Pennsylvania court rules on ID

The US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has published its decision on the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District et al. and has reached the conclusion that the so-called "ID policy" of the Dover Area School District is unconstitutional.

Quote from the conclusion of the court's ruling:

"The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

...

"To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions."

...

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would
time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

You will find a complete history of the trial and a pdf version of the decision on the website of the court or you can also get the pdf here

Case 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 139 Pages

marine biology of Kiel in the news

It is not exactly my field, but if you have heard of deep-sea biology and its hydrothermal vents before, here is a nice article in the Australian ABC news mentioning a researcher from my university (although technically this guy is probably employed at IfM-GEOMAR, which is not a university institution but a large research complex cooperating with my university in research and even some teaching).

There is also a nice picture, which I will copy for the the greater good of promoting my alma mater ;-)

the advantages of living online

I am enjoying the last days of my trip to the other side of the world and since I decided to bring my powerbook, I have been able to not only keep track of my email but also my newsfeeds, as well as my blog reading and even research into where to go, what to do for my various excursions.

As I was just checking alternative online retailers for christmas presents and calculated their respective prices with online currency converters and shipping calculator tools, I just realized (again) how commonplace and even determining of the every day the online access has become, at least for me.

The last time I realized that I was in fact becoming a second- to third-stage online addict was about a year ago, when I was cruising in the Weddel Sea on the research vessel "Polarstern" and the ship's intranet page displaying the successful last satellite uplink (and email transfer) became the most popular thing, in fact my browser starting page, on my laptop.

The daily to twice daily email fix was pure luxury, of course, and while we were paying for it by the kilobyte, the speculation whether or not the radio mate would get another fix and sat uplink done that same day or not was not uncommon during breaks or at mealtimes. When bad weather prevented us from getting any data in or out for as long as two and a half days, you just had to walk by the computer room to see how bad the symptoms had become for some of our colleagues...

On this trip, I got a taste of a different component of the worldwide web traveller: while on the Antarctic cruise the time zone factor was taken out of the equation both by UTC ship time - which made sense considering how many degrees of longitude we were crossing - and by the irregular satellite contact, this time I had access pretty much 24/7, if I wanted to.

So while I was in New Zealand, I could do a relatively easy calculation, since NZ is currently 12 hours ahead of Germany, Denmark and Norway, which are GMT-1, while NZ has daylight saving time.

But now in California I am suddenly nine hours behind. But that is alright, because I can catch my girlfriend on iChat before I go to sleep as she is then just coming into the office, and I can call home on Skype in the afternoon or evening, when their office day is over.

Also, when I get home after a day's excursion into LA, Hollywood, Venice Beach etc. I can catch the first headlines of the day in the German and European press.

But the best part is still when I get out my 1998 powerbook and start up and get unbelieving stares from people around me when they realize it runs the latest OS X ;-)

Getting from 12 hours ahead to nine hours behind resulted in an interesting "time travel" aspect of the trip too: I started in Dunedin on a monday morning, spent the monday afternoon in Auckland Int. Airport, then the Air New Zealand 747 left for LAX in the evening - and I arrived in the US again in the morning of monday the 12. of December, slightly before I had entered the first plane from Dunedin on the South Island to Auckland on the North Is.

Travelling with me were a couple of red-necked base personnel from McMurdo, easily recognizable by their matching Raytheon t-shirts and Antarctic sun tans, who just had come off some Air National Guard supply flight from "The Ice" to Christchurch, where the US Ant. Program have their headquarters.

And since the total time difference was 21 hours and the flight went mostly during the night, there was not even any obvious jet-lag involved, although an evening and a night spent in Economy Class (Air New Zealand calls it "Pacific Class" for some reason) are obviously not as relaxing as it could be.

I fear that the next and final leg of my flight, the transatlantic trip from LAX to Heathrow, is probably going to be more exhausting, especially because I learnt already on the outgoing flight that a few hours break at Heathrow are neither relaxing nor entertaining, as this must certainly be one of the busiest and loudest but also most expensive airports one could get into.

On top of that, I will have a 1:40h long busride back from Hamburg, where my last commuter flight will touch down, to my hometown of Kiel, so I will be there late on Sunday night and probably reasonably battered.

