Inside Credulity

Want!

2009-03-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Flying Car anyone?

MIT Press Release

Counter-Intuitive

2009-03-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

In End of Faith, page 183 :

When asked how thick a piece of newspaper would be if one could fold it upon itself one hundred times in succession, most of us imagine something about the size of a brick. A little arithmetic reveals, however, that such an object would be as thick as the known universe.

Caribbean Cruise - Miami > Turks > Halfmoon Cay > Nassau > Miami

2009-03-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

Setting sail on September 21. Going to be a blast.

Homage!

2009-02-26T07:53:00.000-08:00

http://xkcd.com/548/

Charlie Darwin

2009-02-23T11:43:00.001-08:00

The Future is Now!

2009-02-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

This is probably not the first time this video has come around, but it is still worth watching nonetheless. Advanced magnetics have so much potential....so much imagined by speculative scientists and authors of fabulation.

Way too cool.

"Up the Universe" - Eint Truzenzuzex, Bran Tse-Mallory*

2009-02-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

A TED Talk that examines quite a bit of our knowledge of cosmology, and the origins of the universe. There is a really nifty visual rendering of a tour through several galactic clusters at a virtual speed in the billions of lightyears/sec (Seen in the still-frame of the embedded video. Definitely worth taking a gander.

*Eint Truzenzuzex and Bran Tse-Mallory are fictional characters created by Alan Dean Foster in his "Continuing Adventures of Pip and Flinx" science-fiction novels.

Nostalgia

2009-02-06T07:51:00.000-08:00

Saturday Mornings, in my P.J.'s watching "Land of the Lost".

I'll try not to let Will Farrell as the star bother me.

Bus Slogan Generator!

2009-02-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

Generate Your Own Slogan

If you had a super power, what would it be?

2009-02-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

hmmmm.

Robots will Rule the World

2009-02-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

The First Law of Robotics Stories: In the Future, Robots will rebell and a) Kill Us All; b) Enslave Us All; c) Protect Us All (from ourselves).

* Jack Williamson, in his short story "With Folded Hands" (1947) set the stage for robots stifling human expression in the future. This story predates Asimov's collection, "I, Robot" (1950) by a mere 3 years.

Coming soon to Calgary...

2009-01-29T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Atheist Bus Ad is going to make its debut in the Chinook City.

I think this is a good thing. A symbol of freedom of speech, open social discussion, and non-discriminatory or censorial ad laws.

Some on the Calgary Herald website commentary are suggesting that they might not take transit anymore because of this. To me, this just seems over-reactionary and petty. It is interesting, however, to see the number of folks who's belief structure is so tender that a little difference of opinion leads to outcry.

100 Abandonded Houses....

2009-01-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

A pictorial study of abandoned properties. No location specified for each picture:

....from Kevin Bauman Photography:
http://www.kevinbauman.com/100abandonedhouses/

Some of these have potential. I wonder if there will be a new trend for fix-er-uppers to buy interesting, but abandoned, architecture and restore these properties to their former glory?

Quote for the Day: President Obama

2009-01-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers."

Thought for the Day: Circle of...

2009-01-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/01/unforeseen-difficulties/

Pithy!

Defying Gravity

2009-01-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

Want!

Stellar Nursery

2009-01-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

The cluster of thousands of stars lies 20,000 light years from Earth in the Carina spiral arm of our galaxy. It is embedded in a star-forming nebula called NGC 3603, a cloud of gas and dust with enough material to form 400,000 stars like the Sun.

Previous measurements by Hubble and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile had come to the same conclusion for two of these star systems, indicating that the heaviest star involved is as massive as 114 Suns, which is at the borderline of what some theoretical models allow.

Very cool and interesting.

Why are we so ignorant?

2008-12-31T07:31:00.001-08:00

Quote for the Day: Ann Dillard

2008-12-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

A Ugandan walked up to a christian missionary and asked: "If I didn't know about God, sin and Hell, would I go there?"
"Well, no, you couldn't", replied the missionary.
"Then why did you tell me about them?" asked the Ugandan.

Annie Dillard.

Dog: Man's best friend - for Eons?

2008-12-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27240370/

World's first dog lived 31,700 years ago, ate big

Discovery could push back the date for the earliest dog by 17,700 years

Ancient, 26,000-year-old footprints made by a child and a dog at Chauvet Cave, France, support the pet notion. Torch wipes accompanying the prints indicate the child held a torch while navigating the dark corridors accompanied by a dog.

And a related blog entry that asks whether Neanderthal extinction may have been related to a lack of dog-empathy.

http://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/why-are-the-neanderthals-extinct/

Why Are the Neanderthals Extinct?

23-November-2008 · 17 Comments

"This brings us to where we started this article — dogs! Our idea is that while humans formed an early and mutually beneficial relationship with dogs, the Neanderthals never did; and that is what made all the difference." -The Sensuous Curmudgeon

As a dog lover, of course I'm biased toward agreeing with this hypothesis. I won't say I do so without evidence, but it is certainly a charming notion (apart from the more squeamish thoughts of mutual survivability in times of starvation). I'm going to have to watch this Curmudgeon for a while. Maybe add him to my 'reader' list.

Pale Blue Dot

2008-12-09T08:09:00.001-08:00

I can has brainz?

2008-12-08T08:29:00.001-08:00

This picture in response to this post:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/12/this_photograph_needs_a_captio_34.php

Want!

2008-12-01T08:06:00.001-08:00

Hee!

Crib Notes from Andy Thompsons "Why we believe in gods" lecture.

2008-11-28T08:06:00.000-08:00

Religion may be a bi-product of other common, well-understood cognitive mechanisms (or adaptations) that evolved to solve survival problems not related to religion or faith.

Some of these mechanisms include:

Minimally Counter-intuitive Aspects: When we picture god(s), we attribute them with all the normally expected attributes of another thinking, conscious being. god(s) think, and feel, and are presented as vulnerable to all the same emotional and cognitive weaknesses that humans are. With a few “minimal” exceptions that step outside of our intuitive expectations. god(s) talk to us (in our minds), god(s) know what we are doing (because they are presented as omnipresent), god(s) know what we are thinking (because they are presented as omniscient), etc… But we still imagine them as thinking and feeling much the same way that we imagine ourselves to. We are more prone to accept something with minimal detours into the counter-intuitive than things that are firmly counter-intuitive. (Yes I understand the soon to be voiced problems with use of the word minimal in this example....)

Decoupled Cognition: We can envision and enact conversations with absent family members, deceased family members, etc.
(Some of us can envision conversations with god(s) and can further carry that conversation into an imagined or projected 2-way dialogue - using simple decoupled cognition to fill in the blanks of what our god(s) reactions might be to these conversations - interestingly this might explain why our mythological miracle makers seem to have a very anthropomorphized ability to perform miraculous events that seem to be limited or tied to the cultural understanding of the time of their origin.)

Reciprocal Altruism: We have cognitive mechanisms that automatically keep track of who we owe and who owes us. We track these things (to varying degrees) automatically.
(Religion is full of reciprocity. Just look at some of the “IF you do this...” and “IF you don’t do this...” messages inherent in nearly all religions.)

Childhood Credulity: Our cognitive development leaves children and adolescents open to the influence and suggestion of authority figures in their lives. So much so that they soak up the culture that surrounds them and adapt it as the status quo. This aids in the rapid learning of survival behaviours. It also allows for the infiltration of non-survival and/or toxic learning if presented from recognized authority figures like Parents, Teachers, Religious figures of authority, etc…

Vulnerability to Authority: all humans are vulnerable - to varying degrees - to figures of authority. IF we perceive an instruction as sourced in suffiecient authority, we may follow it even if it would otherwise be an instruction to perform a repulsive, abhorrent or out-of-character action.
(It should be fairly obvious how this relates to religion and authority structures inherent in same. Ref: Stanley Milgram - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)

Attachment System: When we are in distress - at all ages of life - we turn to a care-taker figure. Whether that be a parent when a child or adolescent, a spouse or partner when an adult, or some other care-taker figure we hope will succor us from our distress, this mechanism is present in all of us.
(This mechanism is likely responsible, in part, for romantic love and parental attachment. It should be fairly obvious how religion might make use of this mechanism and allow us to turn to a super-parent, per se. Ref: Letters of Mother Theresa indicating her “falling in love with jesus”, “getting married to jesus” etc...)

Transference: We base our present relationships on past relationships. We learn as children how to treat relationships. Our perceptions use this to form images of people like “Fatherly Figure” or “Good Motherly Figure” etc…

The Problem of Dead Bodies: We have “theory of mind” mechanisms that allow us to project a mind (somewhat like our own) into other people. We imagine them as having similar thought processes, motives, and emotions. When we’re confronted with dead bodies we recognize (from physical clues) that there is no life present, but our “theory of mind” mechanism continues to look for the thought, feelings, emotions etc that we expect to find there.
(It should be fairly obvious how this mechanism might relate to some religious concepts of continued consciousness or mind, after death.)

Hyperactive Agent Detection/Attribution: We all have mechanisms inherent that look for a cause where there may not be a cause. Sounds we hear at the edge of conscious audibility might be translated into ‘whispers’ or ‘other anthropomorphized’ sources. There is a strong benefit to experiencing false positives with this function over the potentially fatal repercussions of experiencing a false negative using this mechanism. We may see 1000 imaginary tigers in the trees and suffer no ill consequence, but to miss just a single tiger that is actually there could have fatal consequences.

Intuitive Reasoning: We fill in the blanks. When we don’t actually have knowledge, our brain attempts to fill in blanks in our knowledge.
(Hyperactive Agent Detection helps us to try to fill in these blanks with humanized or anthropomorphized reasons. Many optical illusions work using this mechanism where will envision a line that completes a ‘shape’ that may not exist. See attached image. Our mind creates the edges of a white-triangle where one does not actually exist.)

Motivated Reasoning: We doubt what we don’t want to hear.
(We don’t change beliefs easily, because this may put us at odds with the group (adopted kin) and that, in the past, was a counter-survival trait.)

Confirmation Bias: We tend to look for evidence that corroborates our opinions, or notice data that confirms our beliefs (much more so than data that does the opposite or is neutral to our opinions and beliefs) - sometimes even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

Mere Familiarity: We favour what is familiar (tradition) over something new or relatively unknown.

Belief in Belief: We have a bias toward belief. Our brain is set up to ‘form opinions’ rapidly - we perceive, form opinion or believe, then at leisure may pause and think about that which we’ve formed opinions about.
(Example - in the past, if a tribe-mate told us there was a tiger behind a tree, it would be a net positive survival mechanism to believe that claim, even if there were no tiger behind said tree. Another example of false positives being far more survival focused than any single false negative. Ref: Some republicans continuing to hound upon Obama as being a terrorist. If we continue to hear something, our cognitive mechanisms tend towards believing that - in spite of evidence to the contrary.)

Kin Recognition: We have strong tendencies to favour ‘kin’ over ‘non-kin’ in our social mentation - sorting our world into “kin” and “Near-Kin” and “not kin”.
(Interestingly, religion is rife with false or appropriated Kin-Terminology to describe figures of importance {to the religion} - Father for Priest/Minister/Pastor, Brother for Monk, Sister for Nun, etc.... Further there were - in the past - some very real benefits for ‘religion’ and ‘survival’ inherent in the artificial expansion of Kin-Perception in people belonging to a religious group.)

Mirror Neurons: If you were in a room with another person and they raised their left arm - that portion of their brain that controls the left arm, right motor cortex - would light up with activity. So would your brain. If that person hurt their left hand, their right-thalamus would light up with activity in response to that pain. So would your right-thalamus, even though your hand was not injured. You would literally feel the other person’s pain (to a reduced degree).

