Couldn't help the headline: but check out the study -- the more you're around happy people, the more you are likely to be happy. Happiness Spreads.

Hat Tip to Orrin Judd, who notes the connection to marketing research and the research on mirror neurons. See why I read Brothers Judd?

As demonstrated in this article, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with how you experience the world.

Which brings me to the most useful note on listening to public speakers: if the word "quantum" is used, get up and leave, turning over tables if necessary. Some kinds of madness are contagious. What they are doing is creating an analogy to something that neither they nor you have spent long enough with to be comfortable, and attempting by that analogy to describe aspects of something that you can personally experience. A good friend of mine from Ohio called it "the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius -- explaining the unknown by means of the still more unknown".

Many remember the cover of TIME magazine and its "scare" stories about heterosexual AIDS. Some of my friends remember Michael Fumento and his determined fact checking that demonstrated that there was no danger of such an epidemic in the US. This week, the news is officially in: there is no such epidemic. There is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases: any time "one in four" is a good statistical description, you have a serious problem.

And, for those following James Taranto, who enquires about apologies: just because the facts are against them, don't expect "experts" to change their tune. After all, the point of expertise is that no one questions you, and everybody believes you.

Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is a successful documentary describing the fear of debate among those who support the random-mutation "Darwinist" model of evolution over the "restricted mutation" models proposed under the rubric of "Intelligent Design". Successful in that it presents a problem (no debate allowed on fundamental principles), proposes a solution (open debate), and does so entertainingly. Few documentaries reach this audience, or have such a successful box office.

One point, however: while the Nazis, and the eugenics crowd were indeed inspired by Darwin and met with no check under their understanding of "survival of the fittest", there is, in fact, a biological basis for preserving genetic diversity. Any study of "survival of the fittest" assumes something: it assumes the current climate and resources available to the population. Should those change, it is important to be able to adapt to the new conditions: and the more your genotype ties you to the prior conditions, the more difficult that adaptation will be.

Earth is changeable. We shouldn't assume otherwise. Therefore, Eugenics has a check coming from a little common sense and a little biology.

For its public database, the British government wants the DNA of everybody -- including tourists. Think of it as a new spot on the entrance form. For those who want the short version, I was alerted by this comment from Pearce, who brought up the disturbing question:

"Everybody, guilty or innocent, should expect their DNA to be on file for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention -- and no other purpose."

"For no other purpose". Why, are there other purposes that the judge knows about?

As it turns out, we already know what the British Government does with DNA databases: it sells them to large private companies which then run amok figuring out who they can tell. Admittedly, the article was from some obscure paper called the Guardian, that the Senior Judge might not have read.

Why else might we object to it? Well, as it turns out, it encourages the already poorly run police forces and prosecutors to take shortcuts:

In fact, we have an example, easily findable, showing that DNA analysis can be spectacularly wrong:

What is also to be expected from a thorough trawl of this mammoth database would be around 100 billion attempts to match crime scenes with potential suspects, resulting in over two thousand false cold hits. More if the labs are capable of making mistakes.

The first false cold hit from a database trawl to be recognised in the UK was in 1999, though it did not become public knowledge until the following year after a UK forensic scientist addressed the USDOJ Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence.

A man with advanced Parkinsons disease who could not drive an automobile or dress himself unaided was linked to a burglary which had occured 200 miles from his home. In spite of protestations of innocence and alibi evidence police arrested him because the DNA profiles matched and 'so it had to be him'. It was several months before 10-point DNA tests were done on samples from the suspect and the crime scene. The results exonerated him.

He gained his freedom and a brief note from the prosecutor saying that charges were being dropped because "there was not enough evidence to provide a realistic chance of conviction". He still awaits an official apology. Or even an admission of error.

Read the article carefully: you'll know why it's a good idea to look for actual evidence, and treat DNA as confirmatory, rather than probative.

Fortunately, the article quoting this lunatic senior judge also contains quotes from others indicating that even though they don't know why there is a problem, they sense there might be. I must be the only one who reads the Guardian out there, or who has a memory, or they would start at the same place I did: what is government becomes corporate.

The five warmest years over last century have likely been: 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004. The top 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1990.

This is from this website. The government is lying, and its lackeys are committing fraud. If I knew who was responsible for the website I would name them.

But now I refer you to this site.

States in the United States report their highest temperatures. When do these occur? The majority are pre-1950. You're welcome to do the math, or resort to this post, which does it for you. Either way, you realize that the Environmental Protection Agency is posting lies on its website, possibly in coooperation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of course, they could be just falling for the scientific fraud set forth by those famous fraudsters, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. If you don't believe that global warming has been supported by fraud, and don't want to do the math in the prior reference, check this out instead.

Nominee for interesting lecture of the week:

From Michael Crichton, on complexity and reading newspapers.

there is nothing more sobering than a 30 year old newspaper. You can’t figure out what the headlines mean. You don’t know who the people are. Theodore Green, John Sparkman, George Reedy, Jack Watson, Kenneth Duberstein. You thumb through page after page of vanished concerns—issues that apparently were vitally important at the time, and now don’t matter at all. It’s amazing how many pressing concerns are literally of the moment. They won’t matter in six months, and certainly not in six years. And if they won’t matter then, are they really worth our attention now?

Read the whole thing: well-illustrated.