Ann Coulter has an amusing column in which she shreds Bob Shrum, the architect of perennial losing demagogic political campaigns, and Mark Geragos. Like her, I’m amazed that the guy can even get clients, let alone charge them millions of dollars, given his record. The only winning case of his that I can think of is Susan McDougal vs. the Mehtas.

But she makes an interesting point that many people don’t understand:

…even Geragos and Sherman would never sneeringly dismiss evidence in a murder trial as “circumstantial evidence.” Only nonlawyers who imagine they are learning about law from “Court TV” think “circumstantial evidence” means “paltry evidence.” After leaping for the channel clicker for six months whenever the name “Scott Peterson” wafted from the television (on the grounds that in a country of 300 million people, some men will kill their wives), I offer this as my sole contribution to the endless national discussion.

In a murder case, all evidence of guilt other than eyewitness testimony is “circumstantial.” Inasmuch as most murders do not occur at Grand Central Terminal during rush hour, it is not an uncommon occurrence to have murder convictions based entirely on circumstantial evidence. DNA evidence is “circumstantial evidence.” Fingerprints are “circumstantial evidence.” An eyewitness account of the perpetrator fleeing the scene of a stabbing with a bloody knife is “circumstantial evidence.” Please stop referring to “circumstantial evidence” as if it doesn’t count. There’s a name for people who take a dim view of circumstantial evidence because they don’t understand the concept of circumstantial evidence: They’re called “O.J. jurors.”

It occured to me as I read this that “circumstantial evidence” is to the legal world what “theory” is to the scientific. The most reliable evidence, far more than eyewitness testimony, is circumstantial, and theories are the stuff that science is made of, but one would never know that to hear them denigrated by creationists. In fact, the evolution debate is a perfect example of exactly what Coulter is describing here, in which the circumstantial evidence for evolution via natural selection is overwhelming, but much of the nation are OJ jurors, because no one has caught a dog in the act of having kittens.

Just as few murders occur, as she says, during rush hour in Grand Central, the vast majority of the fossil record is lost to us as well (though there’s enough to see “transition species,” since all species are transition species). But since that’s only “circumstantial evidence” of something that’s only a “theory,” it’s unlikely that we will ever find enough evidence to satisfy people who don’t even understand how science works, or want to. And in light of that, here is a brave and admirable man.

Colling… finds a place for God in evolution by positing a

The Kyoto Treaty is effectively dead.

The conventional wisdom that it’s the United States against the rest of the world in climate change diplomacy has been turned on its head. Instead it turns out that it is the Europeans who are isolated. China, India, and most of the rest of the developing countries have joined forces with the United States to completely reject the idea of future binding GHG emission limits. At the conference here in Buenos Aires, Italy shocked its fellow European Union members when it called for an end to the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. These countries recognize that stringent emission limits would be huge barriers to their economic growth and future development.

Another myth about “enlightened and progressive Europe, leading the world” falls.

Read this, too:

…climate scepticism is gaining ground in Western Europe. It is even becoming respectable. Many organisations, often cum websites, provide ample information about the views of the climate sceptics, thus breaking the de facto information monopoly of the pro-Kyoto scientists belonging to the ‘established climate science community’.

Good. Now maybe we can have a rational discussion about politically and economically realistic solutions.

This is an interesting breakthrough in organ preservation–wood frogs that freeze solid in the winter, and then thaw without apparent damage in the spring. They’re attempting to apply it to donor organs.

Scientists say they don’t see any immediate potential for putting an entire human body in a science fiction-style deep freeze…

Well, it seems like a significant step in that direction to me.

Jay Manifold says we’re still being too complacent. This is one of the stronger arguments for becoming a true space-faring civilization as soon as possible, to my mind.

He also links to this collection of textbook disclaimers, which seems to be pretty popular on blogdex right now:

This textbook suggests that the earth is spherical. The shape of the earth is a controversial topic, and not all people accept the theory. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

…by James Cameron, who is guest-editing a special issue of Wired this month.

As we mourned the Columbia astronauts, they were frequently referred to in media as “explorers.” The real tragedy of that accident is that they were not explorers. They were boldly going where hundreds had gone before. They were researchers working in a lab that happened to be in orbit. Did their research have value? Of course, but only in the sense that all science has value. Was it worth the price they paid? Not by a light-year. Did they die in vain? Only if we don’t learn and take to heart a lesson – not that foam can peel off the external tank and damage the reinforced carbon leading edge of the wing, or even that NASA culture needs to change. But that even after four decades of technical progress, travel to and from space is inherently dangerous, so only go there for a good reason.

In my mind, there is only one reason good enough, and that’s exploration. That means going somewhere, not in circles. But actually going somewhere, like the moon or Mars, is considered too risky and expensive. Those high school touchdowns scored by Neil and Buzz and the others are trophies that have been gathering dust, but we still fantasize that we are the same team we were then. The reality is that we have become risk averse, willing to coast on the momentum of past accomplishments. If we study the problem, build tools and systems, and so on for the next 50 years, we can jolly ourselves along that we are still those clever Americans who put a man on the moon back when was that again?

If the next step is to send humans to Mars, then we must reexamine our culture of averting risk and assigning blame. We don’t need any miracle breakthroughs in technology. The techniques are well understood. Sure, it takes money, but distributed over time it doesn’t require any more than we’re spending now. What is lacking is the will, the mandate, and the sense of purpose.

Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies

Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies

Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies

Mouse brains, that is. This may be a major medical breakthrough. Phil Bowermaster has the story. He also has some thoughts about post-election civility and blogging.

There may be more of them out there than we know:

With about 1 percent of incoming comets ending up on relatively short-period Earth-crossing orbits, it is expected that several thousand dormant comets could be currently posing a potential threat to our planet.

Recent surveys of the Earth’s immediate vicinity should have turned up some 400 such objects, whereas only a handful have so far been found.

The researchers dismiss the current belief that all the “missing” comets have disintegrated into meteor streams. If this had happened, they argue, then we should be seeing a far greater number of meteor showers and a much brighter zodiacal cloud than is observed.

They propose instead that the majority of these comets have become exceedingly black, with such low surface reflectivities that they could not be observed against the blackness of space by optical means.