All these mechanisms, if appropriated by religion, can play upon our cognitive functions to reinforce the stories and functions religions attempts to appropriate - Particularly in artificial-kin environments.

EG: saviour mythology co-opting our cognitive mechanisms: artificial-kin, authority figure, agent attributed, decoupled mental conversationalist, object of reciprocal altruism, authority figure, super-brother/parent/caregiver, transferred-kin, object of attachment, source of intuitive answers to metaphysical questions, source of confirmation biased opinion/faith, familiar, playing upon mirror neurons with readily available images of suffering
------------------------

This post is composed of crib notes taken by myself while listening to a lecture by Andy Thompson. All attribution, sourcing, credits, etc. should be directed toward his comprehensive research.

Andy Thompson's lecure is available for download or viewing here:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,3373,Why-we-believe-in-gods,J-Anderson-Thomson

I still think I want a Yurt - 21 Century Style

2008-11-13T10:00:00.001-08:00

Money-View:

Round Kitchens

Ultra-mod round kitchen

Ultra-mod Round Kitchen 2

Loft: Open to Below

Loft 2

Stunning night view

Another stunning night view

So, I found a site at http://www.yurtworks.com/ for an Oregon Company that makes round-homes in yurt-like fashion - utilizing the same wall-strap to hold the whole house together. These, however, look and act just like a real home at a fraction of the cost! They had a blog: http://www.yurtworks.blogspot.com/ On their blog I found a link to a flickr album from which I scooped these images. They are a reminder for me in my thinking about alternate dwellings. They are the property of their originator and not my own. I do think, however, that they illustrate some of the best of Yurt-dom out there, and serve as an excellent inspiration piece.

I think I want a Yurt.

2008-11-06T13:55:00.000-08:00

A yurt is a traditional Mongolian semi-permanent round tent structure used by the nomadic tribesmen as mobile-homes. They would disassemble them and cart them on to the next camp site. They were made from sticks, and hides and cords. They look sorta primitive. Until you look at 20th Century Technology in a Yurt. Like this one:

There are some modern companies out there that produce Yurts. They have 2-story yurts.

They have winged Yurts.

As an occasional use vacation dwelling, with an eye toward retirement dwelling in a semi-rural or fully rural location, I think this structure has a lot of promise. I just wonder if I can improve on these designs somewhat.

I was thinking, for the Canadian climate: A central hearth and fireplace with chimney running up through the center of the dome.

This could serve 3 or 4 purposes at once:
- It could support the roof if excess snow-load occurs.
- It could support some sophisticated water catchment technology that might allow for gray-water natural water utilization.
- It could be built massive - out of natural stone work, with wings out into dividers of the living space (like kitchen island and bedroom/bathroom wall divider - allowing for a large thermal mass, heated by a double-sided fireplace, to warm the interior on cold winter nights. If a high efficiency 2-sided insert were purchased for this spot, it could burn for 20+ hours on a single charge of fuel.
- It could divide the room and provide some nice eye-candy. Imagine a slate wall with chimney running up through the roof of the Yurt - out of which projects both the Kitchen Island Peninsula and the heated wall dividing the master bedroom and the shower area. Sounds sexy - in my mind's eye. The other thing I like about the Yurt is that its a very voluminous space in a small footprint. Especially if one adds wings or a second story.

I personally think a sleeping loft above the main great room, with utilities, bath, and part of the kitchen under the loft part, and a double-height living space could be very very sexy. This also has the added benefit of allowing the heated thermal mass dividing wall between kitchen and bath (downstairs) to run the full height (upstairs) dividing the sleeping areas with even more heated stone volume.

I definitely need to think more about this, but if I can get one of these built on a slab heated with geothermal heating, gray water catchment, thermal mass additional heating for really cold times in the winter, this could be a really efficient vacation/retirement home. If I back it with the right insulation, long-life roofing solution, and a decent water purification system, this could almost be the perfect expandable retirement home setup.

Yup. I want a yurt.

How the 2008 Obama Election isn't a Sign of Change

2008-11-05T07:53:00.001-08:00

In spite of the optimism surrounding Obama's election by the people of the US, there are some Liberty Limiting mob-rule ballots out there bringing down the overall positive of the election for many.

Florida and Arkansas are not really all that surprising, but I was sorta hoping that California residents would not vote in Prop 8.

Now the State Supreme Courts have their work cut out for them - especially in California where some gay couples HAVE married - setting up a situation of special and different liberties for some, but not all homosexual couples. Lets hope the SC does the right thing.

The Power of Reversing Psychology

2008-10-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

Don't Vote.

Not only does this ad use reverse psychology, but continues on to reverse its psychology. Clever. Wonder if it will be effective.

And the amusing follow-up.

Hydrogenase Loaded Bacteria may answer Renewable Energy question?

2008-10-27T08:49:00.001-07:00

Metabolic Engineering to Enhance Bacterial Hydrogen Production

TAMUS 2520 represents a major breakthrough in the biological generation of hydrogen. Researchers at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station have developed a modified strain of bacteria that produces orders of magnitude more hydrogen than the associated naturally found organism. Modification of the genes involved in the hydrogenase pathway has allowed this genetically engineered strain of bacteria to produce hydrogen at over 100 times the rate of the baseline. The technology is a major advancement in the metabolic engineering of bacteria and biological hydrogen production.

---------
Interesting. Now how will this translate to profits for Big Oil?

Quest For Fire: 788 000 B.C.E.

2008-10-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Firemaking 790 000 years ago.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A new study shows that humans had the ability to make fire nearly 790,000 years ago, a skill that helped them migrate from Africa to Europe.

By analysing flints at an archaeological site on the bank of the river Jordan, researchers at Israel's Hebrew University discovered that early civilizations had learned to light fires, a turning point that allowed them to venture into unknown lands.

-----------
Old.

Pic of the Day: Saviour Located at South-Pole

2008-10-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

Musta been a shitty day for the messiah.

Quote for the Day

2008-10-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

''The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China . If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India . If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico ,Honduras and Guatemala . If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part." - Dr. Marc Faber - Investment Analyst

---

Fun satire.

Want!

2008-10-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Star Trek tee's from the new movie at Think Geek (dot) com.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/popculture/adf2/images

To boldly go where no red-shirt has gone before!

Anti-Ambrosia?

2008-10-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Ambrosia - often described as godly food that imbued the consumer with immortality.
This dish, while some kind of awesome, is possibly anti-Ambrosia.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/10/
the-hamburger-fatty-melt-a-burger-with-two-grilled-cheese-sandwiches-as-its-bun.html

The Hamburger Fatty Melt, a Burger with Two Grilled Cheese Sandwiches as Its Bun

Posted by Adam Kuban, October 2, 2008 at 1:00 PM

Photographs by Robyn Lee

What you are looking at, ladies and gents, is what we at A Hamburger Today are calling the Hamburger Fatty Melt. Lemme give you the smack on this meat stack. From top to bottom:

Grilled cheese sandwich as bun top
Four-ounce beef patty
Grilled cheese sandwich as bottom bun

Got that? It's a burger with two grilled cheese sandwiches as its bun.

I wish our R&D department here at AHT HQ could claim this as the product of our grease-addled minds, but we're only following through on a burger we heard about via Serious Eats community member Theadob, who mentioned the "Chubby Melt" at the Mossy Creek Cafe in Fisherville, Virginia (burger between two grilled cheese sandwiches, smothered with sautéed onions and mushrooms and topped with Thousand Island dressing).

I vowed to recreate one of my own, but with some tweaks. I thought Mossy Creek pretty much had it right until it ladled on the toppings. Something as glorious as a burger with TWO GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES AS ITS BUN needs little else adorning it.

So stop what you're doing right now and go out and get the following ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
Pepperidge Farm Very Thin white bread
Kraft Deli Deluxe American cheese slices—yellow, not white, fool!
Butter
A juicy tomato

Now follow me here for the recipe: The Hamburger Fatty Melt

Height (The XKCD Way)

2008-09-29T07:05:00.001-07:00

From: http://xkcd.com/482/

Totally!

Uof C Professor Embarasses Self

2008-08-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

From the online edition of the Calgary Herald:

http://tinyurl.com/6lye6u

It's no wonder evangelical atheists need to shout so loud

Every faith, the dogmatic atheists say, contains a seed of violence and torment

Barry Cooper,
U of C Prof of Political Science
For The Calgary Herald
Published: Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The shining example of free thinking said to characterize the French Enlightenment was Voltaire. In the face of dogmatic clerics, both Protestant and Catholic, he urged reasonable people everywhere to "crush the infamous thing."

His argument was as obvious then as it is today: organized religion not only divides humanity into believers and infidels, it authorizes the former, with a beatific smile, to extinguish the latter. Often religion claims to be doing so for the good of the infidel.

That Voltaire had Christianity in mind is indicated by a rather more vulgar expression from his pen: "the people will not be free until the last king is strangled in the guts of the last priest."

Modern would-be Voltaires such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins are just as strident in their hatred of religion in general and revealed religion in particular. "
For one thing, the quotation comes from Deiderot, not Voltaire. For another thing, the article is chock-full of strawmen fallacies, prejudicial broad-stroke discrimination, misrepresentation and plain ignorance.

Welcome to the wonderful world of a PhD gone wrong.
Makes me ashamed of our University here in Calgary.

The Birth of Truth

2008-08-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

A parable:

When Truth was born, three good fairies came to her crib, and each one gave her a gift:

- The first gift would make her absolute.
- The second gift would make her objective.
- The third gift would make her deal with reality.

By an oversight, the wicked fairy was not invited, and did what wicked fairies do in such circumstances: she cursed Truth. By her curse, Truth would never enjoy more than two gifts simultaneously.

And thus Truth developed a personality split - into three parts:

As Mathematical/Formal Truth, she is absolute and objective, but does not deal with reality.

As Theologic Truth (where she underwent a further split into many sub-persons), she is absolute and deals with reality, but is not objective. Islamic Truth is different from Christian Truth, which is in turn split into Catholic and Protestant Truth ....

As Scientific Truth, she is objective and deals with the real world, but not absolute. Scientific statements are always approximations to nature.

Borrowed from an online discussion forum, authour's pseudonym: HRG

The Oldest Humans (yet found)

2008-08-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

From National Geographic

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News

August 14, 2008

Dinosaur hunters have stumbled across the largest and oldest Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara desert.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team were scouring the rocks between harsh dunefields in northern Niger for dinosaur bones in 2000 when they stumbled across the graveyard, on the shores of a long-gone lake.

The scientists eventually uncovered 200 burials of two vastly different cultures that span five thousand years—the first time such a site has been found at a single site.

Called Gobero, the area is a uniquely preserved record of human habitation and burials from the Kiffian (7700 to 6200 B.C.) and the Tenerian (5200 to 2500 B.C.) cultures, says a new study led by Sereno of the University of Chicago.

-----------
Bones that are almost 10,000 years old. And complex burial rights indicating reverence for the departed through the presence of pollen that may indicate flowers used in the burial ceremony.
This is just cool.

Home Theater Basement - Pondering Acoustic Fabric for Acoustic Wall Panels

2008-07-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

I ordered samples of the special acoustic fabric from Guilford of Maine fabric manufacturer.

We'll see how the samples look in situ before ordering.

It's Just (dr.) Horrible!

2008-07-29T08:43:00.001-07:00

Sadly the Hulu version of Dr. Horrible with advertisements is now only available in the US.

