Category Archives: science and technology

Politicking

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JuliusBlog has a couple interesting posts regarding the upcoming election. The first is "a series of correlations between past terror alerts and political events unfavorable to the Bush administration". The second is "a chart comparing Bush approval numbers to the timeline of terror alerts".

The chart is based on a fascinating and well-documented site called PROFESSOR POLLKATZ's POOL OF POLLS. The statistics are very thorough and data collection and interpretation methods are described in detail. Skepticism is always advisable when statistics are involved, but I suspect this site is "clean".

Another site, electoral-vote.com, has an interesting map of projected electoral votes (a similar map can be found on the Pool of Polls site). It doesn't look good for Bush (Kerry 327, Bush 211 at time of posting). I wonder if the GOP convention will change things.

The Wrong Stuff

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8-year-old’s first Holy Communion invalidated by Church
By JOHN CURRAN, The Associated Press

BRIELLE, N.J. – An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot consume wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained none, violating Catholic doctrine.

(Thanks, Fark)

Redemptionis Sacramentum, paragraph 48:

“[48.] The bread used in the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be unleavened, purely of wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of decomposition.123 It follows therefore that bread made from another substance, even if it is grain, or if it is mixed with another substance different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament.124 It is a grave abuse to introduce other substances, such as fruit or sugar or honey, into the bread for confecting the Eucharist. Hosts should obviously be made by those who are not only distinguished by their integrity, but also skilled in making them and furnished with suitable tools.125”

123 Cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 924 S2; Missale Romanum, Institutio Generalis, n. 320.
124 Cf. S. Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction, Dominus Salvator noster, 26 March 1929, n. 1: AAS 21 (1929) pp. 631-642, here p. 632.
125 Cf. ibidem, n. II: AAS 21 (1929) p. 635.

What do you folks think about this? Is the exclusive use of wheat dogmatic, doctrinal, of ordinary tradition (habit, as opposed to Sacred Tradition), or merely intended to preclude the use of unworthy materials?

Flawed Statistics

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Statistics and I don't always get along well. I'm getting better at detecting fishy conclusions drawn from statistics, though. Take this article about abortion among Catholic women for instance.

Almost half of the clinic's 6000 patients last year identified their religion and of this group almost 40% said they were Catholic. A further 23% identified themselves as "Christian", while fewer than 5% said they were Protestant. Seven% were Muslim and 5% were Buddhist.

Nowhere does this article mention what percentage of women in the general population consider themselves Catholic. All it says is that 40% of those women who (1) have an abortion and (2) identify their religion, are Catholic. If Catholics outnumber Protestants in Australia, such a disparity is to be expected, all other things being equal.

Let's simplify the numbers a bit to clarify this. Suppose 100 women have an abortion. 40 are Catholic, 23 are generically Christian, 5 are Protestant, 7 are Muslim, 5 are Buddhist, and the remaining 20 are something else. Let's divide the 23 generic Christians equally between Catholics and Protestants, since we have no data to support a more lopsided grouping. That makes 52 Catholics and 16 Protestants. Let X denote the number of Catholic women in Australia and Y the number of Protestant women. The percentage of Catholic women who had an abortion is 100*52/X. The percentage of Protestant women who had an abortion is 100*16/Y. These percentages will be equal when X = 3.25 * Y. If the multiple is smaller than 3.25, the percentage goes up and vice versa. In other words, if Catholic women outnumber Protestant women by less than 3.25:1, Catholics women are "more likely" to have an abortion than Protestant women. Too bad the article doesn't give us a population breakdown. To make matters worse, only about 50% of those women having abortions identified their religion. The numbers given are essentially meaningless.

The Fallacy Files site has a good explanation of this kind of statistical goof.

Speaking of fallacies, this site is sort of a Cliffs Notes version of Fallacy Files.

Smart Juice!

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My friends and I have often jokingly referred to alcohol as “smart juice”
due to its negative impact on reasoning. In an ironic
twist of science, we may have been righter than we thought. (Thanks, Dappled
Things)

Alcohol sharpens your brain, say researchers

It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman.

Research to be published tomorrow by academics at University College London has found that those who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers.

The benefits of alcohol, which are thought to be linked to its effect on the flow of blood to the brain, can be detected when a person drinks up to 30 units of alcohol – about four to five bottles of wine – per week.