It is an ongoing annoyance of mine that the liberal attitude about freedom of speech is hypocritical. They love to talk about speaking truth to power and speaking out when government is misleading. Then, they get profoundly disturbed when they hear speech they don’t like. See the outcry over The Path to 9/11 as a great example. Go read about how they want conservative commentators to be boycotted or thrown off the air. Listen to the outcry if you make a politically incorrect statement. Their motto seems to really be a paraphrase of Henry Ford, “You can say anything you want, as long as we agree with it.”

The next step in the process showed up last Wednesday with the coming out party of Scientists & Engineers for America. Their introduction statement seems honorable enough:

The principal role of the science and technology community is to advance human understanding. But there are times when this is not enough. Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.

It’s when you dig down that you start to see that this really isn’t a non-partisan group. From the page on their site titled Bill of Rights for Scientists and Engineers:

1. Federal policy shall be made using the best available science and analysis both from within the government and from the rest of society.

[...]

7. The federal government shall not support any science education program that includes instruction in concepts that are derived from ideology and not science.

Notice how these ideological bills of rights always end up defining a “right to be heard” or a “right to define truth”? The real Bill of Rights never did that. Nonetheless, SEA is arguing that the government should always make decisions based on what they decide is the best available science. They also argue that the government can only support education programs that are derived completely from science with no ideology. This is a not-so-veiled reference to the very scientific concept of intelligent design.

With a few clicks more, the mask comes completely off with the very first blog entry which contains these nuggets:

Over the last several years, scientists have come under political assault and the integrity of science has been compromised. The attacks have ranged from White House rewriting an Environmental Protection Agency report on global warming, to veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, to the promotion of intelligent design to disseminating inaccurate scientific information on federal websites.

[...]

The group will discuss the impact the Bush Administration’s science and technology policies have had in their fields and the need for voters to consider the science and technology policies by candidates in this year’s mid-term elections. The group will also provide details of their activities including launching a speaking tour focusing on a number of this fall’s highly contested campaigns in key states.

Ah, now it becomes clear. The group proposes to “prevent the politicization of science” by taking a position on political issues. They clearly have a position on global warming, stem cell research, and intelligent design. I don’t believe any of these issues have a universal agreement in the scientific community.

This philosophy also treads on a long-standing case of self-reference in science. Intelligent Design is correctly defined as the theory that the universe has an intentional design that was arranged by an unidentified intelligence. This is clearly the opposite of the theory of natural selection and random chance. The funny part is that many scientists will exclude the possibility of intelligent design by defining it as non-scientific. Therefore, science can have any theory of the origins of life as long as it’s one based on natural selection. Anything else crosses the boundary of science and is unacceptable. That sounds like an artificial limiting of scientific research rather than an expansion. SEA is attempting to reinforce that definition of science by pushing it as public policy.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t pass the smell test. How can you claim to be non-partisan and an advocate for depoliticizing science, when you start with political opinions and by describing which science is unacceptable? There’s something broken about the concept that to take the ideology out of science we have to start by kicking out the scientists that don’t agree with us.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re all excited to see Mike’s (Stef’s brother) new movie coming out in December. A longer trailer was just posted at the movie’s website and is worth a watch.

Visit http://www.thenativitystory.com/ and click on videos to watch the theatrical trailer. Good stuff.

So, life has been moving so fast that I’d forgotten to keep the blog up to date.

David started high school. My parents visited. David got a cold. I’ve been doing half-day training sessions this past week. I got a cold. We did some more updating in the house. And, generally, we’re all just now catching our breath.

I think it’s all settling back down, though. School is going quite well with David and he’s dealing with the increase in reading and homework that’s required of him this year. Work is going fine for me now that training is over. Stef has been a champ juggling all of this and making sure we all get fed and look presentable out in the world.

Anyway, I just wanted to say “whew!” and let you know that I’ll pick the pace back up.

I couldn’t agree more with this column at the Seattle Times. The move to get Deion Branch was the kind of move that tells fans that Seahawks management is serious. They may have made a misstep in losing Steve Hutchinson over the offseason, but they didn’t screw around. They upgraded the offense and the defense and have, IMHO, the most complete team in the league.

Then, they go out and grab Branch. This is no Billy Beane kind of move. This is a George Steinbrenner kind of move. This is what the Yankees do even when they look better on paper than anyone else. They upgrade anyway. The baseball comparisons are intentional. This is the kind of move I kept waiting for the Mariners to make in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Those were fantastic teams, but they never made that “one more move” to push the team over the hump. They grabbed a little piece here or there, but never found the blockbuster bat or ace pitcher that would have kept the momentum going. It was this lack of big moves that annoyed the heck out of Mariners fans everywhere. It started to make me wonder if I’d ever see one of my favorite teams win a championship.

The Seahawks have made me a believer again. If this is how the front office is going to treat the golden window of opportunity they have, then I’m optimistic. Even better, I think this team has a chance to win a couple. As a matter of fact, there’s some similarity in Branch’s new team and the old. The Seahawks are building a dominating, stable team that can win consistently. They are keeping themselves in a position to keep replacing players as they retire or move on and maintain momentum.

New England has run that plan to three Super Bowl victories. I think that’s within the realm of possiblity here.

But, right now, I’m just enjoying the fact that I can cheer a trade that has clearly upgraded a team that was already pretty darn good.

As some of you know, we have been trying to clean up and refinish some antique furniture that has been in Stefanie’s family for some time. We just about killed ourselves on the buffet that now sits in our dining room. So, when it came time to take another pass at the dining table and six chairs we threw our hands up.

Instead, we found a great guy by the name of Shawn Roselli who is a third generation antique refinisher. You can contact him via his website: PDXRestore.

Here’s a tease of what the final product looks like:

Click the close-up to see more pictures and compare it to a “before” shot from two years ago.

Look closely and you’ll see a little handiwork of our own. While Shawn was expertly working on the table and chairs, Stefanie and I made new seats and upholstered them. I also built the simple, but functional bookshelf that sits atop the buffet in the back.

The table made it home and was ready to go for David’s first day of high school today.