I'm pulling this down so as not to tease my fellow Canucks.

Steampunk Love, Ingenuity and a bit of real history:

2008-07-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

World's First Submarine: 1775

There is no doubt that Bushnell's Turtle - a submarine designed to help break the British blockade of New York harbour during the US Civil War was a masterpiece of epic and "Steampunk" proportions.

Made from a huge log hewn in half and shaped to be hollow, the idea was that this little sub would allow the pilot to attach a bomb to a British ship while undetected underwater.

A study of its reproduction can be found at
http://www.handshouse.org/turtle.html

Intelligent Design Crop Circles

2008-07-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

Pithy!

The Changing Face of Calgary

2008-07-17T07:09:00.001-07:00

Before:

After:

This rendering apparently includes all of the currently approved real estate developments for the downtown core and belt line area. (2008).

This rendering is what Calgary would look like if the Burj project from Dubai (Tallest Sky Scraper in the world) was transplaned to downtown Calgary.

Where's Chthulhu?

2008-07-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

Astronomy Picture of the Day, June 18, 2003

Official Government Issued Gas Coupons.

2008-07-09T12:03:00.001-07:00

Order of Canada - Returned

2008-07-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Dr. Henry Morgentaler being awarded the Order of Canada for his commitment to women's rights, a spate of other recipients are threatening to return their own awards.

Gilbert Finn, former Leiutenant Governer of New Brunswick.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2008/07/09/nb-finn.html?ref=rss

Rev. Lucien Larre
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/03/priest-order-canada.html

So instead of being a symbol of recognition for service to Canadians, these men have transformed this honour into a tool to be used for political grandstanding. It would be the same as an Atheist refusing the order because a Theist had received it in the past, or a Theist (like Rev. Lucien) returning the order if it were awarded to an open Atheist.

Shameful, really, when politics can mar the symbol of admiration used to celebrate a person's contribution to Canadian Society.

"Defenders of Science shouldn't let the sophits carry the day."

2008-07-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008001029_rhetoricop17.html

[quote]
"Third, today's sophists exploit a public misconception about what science is, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data. Any dissent is cited as evidence that there's no consensus, and thus that truth must not have been discovered yet.

A more accurate portrayal of science recognizes it to be a process of debate among a community of experts in which the side with superior evidence and argument wins. Unanimity of belief never exists, but the process of science moves forward with the weight of a supermajority.

It is perverse to continue debating an issue that has already been settled for the vast majority of scientists merely so that policymakers will delay action, or so that the losing side can be taught on an equal footing in the classroom.

Aristotle believed that things that are true "have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites" but that it takes a skilled user of rhetoric to defeat sophisticated sophistry. I concur. The manufactured controversy must be exposed for what it is — the assertion of an important scientific debate where none exists.

Science will continue to be the victim of anti-science sophistry until the defenders of science learn to use my field — rhetoric — to achieve what Aristotle envisioned for it: to make strong arguments carry the day before an audience of non-experts."

[/quote]

Indeed. The "Teach the Controversy" school of debate often must first manufacture a controversy. "Manufactroversy". What is the best response to a "Manufactroversy"? IS it ridicule, illumination of the fallacies inherent, satire, responsive sophistry, or a combination of these and more?

Home Theatre - Basement Update - Soffit Work

2008-07-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

View from the Projection wall:

Left-hand Stub:

Right-hand - past the projector barn:

The infamous Custom-cut:
(Measure 10 times, still cut twice....*#$#%&!!)

Over the Wet Bar:

I know. Progress is slow, but we're getting there slowly but surely.

The Overlapping Map of Morality

2008-06-13T13:49:00.001-07:00

Part 1.

(Please bear in mind that any personal opinions or opinions pertaining to group morals or group ethics are formulated from my personal opinion and should only be treated as a personal opinion, and not as an attempt to dictate, interpret, or impose morals or ethical instructions on others.)

I’m going to lead into my argument with my contention that the Presuppositional Apologia for Morality is flawed. In my opinion, it fails to take into account the overlapping map of morality.

A Presuppositionalist Apologetic's stated position that non-theists cannot account for objective morality without god (meaning the christian god?) starts with a number of assumptive leaps that beg for examination from the outset. Further this stated dependency on the christian god seems to discount dependencies that that moral set had on cultural influences, moral stories, and the deconstructed mythology that was contemporary to early christians, and more importantly to the members of the Council of Nicea - in which the bible (and its containing morality) were canonized. What isn’t clear is whether Clay’s stated position also depends on the accuracy of biblical history or not. This will also bear examination in order to evaluate the Presuppositional Apologia.

This post I’m going to concentrate mainly on the overlapping map of morality. (This is my own proposition to the debate, and should be treated as my own opinion only). If we examine the pillars of 21 century moral codes we will find that there are many different instruction guides for acceptable behaviour. Each major faith has a set of principals they use to instruct behaviours in their followers. Christians have the 10 C’s. Judaism has the 10 C’s (predecessor to the slightly altered Christian 10 C’s) and mosaic law. Sikh’s have 12 main Principals. Buddhism has the three guiding philosophies of Sila, Samadhi and Prajna. Islam has ~23 distinct instructions for ethical behaviour. Hindus have ~20 distinct instructions (commandments?) that are presented for ethical behaviour. Secular society has judicial guidelines for ethical behaviour (that vary somewhat from country to country). Jainism has as set of instructional principals that guide moral behaviour.

It seems that every societal grouping has an urge to develop a set of ethical instructions to guide those decisions and actions that they term to be moral behaviour. The interesting part about all of this is where the overlaps occur. Common instructions created by cultures separated geographically and temporally. Instructions for behaviour that pre-date any biblical historicity, that are not encompassed in any single culture or societal subgroup. Overlaps that have only one factor in common.

If you view the image below, you’ll see a sketch I made of the Overlapping Map of Morality. It is notably absent of specific features other than colourful overlapping blobs, and concentric decreasing divisions. This is intentional.

With this unlabelled map depicted by overlapping coloured circles and decreasing concentric rings defining areas in which these circles overlap, we are free to arrange the ‘ethical instructions’ on this map – displaying where maximum overlap is achieved (those ethical instructions that seem to be prevalent in many cultures – and displaying those in other regions where fewer or no overlap occurs (those ethical instructions that seem to come only from a single culture or cultural sub-groups).

What becomes very interesting examining those ethical instructions that have the most universality along side those ethical instructions that seem to be native only to a single or a few interconnected sub-groups.

Below we see the Overlapping Map of Morality showing the interplay between the 10 C’s (christian and jewish combined) and the ~23 Islamic Instructions. Note the similarities.

In the above comparison between christian moral imperatives and islamic moral imperatives, we see quite a few straight up overlaps in instruction. (those guiding principals in the center section, grey text)

- No other gods
- No murder
- No stealing
- No lying
- No adultery

What is interesting is that we see some islamic instructions that may not be offensive to christians. (those guiding principals in the right-hand blue section, in red text)

-No denying god
- Defend your nation
- No broken promises (which could probably be included in the no lying instruction)
- No oppression
- No scandal

(There are some fuzzy areas in the no oppression and no scandal instructions from islam – on the surface christians may not disagree with them, but there may be situations where christians practices oppression or scandal – by biblical policy. At least, there have been in the past - the moral majority stance on homosexuality coming to mind here. Similarly, there may be other cultures that do this. What may sound ok on first blush, may not work with some official policies.)

There are also some christian principals that may not be immediately objectionable to islamic folks. (those guiding principals in the left-hand red section, in blue text).

- No using gods name in vain
- remember the Sabbath (Similar to the pray 5 times a day instruction – set aside time for prayer – as a general instruction.)
- No bearing false witness

But then there are the irreconcilable differences. God vs. Allah. Prophets. Gambling. Intoxication. Eating Pork. Consuming Blood. Praying 5 times a day (specifically).

Morally speaking, these two different religions have a lot in common. (…that is, if we take these ethical instructions as representative of what these social groups actually follow as ethical guides.).

What happens if an atheist tosses secular ethics into this comparative mix?

For this exercise I’m going to use Canadian Charter of Rights as a starting point for atheist or secular ethical instructions. (Mainly because I’m familiar with it, and because it is fairly simple to translate in point form – for the main ethical instructions…)

Now that we have 3 models in play, we can really begin to see the interplay between morality models and how there is some overlap. There is global overlap in the sweet-spot (or bull’s eye) of the ringed section. There is some subjective agreement in the second ring of the section, and in the outer rims, there is non-overlapping, or non-specified quasi-agreement.

What I mean by non-specified quasi-agreement are those items in green text. While they’re not specifically outlined in each of the three sets of ethical instructions (Christianity in the red region, islam in the blue region, and (one example of) secular law in the green region, we can see similarities, or negotiation between the concepts.

No traitors (islam) probably compliments some of the secular laws of nationality.
No false witnessing (christian) is a keystone of the secular judicial system in nearly every country that I’m familiar with. (And probably falls inside the No lying (global) instruction in the bull’s eye.)
No broken promises (islam) probably compliments a lot of contractual agreement laws (secular), and No false witnessing (christian) as well as falling under the umbrella of No lying (global).
No oppression (islam) synergizes nicely with the Protection of freedoms and liberties (secular) and probably isn’t all that objectionable to judeo-christians – even though its not specifically mentioned in the 10 C’s.

Now I could build this model out further – approaching the complexity of the original unlabeled model from Part 1, using Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc…
(an exercise I probably won’t do without an invitation and funding from a research group truly interested in such an endeavor) But even without those comparisons in place showing the variety of overlap in a global moral map, we can see that Christianity neither has the monopoly on moral instructions, nor do they exclusively hold title to those ethical instructions that are found inside of a global map of morality. We also can note that there are some ethical instructions not contained within our example of the 10 C’s that may be useful for formulating a moral ethic that works globaly. Now I’m not going to attribute this incompleteness to christianity or islam - because I recognize that these models are incomplete - if not bad for a basic representation.
It simply shows that there are different ethical messages that exist outside of each of these models - and suggests that there could be moral or ethical information that exists apart from, or outside of any social sub-group that bears examination and evaluation for inclusion in the moral map.

If we adhere only to a specific guide, or specific written doctrine and do not allow ourselves the freedom and intelligence to research and evaluate (and improve where possible) then we may end up in a stagnant mode of ethical thinking.

Note: These models are greatly simplified, and do not do justice to the complexities inherent in any of the ethical models used. I know any presuppositionalist can come here and pick my tinker-toy models apart as being incomplete or merely scratching the surface of the questions of morality. All these models are intended to do is demonstrate that any single social group attempting to lay claim exclusively to some of the ingredients of the moral stew may be (and probably are) doing so erroneously.

Thus a Presuppositionalist's contention that atheists cannot describe or account for morality without god (meaning the christian god for purposes of these posts) is based on an assumption that is demonstrably self serving and not necessarily true.

I originally posted this at http://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread/10098/P19/

I wrote it. I copied it here. Its mine.

Home Theater, Games Room, now Wet Bar

2008-06-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

Reporting a little progress on the game room:

Installed the Wet-bar sink today. Need to pick up a hole-saw for the faucet, so for now its just sitting there.

Quote for the Day: Dennis Campbell

2008-06-02T16:45:00.001-07:00

"Both science and religion share a common human trait or disposition, to seek meaning and patterns when none appear obvious from separate observations or experiences. “Abolishing religion” has the implication of somehow eliminating that normal human disposition that underlies science as well.

