Rick Brattin's bill here in Missouri trying to get intelligent design into schools includes his own definition of scientific theory.

Although even the Wikipedia entry for scientific theory includes definitions provided by the world's most prestigious organizations of scientists, the bill's sponsor Rick Brattin has seen fit to invent his own definition. And it's a head-scratcher: "'Scientific theory,' an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy." The faith or philosophy involved remain unspecified.

Bill has a long list of brain-melting stipulations.

Such anomalies demonstrate the slipperiness of empiricism. Although many scientific ideas generate conflicting results and suffer from falling effect sizes, they continue to get cited in the textbooks and drive standard medical practice. Why? Because these ideas seem true.

This is a drum I find myself beating quite often nowadays.  If I was a professional scientist this would be weighing on me constantly.  Actually, I guess it already does that.

Science (particularly the messy social sciences) has a problem.  It turns out that we're not really able to figure things out, and that when we think we have, we soon find out we're wrong…and then continue to act like we're right anyway!

Now, don't get me wrong…the scientific method is the most powerful thing humanity has ever created.  I believe in science.  However, we've got a lot of work to do with regards to how we practice it.  Yes, it's the most powerful truth-discovering tool.  No, it's not as good as it could be.

One of the things that I've noticed about this is that most people do not expect to understand things. For most people, the universe is a mysterious place filled with random events beyond their ability to comprehend or control.

-pjeby (from here: http://www.contriving.net/link/ai)

I feel this is an accurate statement.  I even vividly remember when I first made this observation when I was around 12 years old.  It drastically shaped my view of why humanity is the way it is.

Dude records practically every waking moment of his first child's life. Then he maps the data so you can see where and when his son first heard a word and how it was used and when his son first said it and when his son gained mastery. Amazing stuff.

http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html

#ted

MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language — so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son’s life, then parsed 90,…

So, in Japan they have wood planing competitions.  Yeah.  They're planing sheets of wood that are around the size of a red blood cell.  However, what's more amazing to me is that that device is sensitive enough to measure down to 9 microns.

My daughter Morgan and I at Animal Kingdom in Walt Disney World last month.

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.

Robert G. Ingersoll

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One of my favorite quotes of all time is the one in the below image, which I've shared on G+ before.  I just came across another quote along the same lines from the estimable Charles Darwin.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science

Charles Darwin

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Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.

R Scott Bakker, Neuropath

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I had some good ideas for some posts today while I was driving around.  And now I can't think of any of them.

Instead I'll post a few quotes.

Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.

Steward Brand, Whole Earth Discipline