ID on Nightline last night

[Spanish_Inquisitor]

Did anyone see this? Ted Koppel did a whole show on the "controversy". It was decidedly anti-ID. The reporter sent inquiries to the chairs of 10 of the biology departments at major universities in the US, and they unanimously wrote back and said ID was not science.

He then had two columnists, Cal Thomas and George Will, debate the political issue, not the scientific issue, of whether it should be taught in school. Koppel's genius in this regard was to have two conservative columnists, not a liberal and a conservative, argue the merits. If he had done it the usual way, they would have succeeded simply in preaching to their respective converted readership. But George Will made a very good case against ID, saying it was untestable and non-falsifiable.

And they even flashed a copy of the "Wedge" document on the screen, while making a point that the Discovery Institute is attempting to make a controversy where none exists in science.

Good stuff.

SI

[Pierre Bezukhov]

Darn! I wish I had known that. I would have watched it.

[Roland98]

Nick's post on PT. (http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/nightline_expos.html#comments) I didn't even see it advertised, but I don't watch that much TV. Sounds like it was a good one.

[Spanish_Inquisitor]

Darn! I wish I had known that. I would have watched it.
I lucked into it. I was just about to flip the TV off after the news, when it came on.

SI

[ninewands]

I downloaded it off the torrent linked from PT but didn't have time to watch it until last night. To the best of my knowledge this was the first-ever mention of the Wedge Document in the national mainstream media. George Will did a MAJOR slice-n-dice act on Cal Thomas, the DI and ID. IMHO the DI took a SERIOUS lick on the show and they are not happy about it. Now, if we could just get a similar treatment on "48 Hours" or something else running in prime time.

[openeyes]

Now, if we could just get a similar treatment on "48 Hours" or something else running in prime time.
I didn't see it, and my first thought was "I wonder how many people did?". I agree that the more watched shows need to handle ID in a similar vein to turn the tide against it being talked about as science in the classroom.

Besides his view on ID, George Will has also written about Church-State separation in a good light recently.

[ninewands]

Besides his view on ID, George Will has also written about Church-State separation in a good light recently.
Will is pretty much an old-line anti-populist Goldwater-Republican kind of conservative who is probably a lot closer to being a Libertarian than the current Republican Party mainstream. Lately he has been showing more and more signs of disaffection with the neo-cons over several issues, not the least of which are the war in Iraq and the current party leadership's incessant pandering to the Radical Religious Right.

[MrDarwin]

I missed it also but the Discovery Institute has made available a transcript of Nightline's interview with the DI's Stephen Meyer (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=489), which they predictably whine (http://www.evolutionnews.org/) was one-sided and anti-ID.

[theyeti]

I downloaded it through the bit torrent and watched it last night. It's very good. George Will did an admirable job while Cal Thomas kept saying stuff about red states and people not having their beliefs respected. Pretty lame argument.

theyeti

[Prof]

I'd love to see the show. Can someone tell me what "bit torrent" is and how to access the show?

Thanks,

Prof.

[telerion]

Nick's post on PT. (http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/nightline_expos.html#comments) I didn't even see it advertised, but I don't watch that much TV. Sounds like it was a good one.

Any ideas why I can't actually see it? I've downloaded the file using BitLord1.1 (the recommended method). I've located the file on my hard drive, but Windows Media Player only plays the audio (it listed as a video clip and certainly has the right memory size to run time ratio to be video). I'm going to bounce around for some plug-ins or something. :huh:

[theyeti]

I'd love to see the show. Can someone tell me what "bit torrent" is and how to access the show?

A bit torrent is a kind of file that stores information about something you want to download. Rather than bunches of people downloading a file from a single server, the file gets broken into pieces and people download certain bits, and the upload those bits to other people. It's much faster that way, and ironically, the speed increases the more people you have in the "swarm".

You have to download the torrent file (usually about 10k bytes) and then you need to run it on a bit torrent client to download the Nightline file. I use Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/), but there are lots of others out there.

And the file is something like 170Mb, so unless you have a high speed connection, don't bother.

theyeti

[theyeti]

Any ideas why I can't actually see it? I've downloaded the file using BitLord1.1 (the recommended method). I've located the file on my hard drive, but Windows Media Player only plays the audio (it listed as a video clip and certainly has the right memory size to run time ratio to be video). I'm going to bounce around for some plug-ins or something. :huh:


You're probably missing the correct codec. I deleted the thing so I can't tell you what codec it requires. But if all else fails, just download a better media player.

theyeti

[telerion]

You're probably missing the correct codec. I deleted the thing so I can't tell you what codec it requires. But if all else fails, just download a better media player.

theyeti

Yeah, I eventually just used Real Player with DivX. Good show. Cal Thomas sounded like a religious nut. :Cheeky:

[hybrid_angel]

Nightline on OneGoodMove (http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/cat_science.html)

If someone is looking for it later, it is dated August 11, 2005.