One distinct difference between an idealized scientific approach and religion is that science seeks to falsify it’s precepts, concepts or theories, while religion actively avoids such an attempt. For science, falsification is a goal and value; for religion it is a sin that may be punishable by all kinds of nasty happenings.

That suggests that the issue is not the creation of the concepts, scientific or religious, it is in the value conflict of falsification. Science says “question,” and religion says “accept.” In that sense religion is an authoritarian human creation intended among other things for control and constraint of the adherents." - Denis Campbell

So the question is one of Rigor and Critique. Those ideas that can survive the dog-eat-dog existence of peer-review and critique fit within the bounds of 'reason'. Those concepts that forbid or do not stand up to the scrutiny of peer-critique are probably too fragile to be considered 'monumental concepts'.

Term of the Day: Dunning-Kruger Effect

2008-05-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge tend to think that they know more than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less. Dunning and Kruger were awarded a 2000 igNobel prize for their work.

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

They set out to test these hypotheses on human subjects consisting of Cornell undergraduates who were registered in various psychology courses. In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank, whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank. As Dunning and Kruger noted,

Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humour, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.

Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence. A follow-up study suggests that grossly incompetent students improve both their skill level and their ability to estimate their class rank only after extensive tutoring in the skills they had previously lacked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

When I was a kid....

2008-04-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, I played the iconic Dungeons and Dragons game with my friends.

One of my friends, many years ago, when we were young, stumbled upon a game called Champions, where you could role-play super heroes.
One of my first and favorite characters was named Argos. He was ex-CIA, parapellegic, vastly knowledgeable about tactics, covert ops and counter-espionage.
He had, at his disposal, a cybernetic suit of motorized armor. He Flew. He Shot Rockets from shoulder launchers. He had a repeater stun-gun that strobed from a chest launcher. He had enhanced senses. He was Awesome.

I directly owe his creation to my early love of

Iron Man

(My wife is taking me to see this movie on May 2, the day before my birthday.
I luv my wife!)

I have no personal philosophy....

2008-04-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

At least that was an accusation from a quasi-anonymous poster on a discussion forum I frequent, using a photograph of my dog, and a high-school nickname as my avatar. We'd been having a long, disjointed discussion about "the future of life" and how (from his/her perspective) atheism is a philosophy that embraces death.

I had posted a response post to another anonymous poster who'd given up faith and was confused and feeling sort of lost and lonely. I polished this response up a bit and presented it as my personal philosophy. I'm now posting it here. I think this may be a repeat post, but I'm too lazy to go looking through my historic posts for the quotation, so I'm just going to put it up here again, and worry about being repetitive later (if I get around to worrying about it at all).

Here it is. My Personal Philosophy of Life:

Revel in your life. If you have family, cherish them and treasure the time you spend with them - embrace their company and companionship. If you have friends, cherish them and treasure times together with them - embrace the company and companionship that they offer you, and return that in kind. If you have a spouse or a partner and/or children - revel in the fact that you get to share their lives and experiences and be a positive impact for them, a mentor, a role-model, a friend, parent (and for your spouse or partner, lover and confidant). If you have pets, cherish them for the pleasure, companionship and joy they bring to your life. Few things compare to the uncomplicated, unpolitical, nonjudgmental affection displayed by a cat or a dog or pet, or the trusting interaction between you and your pet. If you have a job, strive to excel at it, and be a good influence and positive mentor for those around you. Strive to excel at what you do. Strive for harmony, balance, happiness, joy and companionship in your life. Pay attention to these things a little bit every day.

Do this for a day. Then try it for a week. Then give it a month. Then another. Pretty soon you’ll find that those things that make you happiest are those things that you concentrate on most frequently.

Then finally, on a quiet introspective evening, consider how wonderful it is to be married to your spouse or paired with your partner, parent to your children, guardian of your pet(s), a positive influence to your peers and co-workers, close with your friends, and alive at this very moment at this very time. Then go give your spouse/child/pet/best-friend a squeeze and start again tomorrow.

May you and yours have a life filled with health, happiness and harmony.

The Truly Expelled

2008-04-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=626

Quoted from above:

Steve Bitterman was an instructor who taught the Western Civilization course at Southwestern Community College in Red Oak, Iowa. In 2007, at the age of sixty, he was fired because he did not teach the story of Adam and Eve as literal truth. (How many faithful Christians there are in this country who see that story as an allegory, and a powerful, meaningful one, of the loss of innocence!) “I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said afterward. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century.”

Alex Bolyanatz was an assistant professor of anthropology at Wheaton College, a Protestant liberal-arts college in Illinois. He had been popular with both students and his fellow teachers, but in the spring of 2000, he received a letter from his provost issuing a stern rebuke: “During your term at Wheaton College,” Stanton Jones wrote, “you have failed to develop the necessary basic competence in the integration of Faith and Learning, particularly in the classroom setting.” Jones castigated Bolyanatz for not treating creationism with respect and instead teaching evolution as the plain, scientific truth. Bolyanatz had repeatedly made the point that evolution did not conflict with his own religious faith, but claiming that “The evolutionary model does not discount faith” was not enough to save his job. His experience parallels that of Howard J. Van Till, who taught physics at Calvin College in Michigan. When Van Till made the modest claims that evolution had been scientifically proven and that Biblical texts were influenced by the cultures in which they’d been written, angry community members pressured Calvin College’s Board of Trustees into forming an investigative committee, which subjected Van Till to four years of inquiry. He was, eventually, cleared, but not until the committee had performed, he said, “a test of the entirety of my theological position.”

Likewise, Richard Colling graduated from Olivet Nazarene University and taught there for twenty-seven years. A man of strong religious convictions, he argued that one could believe in the Christian God and still accept the scientific truth of evolution. In 2004, he published a book about this belief, and for his pains, he was barred from teaching general biology or having his book used in the school.

Colling had been granted tenure, so that at least his job and paycheck were secure, even though the ejection from the community he loved brought him significant anguish. Nancey Murphy of Fuller Theological Seminary did not have that shield, and so when her negative review of Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial aroused Johnson’s ire, she had to fight for her job. Johnson, a lawyer who was one of the instigators in rebranding creationism as “Intelligent Design,” has never displayed a grasp of basic biological facts, but that didn’t stop him from calling up a Fuller trustee and starting a campaign to get Nancey Murphy fired.

Gwen Pearson taught biology at the Permian Basin branch of the University of Texas, located in the city of Odessa. Her three years as an assistant professor ended with assaults on her integrity and her physical self:

This all became a great deal more serious when I began to get messages on my home answering machine threatening to assist me in reaching hell, where I would surely end up. I also received threatening mail messages: “The Bible tells us how to deal with nonbelievers: ‘Bring those who would not have me to reign over them, and slay them before me.’ May Christians have the strength to slaughter you and end your pitiful, blasphemous life!”

An envelope containing student evaluations from my evolution class was tampered with. A student wrote a letter to the president of the university claiming that I said in class that “anyone who believes in God gets an F.” Despite the fact that she had never been in my class, and it was clearly untrue, a full investigation of the charge ensued.

There were other problems. Often I arrived in class to find “Dr. Feminazi” scrawled on the blackboard. An emotionally disturbed student assaulted me on campus. In town, Maurice Sendak’s award-winning book Where the Wild Things Are was removed from school libraries, as it might “confuse children as to the true nature of Beelzebub.” The California-based Institute for Creation Research (ICR) preached in the county stadium to 10,000 local people.

I finally resigned when I received an admonition from the dean in my yearly reappointment letter to “accommodate the more intellectually conservative students with a low threshold of offensibility” in my evolution course. Rather than compromise my academic freedom, I chose to leave what seemed to be a dangerous place.

Pearson was faced with an intolerable situation — people who had seemingly never contemplated the nobility of forgiveness — and left of her own volition, but Chris Comer was not so lucky. A dedicated employee of the Texas Education Agency, Comer was serving as Director of Science when she forwarded a brief e-mail message mentioning that the philosopher Barbara Forrest would be giving a talk at an Austin public events center. Forrest and her colleague Paul Gross are authors of Creationism’s Trojan Horse, a book which details how creationism has masqueraded as serious science in order to slip particular religious beliefs into the public schools. For sending a brief “FYI,” Comer was forced to resign.

Paul Mirecki was professor of religious studies and department chair at the University of Kansas. He planned to teach a class called “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies,” but canceled those plans after two men beat him in the street one December morning. He had displayed an acerbic tongue in online discussion forums, and he later apologized for his less temperate remarks; neither that apology nor sympathy for a physically assaulted human being stayed the KU administration, who forced him to step down as department chair.

The real occurrence of violence gives death threats a certain cachet of intimidating force. Eric Pianka, a biologist at UT Austin, gave a speech before the Texas Academy of Science, which was presenting him with a distinguished-service award. In his speech, he articulated his fears that overpopulation will lead to a disaster for the human species. The story then took a twist which a fiction writer would be hard-pressed to surpass: a creationist named Forrest Mims claimed that Pianka advocated releasing the Ebola virus to eliminate 90% of the world’s population. Other creationists, like William Dembski, soon picked up the story, leading to online hysteria. Within days, Pianka himself and others in the Texas Academy of Science received death threats.

“I don’t bear any ill will towards anybody,” Pianka told one reporter, and elaborated: “I’ve got two granddaughters, man. I’m putting money in a college fund for my granddaughters. I’m worried about them.”

The issue of creationism has been simmering for decades, sometimes frothing up into great legal battles which attract widespread attention. The most recent of these watershed events happened in Dover, Pennsylvania, where a school board tried to push “Intelligent Design” into the science classrooms.

Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican and faithful Lutheran, delivered a landmark verdict in which he summarized the claims of Intelligent Design proponents as “breathtaking inanity.” Once the verdict was revealed, Judge Jones became the target of character assassination and even received death threats for the crime of doing his job.

His decision put Judge Jones on the cover of Time Magazine, but you don’t have to be famous to have someone get very upset about you. Michael Korn sent threatening letters, adorned with skulls and crossbones, to several biology professors at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Several of the messages were delivered by slipping envelopes under the professors’ office doors after working hours; Korn’s missives referred to “killing the enemies of Christian society.” He then skipped town and is currently a fugitive from justice.

When will one of these threats come to fruition? When will self-righteous anger, fueled by ignorance, unchecked thanks to prejudicial culture, meet a loosening of inhibitions and end in grief? If you think this is such a long shot that it could never happen and isn’t worth bothering about, what about the sad story of Rudi Boa?

A 28-year-old graduate of Edinburgh University with degrees in chemistry and forensic science, Boa was backpacking across Australia with his girlfriend, Gillian Brown. At a bar in Tumut, New South Wales, Boa had an argument over religion with another traveler, Alexander York. Later that night, it appears, York attacked Brown and in the ensuing fight, Boa was stabbed, once, in the chest. York was found guilty of manslaughter. A community center in Phnom Penh, through which Boa had traveled shortly before his death, was later founded and named in his honor, using donations from the Boa family.

I wonder: when will this happen in America? All the ingredients are already here. It doesn’t take an organized conspiracy, just a culture in which the enemy has already been defined.

We fight over scarce resources, whether they be oil or cocaine, and we invent new scarcities over which to wage war, treasures whose very existence depend upon human perception and whose value can never be tested through experiment and rational investigation. Even when this contest does not lead to physical violence, it deranges lives and brings anguish.

Many of the names I’ve mentioned in this essay belong to faithful Christians. These people, who have suffered because they accept the scientific truth of evolution, are not raving atheists or infidel interlopers. They learned the hard way that some folks just aren’t satisfied with “theistic evolution,” with the idea that the Creation took a long time or that science and religion answer different kinds of questions. Compromise and coexistence are, quite simply, not good enough. Those who advise such a friendly relationship find themselves, dare I say it, expelled.