But hey, I should not complain, after all I managed to see the other side of the world while running around mostly in t-shirts in December, as well as visiting my little nephew and his family here in California, and all of this was a 'business trip', after all! ;-)

more on Mac and open source

If you wonder what is at the bottom of the Mac OS X versus Linux debate, you might like this article, fished out of mactechnews.de. The author entertains us with some of his experiences trying to get Linux to work, which is probably only amusing if you have tried - and more often than not also failed - a similar thing. But then he goes on to muse about the underlying principles and terms like kernels, distributions, GUIs (graphical user interfaces, i.e. the "look and feel" of an OS, or Operating System) and processor acronyms, also called "platforms" start popping up.

Amazingly, though, it does not get as messy as this sounds, and if you work your way through it, you can get a better picture of what these things are all about, and why a even closer merging of the powers of Mac OS X and Linux could be a good thing, especially at the kernel level, i.e. the principal structure of an operating system.

The bottom line; since Apple has already embraced UNIX and is moving towards Intel processors, it should as a next step also exchange their Mach kernel with the Linux kernel, which is a monolithic kernel instead of the microkernel that Apple is employing for their OS X.

The gain should be another performance boost and might effectively endear Apple even more to the Linux clientèle, which is probably more accessible than the Windows world if only the "technicalities" are set right.

Anyway, it is an interesting thought experiment for the more "kernelly inclined" ;-)

You have walked the walk...

...but can you talk the talk?

Science is apparently about "going out there" - either literally or metaphorically - (and I am happy to say that I can do it literally as metaphors tend to confuse me) and "getting some data" about something. But then there is another element of "science in progress" and that is the presentation of whatever you have thought up, found out, and experimented with.

In fact, to a scientist, everything which is not published (yet) technically does not exist, so the race is on: you have to put it out there. What is more important, you have to get there faster than other people. That's what conferences are all about, as you can put out your data fairly quickly either in an oral or poster presentation and it will be "out there", available, and therefore also "on your list", as another hit, another line or paragraph, and you can get (or claim) credit for it. In comparison, publishing in a printed or electronic journal can take months to years.
On the other hand, chatting away during coofee breaks about your next upcoming project could earn you either an "understanding" smile (meaning: "right, you have this big idea but you do not quite have it ready yet...duh!") or a nervous and imploring expression from someone who either realizes that you are on to something he/she is noe quite ready with yet, or from somebody who might try to use your idea for his/her own publishing.

The reason why I am just thinking about all this is that I just got back from such a conference, and although there was very little biology there, it was a cool and very informative experience. Most of the other people there were either into satellite imagery or computer models of the extent, dynamics, flow and mass balance of sea ice, so a typical though startling question to me on the first day was: "So, are you in acquisition or modelling?" Not wanting to admit that I was working on a much smaller scale and totally different focus, I settled for "acquisition". My bold question what the other person was doing got a semi-bored "modelling wave fields..." as an answer.

But whether they were modellers or satellite dish heads, they had one thing in common: they were all about the data. Coverage, resolution, probability functions, vessels of opportunity, channel polarization, that sort of thing. And to my great delight, they all struggled over the old "data vs. information" subject.

Sometimes new models explained old datasets better, sometimes they illustrated just how insufficient the old satellite was, and sometimes new satellites proved the old models wrong and so it went back and forth. Some, or in fact many, presentations were centered around the amount and quality of new data that people had, which by their nature already were about the "big pictures" (as in "satellite footprint") but some others were more integrating and reviewing and showed us the "even bigger pictures" as in "from points to poles", and while the first kind often attracted mostly technical questions and comments, the second kind really got the arguments going, and understandably so.

And although many of the participants looked more or less geophysically or even mathematically inclined (you figure that one out yourself), there were notable exceptions, a few of them even very notable. So, over a few beers after a long day of talks some guy worked up his courage to walk over to one especially notable colleague and said: "so, how long have you been in modelling?"

on my way to the other side of the globe

Tomorrow I will be venturing on another "academic jet-set" trip which will earn me a lot of frequent flyer miles as well as an opportunity to show off my newly found Antarctic critters on a poster. So the trolley is packed, the poster roll stands by the door, and of course my trusty old WS powerbook will come along, too.

I have no idea how often or whether I will be connected to something at all, but let's see when I get there.

First, I have to brave a "short" commuter flight to Heathrow and then a 26hrs stretch (probably with a tank stop somewhere on the way) to Auckland, NZ, before I have yet another 'commute' from there to the lovely city of Dunedin. Let's see whether the bookstores at Heathrow have a NZ Lonely Planet copy left.

Isn't it odd how that you always look forward to those trips until the very night before, when nothing sounds more intreaguing than just having the usual "day at the office" the next day? Anyway, by Friday night (already Saturday morning over there) I will know what I got myself into. So long.