. In the 1970s, scientists predicted that oil would run out in a few decades. Were they right? Explain. Are scientists typically held accountable for false claims or predictions? Provide and explain possible motivations for scientists to predict falsely that oil would run out soon.

Extra Credit (5 points each, for a maximum total of 15 extra points):

E. Assume that (i) there are three gas stations at a major intersection with each attracting 1/3 of the customers; (ii) each currently sells gas at $1.40 per gallon; and (iii) the lowest profitable sales price for them would be $1.36 per gallon. One gas station owner went on vacation for a month. How do you think the other two owners will adjust their price for that month? Explain their options and how they will decide to maximize profits.

F. List and discuss several examples of how the world seems to have been created in a way that only humans (and God) appreciate. Does this indicate design or pure chance?

G. What is the harm in promoting or teaching false scientific claims? Are people hurt by it? Does it prevent or delay real advances in science? Explain your answers with examples, if possible.