And stories which begin with unshakable hate do not end very well.

UPDATE (20 April 2008): I should have known that my Gentle Readers would have additional items to offer. See, for example, the story of Kanawha County, West Virginia and this list of incidents, which overlaps with my own.

Oh, and I’ve also been alerted to the unfortunate case of Terry Gray, a Christian biochemist whose negative review of Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial sparked an unhappy response from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which eventually forced Dr. Gray to recant.

UPDATE: In addition to that, Christopher J. O’Brien describes his correspondence with Richard Colling, the professor at Olivet Nazarene whose experiences I summarized above. Colling writes to O’Brien thusly:

I am deeply saddened that the entire situation has come to this point of misrepresentation and organized attempts to discredit and malign my reputation. My heart has always been to offer a means to students and to the general public by which science and faith can be viewed as compatible. My faculty colleagues and students will attest that I have done this accurately, as well as faithfully and sensitively in the classroom and in my book, Random Designer. Yet sadly the university leadership, without willingness to accept responsibility for questionable actions and misleading communications, has apparently chosen to ignore these facts. I have discovered that some of the most fundamental voices in the Christian church and culture only want war, and seemingly will stop at nothing to discredit/destroy anyone who understands the biology/evolution and makes an intellectually honest attempt to communicate peace between Biology and the Bible. This grieves me deeply.

I believe the anguish in Colling’s voice can reach out to others of different faiths, or of none at all. We all listen to human stories.

UPDATE (21 April): The problem is not restricted to the United States. Christopher diCarlo our ancestors all lived in East-Central Africa. A student became incensed when diCarlo explained that human beings had evolved and filled up the world by migrating around it; she complained to the administration, and diCarlo found himself explaining his case again to the Associate Dean. Almost certainly in consequence, diCarlo was passed over for a full-time professorship. He hasn’t done too poorly for himself in the years since, but it’s worth noting that his supporting the fact of human evolution caused him at least as much trouble, if not more, than that suffered by the “martyrs” whom creationists like to trumpet as victims of “Darwinism.” was teaching a critical thinking course at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, when one day he wore a T-shirt he had made which said, “We Are All Africans.” It’s true: go back a mere eyeblink of geological time, and

Just a Theory

2008-04-17T11:52:00.001-07:00

Ayup.

Lucid Dreaming - The Zombie Apocalypse

2008-04-17T06:36:00.001-07:00

Ok, every once in a while I have lucid dreams that stick with me for hours or days afterwards.

Here is one from last night.

The scene was the house I grew up in - 43 Lk Sundance Pl. Only it was enlarged and sprawling like a set from a 70's sitcom, or the house from the graduate, with seemingly infinite space.

The Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse were over for a congenial visit. Yup. Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens were over for a 'cordial visit'. Everyone was sitting around chatting in the living room that was set like the Three's Company Show...all light and no shadows anywhere.

I remember distinctly that Sam Harris was far more interested in my collection of computer games, and wanted to know if I played World of Warcraft - (He was a Blood Elf Warlock - there may be an endorsement contract in the making here...). Richard Dawkins was the culinary expert and not only wanted to give tips toward our dinner repast, but wanted to take over, wielding his own personal gourmet chef-knife that never leaves his side. (We gave him free reign in the kitchen....hoping for the best).

Dan Dennett was particularly interested in my collection of power-tools and the workshop in the basement that was a direct reminiscence of yesteryear, with my dad's old workbench in the corner, complete with old military bench vice, and a 1 hp belt driven table saw that was more rust than saw. Hitch was perusing my book collection, with mixed reviews of my eclectic mix of canonical literature from my college days and my extensive collection of sci fi classics.

It was when we were stitting down to dinner that things became a little weird, because that was when the zombies attacked.

As a group, we all formed up with various tasks. Dan Dennett was in charge of fortifications, using the power tools in the basement to good effect - barricading windows and doors to keep the unholy undead from sucking out our brains. Sam Harris, predictably (I guess) wanted to research the internet for information on how to fight of and slay zombies, but our connection was 'cut'.

Richard Dawkins was in a bit of shock and was more of a helping hand for the amazing impromptu carpentry of Dan Dennett. Hitch, it turns out, was a direct descendant of dr. van Helsing (quel surprise!) and had even come equipped with a 'monster fighting kit'.

We determined to fight a tactical retreat through the house into the attic, as the zombies advanced through our multiple lines of defense. On the way to the attic, we ran through my parent's traditional bedroom - from back in my 'growing up days'. There we disturbed, in bed, in slumber, my mom and my dad (who's been passed away for (~15 years now). They lept out of bed, tossed on their "leathers" (monster fighting gear?!?!) and joined in without a blink of an eye. Hitch van Helsing had plenty of accoutrement to go around?

Yup. That was my dream.

Freud that up, loosers!

Richard Dawkins - Open Letter to His Daughter

2008-04-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Juliet,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?

The answer to these questions is "evidence." Sometimes evidence means actually seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling..... ) that something is true. Astronauts have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The "evening star" looks like a bright twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful ball - the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or hearing or feeling..... ) is called an observation.

Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists - the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe - often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis ) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn't take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see...... Then he runs through the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? ); hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, " I diagnose that the child has measles. " Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called "tradition," "authority," and "revelation."

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by "tradition." Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like: "We Hindus believe so and so"; "We Muslims believe such and such"; "We Christians believe something else."

Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn't all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he didn't even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn't the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they've been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That's tradition.

The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn't true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn't make it any truer!

Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons - evidence - for believing what they believe. But actually, their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

Let's talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn't die but was lifted bodily in to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don't talk about much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don't call her the "Queen of Heaven." The tradition that Mary's body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn't invented until about six centuries after Jesus' time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as any story like "Snow White" was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six hundred years after Mary's death.

I'll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.

Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven't seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else's word for it. I haven't, with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like "authority." But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary's body zooming off to Heaven.

The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called "revelation." If you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary's body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been "revealed" to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling "revelation." It isn't only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?

Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You'd be very upset, and you'd probably say, "Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?" Now suppose I answered: "I don't actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead." You'd be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you'd know that an inside "feeling" on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise, you' d never be confident of things like "My wife loves me." But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can't trust them.

Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a "hunch'" about an idea that just "feels" right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.

I promised that I'd come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ..... other people. Most of us don't hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ''swim'' through a "sea of people." Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to '`swim about" in your own separate "people sea." Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at "swimming about in their people sea," children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child's brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can't be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed - even if it is completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place - it can go on forever.

Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood - not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can't be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can't be alive in Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: "Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?" And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Your loving Daddy

------------------------
There is some beautiful rationality contained in this missive.

A Dream of Elephants

2008-04-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

When I have migraines, or when I am ill and suffer fevers, I often have vivid fever dreams that I can remember for months or years afterwards. I'm not wholely sure what to attribute the lasting memory of these dreams, but nonetheless, I do experience them.

Years and years and years ago, I had a dream that I was a research biologist experimenting in higher intelligence in elephants and teaching them sign language. Presumably this occured sometime after I learned of their brain mass, and relative emotional attachment in family groupings. It could also have come shortly after reading "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Perhaps I should have taught them to paint signs?

He's the Dick to the Doc to the PhD...

2008-03-28T22:43:00.001-07:00

Airport Security and my "Magnetic" Personality.

2008-03-28T14:01:00.001-07:00

I've been travelling a lot lately. Some for work, some for vacation. I've been on planes 6 times in the past 7 weeks. Every time I go to the airport, I carefully lay out my laptop, empty my pockets. Take off my belt, and walk slowly through the detector gate.

Inevitably it beeps. Then I get the irritation of having to spread-eagle front and back for the security people as they wand me back to front to see what sort of carefully concealed weapon of destruction I may be carrying. To date, I have had to revmove my shoes three times and have them scanned separately. I have had my ankles carefully checked for concealed weaponry. I have had my butt and crotch inspected (from outside the clothes, you perv's) for "non-ordinary" equipment.

To date I have yet to be found smuggling anything more untoward that Denver Hayes shorts or Happyfeet socks through the airport check.

Its irritating. It bugs me that I have to go through this every damn time I fly because something about my body makes the metal detector beep. Nothing starts off a trip on a happy note like a near-strip-search and a quick check of my jewel-pouch with a detector-wand while other annoyed travelers stand and watch in increasing impatience.

Quote of the Day

2008-03-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

"The other thing we evolutionary biologists don't do enough of, and this stems from the previous point, is make an emotional and moral case for the study of evolution. Last night, I concluded my talk with a quote from Dover, PA creationist school board member William Cunningham, who declared, "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"

My response was, "In the last two minutes, someone died from a bacterial infection. We take a stand for him.""

From: http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2008/03/another_fight_about_framing_an.php

Simple, and concise.

Bullseye on Breast Cancer!

2008-03-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/03/12/scicanc112.xml

Breast cancer 'master gene' breakthrough

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 12/03/2008

Thousands of women who suffer from breast cancer were
today given fresh hope after scientists announced they had
discovered a way to stop the disease spreading.

Researchers find breast cancer trigger

Scraps stop breast cancer in its tracks

Aspirin 'can cut breast cancer risk by 20pc'

The breakthrough paves the way for the development of
drugs which could halt the progress of the disease and help
save the lives of some of the 44,000 women diagnosed
with the illness every year.

SATB1 forms a 3D cage-like structure within the cell nucleus (left) that binds to DNA specific sites in genes

The most deadly feature of breast cancer is when it
disperses from the breast, causing tumours to develop
in other parts of the body.

But now researchers say they have found a way of
stopping this process, known as metastasis, after
pinpointing the gene which controls the spread of the cancer.

By removing this gene from cancer cells the
American teams of scientists were able to halt
its progress and even turned the cancer cell back to normal.

The gene, called SATB1, is thought to control the
use of around 1000 others to promote the spread,
says Dr Terumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, California, whose r
esearch is published in the journal Nature today.

Simply Awesome!

Around the House: Home Theater nearing Finish Line

2008-02-01T15:09:00.000-08:00

Woot! Just got an email from Nic that our custom black ceiling tiles have arrived and will be delivered next saturday. In honour of this milestone, I'm posting an update on the DIY home theater she and I have been building in our home.

-enjoy!

*Apologies in advance for the dusty camera lens in some shots.

Room Size:
20'wide by 18' long (odd shaped room - see floor plan below)

Equipment List:

Optoma HD70 720p DLP Front Projector.
Yamaha HTR-6060 7.1 HDMI Receiver with 2 HDMI Inputs
Sony DVDS43k Upconverting DVD Player
Motorola 6280 HD PVR.

Speakers: on loan. Aiming for Axiom Epic Midi or Epic Grand Master HT Package in the next 2 or 3 months.

The builder insulated and framed the exterior walls, and roughed in plumbing for a full-bath (that would become my wet-bar area). My wife Nic and I decided that 4 bathrooms in the house were just too, and that 3 should be sufficient. We roughed in some electrical, built some partition walls, and hung and mudded the drywall over the course of the first 5 months of the build (Weekend warriors with not enough enthusiasm for mudding and taping I'm afraid.)

We determined early on that we wanted 2 rows of seating.

Floor Plan: Here is a rough layout of the basement footprint with some sketched in partition walls and measurements.

Once all the carpet was down, and the baseboards installed, we could work on some finishing touches to the room. We did hook up the projector which is being projected onto a home-made screen. (Blackout fabric stretched over 1x4 fir frame. No paint) 103" Diagonal.

