Isebrand.com

Getting Vinas to talk

From the article, "US man was 'gold mine' of terror intel"

When the American-born al-Qaida recruit Bryant Neal Vinas was captured in Pakistan late last year, he wasn't whisked off to a military prison or a secret CIA facility in another country to be interrogated.

Instead, the itinerant terrorist landed in the hands of the FBI and was flown back to New York to face justice.

Months before President Barack Obama took office with a pledge to change U.S. counterterrorism policies, the Bush administration gave Vinas all the rights of American criminal suspects.

And he talked.

While an American citizen captured in Pakistan certainly presents a unique case, the circumstances of Vinas' treatment may point to a new emphasis in the fight against terror, one that relies more on FBI crimefighters and the civilian justice system than on CIA interrogators and military detention.

"This was by the numbers. It was a law enforcement operation and it worked," said a senior law enforcement official.

More here.

US Senate passes Matthew Shepard Act (MSA)

From the HRC e-mail announcing passage*

The [Department of Defense] bill will soon be on its way to President Obama's desk, where he'll get a chance to make good on his promise to sign it.

This vote came on the heels of tremendous pressure from radical right-wing groups that used every trick in the book.

They called the bill the "Pedophile Protection Act," among other outrageous claims. They dismissed the barbaric hate crime that took Matthew Shepard's life as a "hoax." They flooded the Senate with hundreds of thousands of letters and calls.

*On July 16, the Act had been included in the Dept. of Defense (DOD) bill before the Congress. So, the term "passage" might not be technically correct above. I just don't know the procedural terminology well enough. Adopted, perhaps? Anyway.... As HRC explained -

The DOD bill will still have to...go to a House-Senate conference committee before being sent to the President. Issues not related to hate crimes have prompted a Presidential veto threat. The White House and House and Senate Leadership have repeatedly assured [HRC] that regardless of a possible veto, the MSA will be included in the bill that is eventually signed into law later this year.

Butterflies & Wheels

Exciting and refreshing: Butterflies & Wheels.

The establishment of Butterflies & Wheels was motivated by

the idea that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour,

and by

the tendency of the political Left...to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks.

Butterflies & Wheels opposes pseudoscience, epistemic relativism in the humanities, and "schools of thought whose truth claims are prompted by the political, ideological and moral commitments of their adherents."

(Image: Experiment 109 - Fractals, by Lynn)

Charles Darwin's student rooms

Richard Carter, FCD has excellent photographs (e.g., at right) on The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin's recently restored student rooms, a tour of which was arranged for the photographer by Dr. John van Wyhe.

Hat-tip to Michael Barton, FCD.

The Darwin Celebrations of Christ's College (Cambridge) began on February 12th "with the arrival and unveiling of the specially commissioned bronze sculpture," The Young Charles Darwin. On February 20th, the college officially opened all of its Darwin exhibits and the "Darwin visit trail."

From July 1st until mid-November, members of the public will be admitted to view the sculpture, the new Darwin Garden, the refurbished Darwin Portico, Darwin's restored student rooms, and a special and unique library exhibition.

Maddow's coverage of religious right group, The Family, and The C Street House

Inaccuracies in science-related news

We know journalism is dying. But reporters' scientific ignorance and willingness to warp facts to make a narrative more interesting when covering science-related stories is sometimes astounding. (By the way, the same can be said relative to religion-relation reporting, too.)

P. Z. Meyers offers a worthwhile observation in light of Ben Goldacre's excellent look at one particularly distasteful example of poor science journalism: "Lately, there have been too many instances of...bending a story to more comfortably fit a common and erroneous stereotype."

Some intellectual honesty

"God and Science Don't Mix," Lawrence M. Krauss, The Wall Street Journal:

I have argued that one does not have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary biology as a reality. And I have pointed to my friend Ken [Miller, scientist and professing Roman Catholic] as an example.

But most scientists:

extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism.

While such a leap may not be unimpeachable it is certainly rational.... Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world's organized religions. As Sam Harris recently wrote... a "reconciliation between science and Christianity would mean squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age convictions."