[Kosmo]

Yeah, I eventually just used Real Player with DivX. Good show. Cal Thomas sounded like a religious nut. :Cheeky:
That's an apt characterization of Thomas, I've seen a few 'they won't make a monkey out of me' type columns authored by him. I could only listen to the show on Realplayer (I'm a computer idiot,) but I gather he was actually on his best behavior on that Nightline segment.
While he touted the idea of 'teaching the controversy' I have no doubt that a strict ban on the teaching of evolutionary biology altogether would be okay with him.

[ninewands]

You're probably missing the correct codec. I deleted the thing so I can't tell you what codec it requires. But if all else fails, just download a better media player.

It's an MS-Widows AVI-format video clip, but it uses the DivX 5 codec. If you are usinh Windows Media Player 9 or later I would think it would update itself with the correct codec on the fly.

I didn't have any problems playing it using GXine on Linux, which kind of surprised me.

[ninewands]

A bit torrent is a kind of file that stores information about something you want to download. Rather than bunches of people downloading a file from a single server, the file gets broken into pieces and people download certain bits, and the upload those bits to other people. It's much faster that way, and ironically, the speed increases the more people you have in the "swarm".

You have to download the torrent file (usually about 10k bytes) and then you need to run it on a bit torrent client to download the Nightline file. I use Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/), but there are lots of others out there.

And the file is something like 170Mb, so unless you have a high speed connection, don't bother.

theyeti

If you are using the one of the Mozilla browsers, the original bittorrent program will install itself as a "Helper Application" and perform the download by just clicking the torrent:// ... " url. Unfortunately, it's a wee bit of an advanced installation for Windows because you have to have a fairly recent Python interpreter and librarues.

[Prof]

Nightline on OneGoodMove (http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/cat_science.html)

If someone is looking for it later, it is dated August 11, 2005.


THANK YOU!

Good show. Didn't insult my intelligence and it outlined the propaganda side of DI and ID in general.

One question: If God is good and powerful, why must he rely on ignorant, unscrupulous weasles to represent him on earth?

Prof.

[Donnmathan]

THANK YOU!

Good show. Didn't insult my intelligence and it outlined the propaganda side of DI and ID in general.

One question: If God is good and powerful, why must he rely on ignorant, unscrupulous weasles to represent him on earth?

Prof.

Because he's a lying, arrogant, blood-thirsty, unscrupulous weasel? :rolling:

[Stella]

I saw it too. Finally someone cracked out that nasty little screed, the Wedge Document!

And I really, really liked how the woman, whose name I've forgotten, pointed out that ID is not new.

The last time I saw Dembski he refered to ID as "The new kid on the block" and then compared it to relativity or something. That just rankles me in the worst way.

I also liked that it was pointed out that ID is popular among the more conservative christian types because they feel disenfranchised. Hmmm. I had never really though of it like that before. It almost, almost makes me feel a wee bit sorry for them.

[RBH]

Stella wroteAnd I really, really liked how the woman, whose name I've forgotten, pointed out that ID is not new.That was Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195157427/internetinfidels/), which was a prime reference for the reporter and producer who put the piece together.

RBH

[Advocatus Diaboli]

From the transcript:
We argue that our theory provides a better explanation of some of the critical pieces of evidence of biology, namely the irreducibly complex molecular machines and circuits that we seen in cells and the presence of this informational software that drives everything in the cell as it’s embedded in the DNA molecule.

-Stephen Meyer

This is what bothers me, the IDeist go on and on about how they have a scientific explanation, but I just can't see what the explanation could be, other than "an intelligence did it, somehow." And then they complain that those darn Darwinist's explanations aren't detailed enough.

[mirage]

It's an MS-Widows AVI-format video clip, but it uses the DivX 5 codec. If you are usinh Windows Media Player 9 or later I would think it would update itself with the correct codec on the fly.

I didn't have any problems playing it using GXine on Linux, which kind of surprised me.
WMP will only update microsoft codecs. The .avi format is just a container, almost anything can be in it.

DivX codec can be downloaded here (http://www.divx.com/divx/download/) .

It's a commercial codec and I can't remember if it tries to install the player or if you can just do the codec wmp needs. At any rate, the player will install the codec and you can get rid of it later.

Increasingly, downloadable BitTorrent or P2P video is encoded using the superior open source xvid codec which give very high quality small files and that is available here (http://www.divx.com/divx/download/) .

Sometimes the sound doesn't play, and that means you need another audio codec! But I won't go into that here. Mostly audio is mp3 or AC3.

(Just don't install huge multi-codec packs of dubious provenance as they can screw things up.)

[PhilVaz]

OR you can download the .mov QuickTime format of the program below

I'll leave it here a week or so.

http://www.bringyou.to/BACKUP

Phil P