2 Rows: The 2 rows of seating worked out really well. Here you see our 4 seater sofa and 2 captains chairs providing comfortable seating for 6 people.

Storage: Here is some built-in storage for movies, games, manuals etc...

Bar: Here is the wet-bar "in progress". We still have to hang the upper cabinet (below the soffit) and some bottle shelves into the corner. We're pretty happy with how it's turning out.

Screen Wall: Here is a view of the screen wall from the Bar area. The closed door leads to our electrical panel/recycling closet. The open door (just see the edge of it) leads to the stairs up.

Because we realized a lot of saving through 'sweat equity' by doing most of the work ourselves, we managed to keep the budget for this room very tight. I don't have a fully detailed materials budget, but so far we're at ~$8700 of our $12000 budget (Figure another $1800 for the Axiom speakers we want and a few dollars for finishing touches and we should be right on the money at the end of the reno in May '08.

2008 Facelift

2008-02-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since I was regularly blogging. Blame it on my brief love affair with Facebook Scrabble, blame it on my general business with life, or blame it on the fact that I'm a slacker.

All are partially correct.

In honour of my intention to post more brain-pharts, here is a new look and feel to my blarg.

-enjoy!

Slam Dunk for Reason. (PZ Myers)

2008-02-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.kkmslive.com/MP3/15013108-Simmons%20&%20Myers.MP3

Topic of the Debate: “Are Darwin’s Theories Fact or Faith Issues?”

The topic was changed about 1 hour prior to the debate at the request of Dr. Simmons of the Discovery Institute, from the originally proposed topic “the evidence of Evolution vs. evidence of Intelligent Design”.

The MP3 is 1 hour long, but worth the time if these questions interest you.

Cartoony Impiousness?

2007-09-27T09:45:00.001-07:00

http://falwellinhell.com/comic.cgi?comic=1

Yes, it is impious. Yes it is impolite. Yes it is brutal.

More on Evolved Morality - Dr. J. Haidt

2007-09-19T06:38:00.000-07:00

Reposted from: New York Times: Science - Sept 18, 2007

Is "Do Unto Others" written in our Genes?

By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: September 18, 2007

Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.

At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved?

In a series of recent articles and a book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that traces its connections both to religion and to politics.

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.

Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously — they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition.

Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.

So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when just one might seem plenty?

“We have a complex animal mind that only recently evolved language and language-based reasoning,” Dr. Haidt said. “No way was control of the organism going to be handed over to this novel faculty.”

He likens the mind’s subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant’s back. Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and largely ignored the elephant.

Dr. Haidt developed a better sense of the elephant after visiting India at the suggestion of an anthropologist, Richard Shweder. In Bhubaneswar, in the Indian state of Orissa, Dr. Haidt saw that people recognized a much wider moral domain than the issues of harm and justice that are central to Western morality. Indians were concerned with integrating the community through rituals and committed to concepts of religious purity as a way to restrain behavior.

On his return from India, Dr. Haidt combed the literature of anthropology and psychology for ideas about morality throughout the world. He identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together.

Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity.

The five moral systems, in Dr. Haidt’s view, are innate psychological mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies, selfishness is suppressed “through practices, rituals and stories that help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,” Dr. Haidt said.

He is aware that many people — including “the politically homogeneous discipline of psychology” — equate morality with justice, rights and the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere social convention. But many societies around the world do in fact behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral concepts, Dr. Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of the moral domain.

The idea that morality and sacredness are intertwined, he said, may now be out of fashion but has a venerable pedigree, tracing back to Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology.

Dr. Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the moral systems. “If we didn’t have religious minds we would not have stepped through the transition to groupishness,” he said. “We’d still be just small bands roving around.”

Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful,” he said.

Dr. Haidt came to recognize the importance of religion by a roundabout route. “I first found divinity in disgust,” he writes in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis.”

The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals.

“Imagine visiting a town,” Dr. Haidt writes, “where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex ‘doggie style’ in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.”

He sees the disgust evoked by such a scene as allied to notions of physical and religious purity. Purity is, in his view, a moral system that promotes the goals of controlling selfish desires and acting in a religiously approved way.

Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures. “Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said.

Working with a graduate student, Jesse Graham, Dr. Haidt has detected a striking political dimension to morality. He and Mr. Graham asked people to identify their position on a liberal-conservative spectrum and then complete a questionnaire that assessed the importance attached to each of the five moral systems. (The test, called the moral foundations questionnaire, can be taken online, at www.YourMorals.org.)

They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.

Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals.

Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on the five moral categories.

Take attitudes to contemporary art and music. Conservatives fear that subversive art will undermine authority, violate the in-group’s traditions and offend canons of purity and sanctity. Liberals, on the other hand, see contemporary art as protecting equality by assailing the establishment, especially if the art is by oppressed groups.

Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give some weight to individual protections, they often have a better understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative attitudes, in his view.

Dr. Haidt, who describes himself as a moderate liberal, says that societies need people with both types of personality. “A liberal morality will encourage much greater creativity but will weaken social structure and deplete social capital,” he said. “I am really glad we have New York and San Francisco — most of our creativity comes out of cities like these. But a nation that was just New York and San Francisco could not survive very long. Conservatives give more to charity and tend to be more supportive of essential institutions like the military and law enforcement.”

Other psychologists have mixed views about Dr. Haidt’s ideas.

Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, “I’m a big fan of Haidt’s work.” He added that the idea of including purity in the moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no place in moral reasoning.

But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s view that the task of morality is to suppress selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic tendencies but do not have moral systems.

“For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal said.

He said that he also disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s alignment of liberals with individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness.

“It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good — safety laws for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor — that are not nearly as well recognized by conservatives,” Dr. de Waal said.

That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at New York University. Dr. Jost said he admired Dr. Haidt as a “very interesting and creative social psychologist” and found his work useful in drawing attention to the strong moral element in political beliefs.

But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr. Jost said.

In defense of his views, Dr. Haidt said that moral claims could be valid even if not universally acknowledged.

“It is at least possible,” he said, “that conservatives and traditional societies have some moral or sociological insights that secular liberals do not understand.”

-----------------------

I can see the intuitive morality versus the conscious morality dilemma. What we reason may be ok, our instincts may not agree with. And I tend to agree with the notion that "behaviours that strengthen group-dynamics" and/or "behaviours that lend themselves to social-selection" would be useful for group-minded species.

As far as the Liberal versus Conservative sympathies, I can see where Dr. Haidt is leaning, but I think that in modern western politics and modern western religion there are going to be a wider spectrum of "shades of grey" to work with for North Americans and Europeans with wider access to diverse cultures and higher standards of education.

I'm definitely adding "The Happiness Hypothesis" to my reading list.

Evolved Morality?

2007-09-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

Reposted from: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19526190.400-what-good-is-god.html

* 01 September 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Helen Phillips

...So why do religious concepts provoke moral behaviour even in non-believers? It's because both religion and morality are evolutionary adaptations, says Jesse Bering, who heads the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, UK. Morality does not stem from religion, as is often argued, he suggests: they evolved separately, albeit in response to the same forces in our social environment. Once our ancestors acquired language and theory of mind - the ability to understand what others are thinking - news of any individual's reputation could spread far beyond their immediate group. Anyone with tendencies to behave pro-socially would then have been at an advantage, Bering says: "What we're concerned about in terms of our moral behaviour is what other people think about us." So morality became adaptive.

At the same time the capacity for religious belief would also have emerged. Our reputation-conscious ancestors would have experienced a pervasive feeling of being watched and judged, he says, which they would readily have attributed to supernatural sources since the cognitive system underlying theory of mind also seeks to attribute intentionality and meaning, even where there is none. So the same adaptations that led to morality could also have driven the evolution of religion.

Meanwhile, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson of the State University of New York argues that religious practices are also important for group cohesion and are therefore subject to group selection. As humans have become ever more social over the past 100,000 years, and especially from 10,000 years ago, when agriculture led to huge division of labour in societies, religion and morality would have co-evolved as ways to promote social cohesion. "Religion did play a crucial role in giving us our moral nature, at least evolutionarily speaking," says psychologist Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia.

Nowadays, adds Bering, whether we believe in a God or not, the brain architecture that causes us to behave as though we might get caught behaving badly is still present. As a result, atheists are no more likely to be immoral than believers. Indeed, his own experiments show that, regardless of whether people believe in supernatural beings, both adults and children cheat less when performing a task in private if Bering has first primed them with the idea that there may be a "god" or a "ghost" watching.

Cultural and technological advances have also changed the way we live, making western liberal societies poor models for understanding the link between religion and morality, according to Haidt. He argues that we are now far more individualistic than our ancestors. "Technology has changed our lives so we can live in new ways. We can now be moral without religion. We have developed other means of social control," he says, such as laws, police forces and CCTV cameras.

Interesting that the formation of language, and thus a far-reaching 'reputation' may have had some influence on behavioural changes. Acting 'moral' made for a better reputation, and better reception from 'strangers' who had heard of a person's exploits 'through the grapevine'?

Bloggers for Peer Reviewed Research Icon Contest

2007-08-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

My Entries.

Squirrel Obstacle Course

2007-08-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Question: Could the problem-solving skills used by habitual users of the course cause evolutionary pressure over long periods of time?

Exaptation

2007-08-15T10:28:00.001-07:00

Early man, living on the savanna, evolved to throw a spear. Being able to successfully throw a spear allowed early humanity to hunt/gather more food, and thus a better chance to pass on the genetics that allow for well-thrown-spears. To throw a spear well, humans must be able to instinctively calculate to allow for wind, motion of target, up-hill, down-hill throws, etc.

As a side effect of being able to instinctively calculate a well-thrown spear (survival adaptation) when humanity later invents mathematics and trigonometry, humanity finds they have a built-in aptitude for this kind of thinking.

Exaptation = An unlooked for side effect of evolved behaviors.

An interesting side effect of this is that a larger right-brain (computation) makes for better antelope catching. The larger right brain allows for quicker instinctive calculation of prehistoric antelope artillery - making for quicker kills, more prosperous humans, and more reproduced genes to select from.

Further, it is easier for the genetic map to simply allow for a larger over-all brain, than simply a larger right brain. So consequently the left-brain (linguistics, imagination) also gets larger.

Ultimately the result is the evolution of poetic artillery-men. (*grin*)

Paraphrased from PZ Myers, Prof. Biology, University of Minnesota.

-----------------------------------------------
Interesting notion. For a start, this theory starts to explain how behaviours may evolve that do not necessarily directly equate to passing on the genetic line - or may be an unlooked for result of that survival trait. Very interesting.

Why/How could Altruism "evolve"?

2007-08-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

Quite simply: Altruism through protecting the young in spite of personal risk, alarm calling, and various other evolved behaviours have clearly demonstrated benefits for genetic pools.

If I were a....

2007-08-13T06:51:00.001-07:00

Lego-man, Star-Trek Red Shirt.

(Hey, why not kill 2 birds with one (plastic) stone?)

;-)

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mm2/

Biblical Skepticism

2007-07-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Parallel Translations

NASB:

GWT:

Instead, test everything. Hold on to what is good.(GOD'S WORD®)

KJV:

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

ASV:

prove all things; hold fast that which is good;

BBE:

Let all things be tested; keep to what is good;

DBY:

but prove all things, hold fast the right;

ERV:

prove all things; hold fast that which is good;

WEY:

but test all such, and retain hold of the good.

WBS:

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

WEB:

Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.

YLT:

all things prove; that which is good hold fast;

Yes, I know...its the old picking of nits about the good book as the inerrant word of god...but one has to respect a passage that essentially tells one to test/prove/research all things and discard the bad.

Now it may be a stretch to equate 'that which is to be discarded' in the above c&v quotations with 'the untrue' but from a skeptical perspective it doesn't look like a big stretch. I'm sure the 'context police' will say that 'that which is to be discarded' is quantified by 'that which brings god displeasure' and in fact has nothing to do with truth or proof or evidenced fact.

Take it as you will....I find it amusing that the book iteslf contains instruction for skeptical analysis.

2007-07-27T14:41:00.001-07:00

Looks like I'll be starting my hollywood career as an extra in the upcoming Simpson's Movie.

Wheeee!

Of Peer Approval, Agent Attribution and Time-Binding.

2007-07-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

As a social creature, humanity seeks peer approval in social situations. We see this in almost every aspect of social structuring. People seek the approval and well wishes of their peers and associates, and those that are outcast or shunned by their peers and associates suffer from this isolation. We tell stories to each other - we are a story telling species. We tell stories through words and art and acting and actions. But we seek approval for our stories. Great tales get re-told over and over - and they become the "Canon". Social Myths that meet the approval of groups get told over and over again, reinforcing this group approval of the tale. Embellishments and heroic actions get more approval, and are re-told far more often than stories of the mundane or ordinary.

As the descendant of a prey animal, humanity uses an Agent Attribution mechanism to fill shadows with horrors, rustling bushes with potential predators, half-heard sounds with inimical intent, half felt rhythms with projected animus. It is widely thought that our brains do this as a survival mechanism. To assume that all bushes with rustling leaves contain a jaguar that could eat us - simply makes us safer. Sure there will be false positives; certainly there will be rustling bushes that do not contain jaguars waiting to pounce on us and drag us off to be consumed. But many false positives, in this instances, are far more desirable than any single false negative. Thus our perceptual projection of "Agents in Bushes" acts as an evolved survival mechanism that helps protect us from danger.

It is also widely thought that humanity is the only species that binds time. We conceptualize yesterday. We conceptualize tomorrow. But this then brings up the question of tomorrow's tomorrow (and tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow...ad infinitum.) We have the concept of eternity...a shadowy, conceptual future that we can envision through recursive reasoning, but can't really picture in a mental map with any sort of realist predictability. Sure we might do many of the same things next Tuesday that we did last Tuesday, and maybe the next several Tuesdays will be very similar for us, but we can't really say that every Tuesday from now until we experience no more Tuesdays will be the same for us. Thus the concept of eternity becomes a shadowy cavern of potential actions and reactions. We can imagine events, but we cannot, with any accuracy, predict them.

Is it reasonable then to think that these three phenomena of human mentality (among many) have combined to have great effect on our history as a species? In conceptualizing "Eternity" (tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow's...tomorrow) with our ability to time bind, do we then instinctively need to attribute "agency" to that vast gulf of unknown, unknowable possibility? Do we "need" (instinctively, or due to evolutionary programming) to envision the jaguar in the bush of tomorrow? Further, in our capacity as a story teller species, do we then embellish the jaguar in the bush, turning it into a wondrous and spectacular Jaguar with mystical powers and supreme animus? What then if our peers and associates approve of our story, and re-tell it over and over and over - embellishing it as they go along?

That's GOTTA be good for you.....

2007-07-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Today Nic and I were driving into work though some rain. On all the roads we traveled there was a foamy white "chemical" residue on the pavement...every road.

It was either washing off the pavement, or being washed onto the pavement from surrounding landscape. WE were passing through residential and commercial areas of the city, but the chemical seemed to be everywhere.

I really don't know what kind of chemical it was, but that's GOTTA be good for you....

You are Here...

2007-07-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

Don't Panic.

The Skeptic's Primer - Answers to Difficult Questions

2007-07-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

Q: Is(Are) there (a) God(s)?
A: We don't know.
Complex A: We are a Story Telling Species*. We consume verbal, written, audio and visual entertainments regularly that delight our senses, spark our imagination, and cause our minds to real with imagined possibilities of the strange, spectacular, and sinister. While we don't really know if there is anything out there, we excel at creating stories about unheard of and unwitnessed wonders that delight, dismay, and/or detail the peccadilloes of our imagination. In short, we make stories up about daily events - it is not a great stretch to think we might make stories up about events that are outside of the ordinary. In spite of a wealth of literature concerning deity(s) in our common mythology, there is no evidence to support the existence of any one god or god(s).

Q: Is there life after Death?
A: We don't know.
Complex A: Evidence suggests that the "Self" exists because of electrical and hormonal activity in the brain. When a person or animal dies, all electrical activity in the body and hormonal production ceases. While there may be border states of "changed" perception during the shut-down of these processes that may lead to imagined experiences or simply altered state recollections from those brought back from the brink of death, there is no evidence that any process of self or thought continues on after electrical brain activity and hormonal production ceases.

Q: Where does morality come from?
A: Morality is likely the combination of environmental influence and evolved behavioral instinct.
Complicated A: We have observed that altruism triggers the pleasure centers of the brain. We have also observed patterns of behavior that suggest that altruism functions in an environment of natural selection to aid in the preservation of a genetic line.

*Being a Story Teller Species* (See above) we excel at making up just-so stories and cautionary tales that help clarify and outline what social groups perceive to be moral and ethical behaviors, but those behaviors are not sourced in, or derived from these morality myths, but rather seem to derive from observed behaviors of parental and mentor figures, as well as social influence from peers.

Q:How did the Universe Begin?
A: We don't know.
Complex A: We have cosmological evidence that suggests that the universe may have begun in certain ways, and can answer with a fair degree of certainty that what we observe supports our suggested conclusions...but we're open to new evidence - whether that be more evidence supporting our current theories, or new evidence that suggests a new origin for the universe.

*Being a Story Teller Species* (See above) we have made up many stories about how the universe may have began, stretching our imaginations to their unfettered limits as best we could. While these stories, myths and legends may be compelling, there is no evidence to suggest that any of these stories are anything more than myths and legends.

Q: How did life begin?
A: We don't know.
Complex A: We don't know. We have seen experiments where complex proteins have assembled and replicated themselves, even mutating and changing into new "organic" substances through multiple combines (See Spiegleman’s Monster). This suggests that life may have began in this fashion. We also have genetic evidence that suggests that all creatures came from a common source of genetic information deep in the past. Combining this information, our best hypothesis is that life began as a complex soup of chemicals that combined to form precursors to what we now know to be the building blocks of life.

*Being a Story Teller Species*, we have created many stories, myths and fables about the beginning of the universe, world, life, etc....but there is no evidence that suggests any of these origin myths are accurate or representative of what actually did occur.

Q:What if I don't want to live in a world without God(s), Afterlife(s), Reincarnation(s) or other "out of body" phenomena?
A: The desire for something more doesn't make stories, myths, or legends born of that desire truthful.
Complex A: *Being a Story Teller Species* with grand ideals and lofty aspirations it may be comforting for us to create stories, myths, and legends about a protective powerful figurehead that help us make sense of things we don't understand. The fact of this comforting or palliative effect is not an argument for the truth of these myths and legends. Whether the stories are true or not true, the fact of reality remains the same. It is perfectly acceptable for there to be questions about life, the universe, and everything to which the only answer we have is “We don’t know.”

The Bat Cave - Home Theater

2007-07-06T08:39:00.001-07:00

From: http://www.cepro.com/slideshow/image/150/

So I wonder if my wife will let me install a "Batcave" style home theater?

*evil grin*

Victorian Horror

2007-07-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've been asked by a close friend to pen an episodic Victorian Thriller story that she will ink into a graphic novel.

I'm actually pretty excited about the prospect. I've been doing some cursory research and think I'm going to center my story around the year 1875.

While I have no illusions of being another Lovecraft, I do dearly love the early horror inspired by he and Lord Dunsany.

*rubs hands together...*

Carl Sagan's Dragon

2007-06-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Beautiful.

Zeitgeist?

2007-06-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Unverified...but compelling.

Quote for the Day: Neil deGrasse Tyson

2007-06-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

"If you profess wear the badge "Teacher, Instructor, Professor, Educator" it is your obligation to understand the conduits of communication that are necessary to enlighten your audience. And...not every student can use the same conduit for enlightenment." Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Monster in the Closet...

2007-06-14T09:02:00.001-07:00

The experiment, conducted by Sol Spiegelman of the University of Illinois, consisted of introducing the viral RNA into a medium containing the RNA's own replication enzyme, plus a supply of raw materials and some salts, and incubating the mixture. When Spiegelman did this, the system obligingly replicated the strands of naked RNA. Spiegelman then extracted some of the freshly synthesized RNA, put it in a separate nutrient solution, and let it multiply. He then decanted some of that RNA into yet another solution, and so on, in a series of steps.

The effect of allowing unrestricted replication was that the RNA that multiplied fastest won out, and got passed on to the "next generation" in the series. The decanting operation therefore replaced, in a highly accelerated way, the basic competition process of Darwinian evolution, acting directly on the RNA. In this respect it resembled an RNA world.

Spiegelman's results were spectacular. As anticipated, copying errors occurred during replication. Relieved of the responsibility of working for a living and the need to manufacture protein coats, the spoon-fed RNA strands began to slim down, shedding parts of the genome that were no longer required and merely proved to be an encumbrance. The RNA molecules that could replicate the fastest simply out-multiplied the competition. After seventy-four generations, what started out as an RNA strand with 4,500 nucleotide bases ended up as a dwarf genome with only 220 bases. This raw replicator with no frills attached could replicate very fast. It was dubbed Spiegelman's monster.

*Evolution at work in the laboratory.

In 1974, Manfred Eigen and his colleagues also experimented with a chemical broth containing Qb replication enzyme and salts, and an energized form of the four bases that make up the building blocks of RNA. They tried varying the quantity of viral RNA initially added to the mixture. As the amount of input RNA was progressively reduced, the experimenters found that, with little competition, it enjoyed untrammeled exponential growth. Even a single RNA molecule added to the broth was enough to trigger a population explosion.

But then something truly amazing was discovered. Replicating strands of RNA were still produced even when not a single molecule of viral RNA was added! To return to my architectural analogy, it was rather like throwing a pile of bricks into a giant mixer and producing, if not a house, then at least a garage. At first Eigen found the results hard to believe, and checked to see whether accidental contamination had occurred. Soon the experimenters convinced themselves that they were witnessing for the first time the spontaneous synthesis of RNA strands form their basic building blocks. Analysis revealed that under some experimental conditions the created RNA resembled Spiegelman's monster.

*Biogenesis in the lab? Well....lets be honest, its not quite biogenesis...its more pre-biogenesis. The RNA would have to form protein skins and develop into cellular organisms.....but its certainly a hint toward biogenesis.

More on Evolution....

2007-06-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

The Canard: Random Mutation cannot produce complex 'finished' systems.

The Response: Mutations in evolution are not so much 'random' as indifferent, or undirected. There is no predictability or purpose to the mutation that, through natural selection, results in evolution...it just happens.

Jerry Coyne's explanation:

On the basis of much evidence, scientists have concluded that mutations occur randomly. The term "random" here has a specific meaning that is often misunderstood, even by biologists. What we mean is that mutations occur irrespective of whether they would be useful to the organism. Mutations are simply errors in DNA replication. Most of them are harmful or neutral, but a few of them can turn out to be useful. And there is no known biological mechanism for jacking up the probability that a mutation will meet the current adaptive needs of the organism. Bears adapting to snowy terrain will not enjoy a higher probability of getting mutations producing lighter coats than will bears inhabiting non-snowy terrain.

What we do not mean by "random" is that all genes are equally likely to mutate (some are more mutable than others) or that all mutations are equally likely (some types of DNA change are more common than others). It is more accurate, then, to call mutations "indifferent" rather than "random": the chance of a mutation happening is indifferent to whether it would be helpful or harmful. Evolution by selection, then, is a combination of two steps: a "random" (or indifferent) step--mutation--that generates a panoply of genetic variants, both good and bad (in our example, a variety of new coat colors); and then a deterministic step--natural selection--that orders this variation, keeping the good and winnowing the bad (the retention of light-color genes at the expense of dark-color ones).

So....if my imperfect understanding of the explanation is accurate, the following happens:

- Populations reproduce.

- Genetic mutation causes changes in offspring during embryonic formation.

- Offspring who 'chance' to have beneficial mutations that favour their survivability may survive to reproduce more than those with neutral or non-beneficial mutations.

- The population of 'beneficially mutated breeding subjects' is more likely to pass on a beneficial mutation to their offspring (along with other mutations).

- Over time the net accumulation of passed on beneficial traits may lead to a beneficial mutation being adapted by a species and becoming a 'common inheritance' of said species.

- Natural Selection combined with Beneficial Mutations may not result in increased complexity, but in fact may result in the reduction of certain complexities if those reductions amount to a net-positive or net-benefit for the species.

Note: I'm becoming quite a fan of Jerry Coyne.

Strange and Compelling

2007-06-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

From: http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akoblin/

What happens when you amalgamate the flight paths over the US, colour coordinate them by airline, and then time-laps the flight paths? Serendipitous Beauty!

The Succinct Definition of Evolution.

2007-06-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

"There is only one going theory of evolution, and it is this: organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection."

Jerry Coyne, Proff. Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago.

June 5, 2007 - Calgary. A bit of rain.

2007-06-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Aniston is Equivalent to HOW MANY chickens?

2007-06-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

According to Weird Converter, Jen Aniston is equal to 24.9478363422 chickens.

This conversion tool has so many possibilities.

1 Giraffe's neck = 0.1197306539 the length of the world's longest snake.

The Pleasures of Altruism

2007-06-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html

"Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable."
---------------------------------------------

So...there is some evidence that racial altruism or solidarity produces a pleasurable response in the brain of the typical human.
YET...we still see tribalism rampant in 21 century humanity. We understand that evolving a pleasurable altruism trait may be beneficial to humanity.

It feels good to be good to others, so if we're all good to each other, we'll all feel good together and that is a good thing.

But we compartmentalize, and segregate, and break down our species into smaller, easily sorted packages that we can conceptualize better.
Which brings up an interesting supposition. Do all these religious types who feel "all moral and warm" because of their faith, trigger this "pleasurable altruism" circuit in their brain through tribal solidarity of congregational fellowship?
Could this be part of the reason that so many people take comfort in tribal segregation - by joining a socieity that allows for maximum triggering of the "pleasurable altruism" circuit?
Sororities, Fraternities, Political Parties, Churches, Clubs, Gangs, Associations, Social Networking, Sporting Teams and Fan Associations - all may be humanity flailing around trying to maximize this triggering.

Civilization - The Real Thing

2007-05-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

This is a composite image of the earth at night. It is compiled from many satellite images. The brighter areas are the bright lights of civilization.

A large scale image is available for download here.

Life 2.0?

2007-05-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

From the newsweek article at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18882828/site/newsweek/

Christopher Voigt, of UC San Francisco, and Christina Smolke, of Caltech, are in the early stages of designing microbes that would circulate through the human bloodstream, seeking out cancerous tumors anywhere in the body. The microbes might be equipped with a biodevice that detects the low oxygen levels characteristic of a tumor, another that invades the cancer cells, a third that generates a toxin to kill the cells and a fourth that hangs around afterward in case the cancer comes back. All this would happen without the patient's even knowing. Eventually, circulating cellular sentries could monitor and adjust blood levels of critical substances including glucose and cholesterol.

Now that's Cool!

Promiscuous Teleology

2007-05-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Selected quotes shamelessly pasted from:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html

Our intuitive psychology also contributes to resistance to science. One significant bias is that children naturally see the world in terms of design and purpose. For instance, four year-olds insist that everything has a purpose, including lions ("to go in the zoo") and clouds ("for raining"), a propensity that Deborah Kelemen has dubbed "promiscuous teleology." Additionally, when asked about the origin of animals and people, children spontaneously tend to provide and to prefer creationist explanations.

Just as children's intuitions about the physical world make it difficult for them to accept that the Earth is a sphere, their psychological intuitions about agency and design make it difficult for them to accept the processes of evolution.

So....if, as children, we assign purpose to each object (Clouds are for Rain, Kittens are for Cuddling, etc...) and find it easier to accept, at this age, "created" explanations for the origins of things, then perhaps those adults who cling to "creationist theory" have simply not developed (or over-developed) the brain structure or thought patterns that govern acceptance of new ideas and new information?

Some culture-specific information is not associated with any particular source. It is "common knowledge." As such, learning of this type of information generally bypasses critical analysis. A prototypical example is that of word meanings. Everyone uses the word "dog" to refer to dogs, so children easily learn that this is what they are called. Other examples include belief in germs and electricity. Their existence is generally assumed in day-to-day conversation and is not marked as uncertain; nobody says that they "believe in electricity." Hence even children and adults with little scientific background believe that these invisible entities really exist, a topic explored in detail by Paul Harris and his colleagues.

Science is not special here. Geographic information and historical information is also typically assumed, which is how an American child comes to believe that there is a faraway place called Africa and that there was a man who lived long ago named Abraham Lincoln. And, in some cultures, certain religious beliefs can be assumed as well. For instance, if the existence of supernatural entities like gods, karma, and ancestor spirits is never questioned by adults in the community, the existence of such entities will be unquestioningly accepted by children.

So children raised in a family/society where skepticism is the norm, or where critical analysis of scientific and/or philisophical thought is the norm may adopt such practices in the same unquestioning fashion?

But in some domains, including much of science, direct evaluation is difficult or impossible. Few of us are qualified to assess claims about the merits of string theory, the role in mercury in the etiology of autism, or the existence of repressed memories. So rather than evaluating the asserted claim itself, we instead evaluate the claim's source. If the source is deemed trustworthy, people will believe the claim, often without really understanding it.

Aha! So children raised in a family/society where science is dubbed to be untrustworthy will accept that science and the scientific method is not to be taken at face value in the same unquestioning fashion that they adopt unquestioned social mythology from parents, adults and trusted elders.

This deference to authority isn't limited to science; the same process holds for certain religious, moral, and political beliefs as well. In an illustrative recent study, subjects were asked their opinion about a social welfare policy, which was described as being endorsed either by Democrats or by Republicans. Although the subjects sincerely believed that their responses were based on the objective merits of the policy, the major determinant of what they thought of the policy was in fact whether or not their favored political party was said to endorse it. More generally, many of the specific moral intuitions held by members of a society appear to be the consequence, not of personal moral contemplation, but of deference to the views of the community.

And there we have it. There is no divine source for morality, but rather impressionable people seeking a like minded tribe to associate with, selects morality based on the consensus of said tribe. Which goes a long way to explain the shifting zeitgeist of the 21 century away from scripturally mandated moral directives to more forgiving culture driven morality. We've all but ended slavery, and sexism (*nod*...there are holdouts, granted) and are working on eliminating prejudicial discrimination based on sex and sexuality.

Given the role of trust in social learning, it is particularly worrying that national surveys reflect a general decline in the extent to which people trust scientists. To end on a practical note, then, one way to combat resistance to science is to persuade children and adults that the institute of science is, for the most part, worthy of trust.

It appears that the trend in Christian Fundamentalist circles is to erode the public trust in science, playing out creationism and ID illusions as alternatives. If successful, these programs may inadvertently lead to the dumbing-down of populations of C.F.'s through their widespread skepticism of the Scientific Community and subsequent lack of aptitudes for the Hard Sciences - and perhaps increasing aptitudes for the Junk Sciences. I tend to agree that promotion of trust in the Scientific Method and encouraging children to experience the varied disciplines of science with an open and childlike sense of wonder and discovery is not only healthy, but essential.

Oldest Life on Earth

2007-05-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=3f0f7bed-167c-43a6-b5a2-957f78f1a061

A Canadian-led team of scientists has discovered what they say is the oldest indisputable evidence of life on Earth -- the fossilized trackways of slithering microbes in a 3.35-billion-year-old rock from Australia.

The team, led by University of Western Ontario geologist Neil Banerjee and including three scientists from the University of Alberta, claims to have completed the first "direct dating" of a biomarker from the planet's earliest epoch. Previous studies -- including one led by Banerjee in 2004 that fixed a 3.5-billion-year-old age to fossilized microbe trails found in South Africa -- have been criticized for relying on techniques that dated surrounding rock rather than the "ichnofossil" tracks themselves.

Banerjee said Monday the dating of the Australian fossils is "quite unique" because the researchers used a state-of-the-art, laser-plasma mass spectrometer at the U of A to precisely target tiny minerals and organic residues captured inside the microbes' primordial burrows.

"One of the criticisms of our earlier work was based on the analogy that just because the London Underground was dug into million-year-old rock, that doesn't make the Underground a million years old," said Banerjee. "This time, we dated the fossil itself. To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has directly dated an archean microfossil."

Coolness!!!

Zen Moment

2007-05-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

The Security Code Verifier:
Is it serendipity? Is it an accident? Is it a message from GOrD?

Chuck Norris reveals the diabolical 5-Year plan for Atheism

2007-05-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Shamelessly re-posted from:
http://goosetheantithesis.blogspot.com/2007/05/we-pissed-off-chuck-norris.html

To inform his readers of the correct plan of attack, Chuck details the Evil Atheist Conspiracy's™ 5-year plan (procured, no doubt, from the freshly slain corpse of one of our operatives). This includes:

Outlawing Christianity

1. by causing a goof-up at the mint, resulting in "In God We Trust" being accidentally left off some new dollar coins.
2. by joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation and ensuring that the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is correctly applied.
3. by discovering the existence of a nonbelieving Congressman.
4. by forcing Congress to pass a hate-crime bill.

Targeting Children

1. by daring to raise them without religion.
2. by offering a non-religious summer camp for freethinking kids.
3. by providing an online forum to allow teenagers to question faith.
4. by offering unholy Richard Dawkins link buttons for MySpace pages.

Promoting Atheism

1. by purchasing Richard Dawkins' "atheist bible."
2. by allowing Sam Harris to write letters.
3. by ignoring the science that proves God.

*little does he know that we're now in Year 7 of the program......

I am....a scientific atheist?

2007-05-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

What Kind of Atheist are you?
http://quizfarm.com/run.php/Quiz?quiz_id=34703

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.

Scientific Atheist

100%

Apathetic Atheist

83%

Spiritual Atheist

75%

Militant Atheist

67%

Agnostic

67%

Angry Atheist

50%

Theist

33%

What kind of atheist are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Hurricane Season?

2007-05-23T11:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.noaa.gov/

NOAA PREDICTS ABOVE NORMAL 2007 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON
13 to 17 Named Storms Predicted
Experts at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center are projecting a 75 percent chance that the Atlantic Hurricane Season will be above normal this year—showing the ongoing active hurricane era remains strong.
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Another Katrina? I hope not - for the sake of any innocents that may be harmed by a strong hurricane season.