OVO

Science Daily: Learning Suffers If Brain Transcript Isn't Transported Far Out To End Of Neurons [LINK-ZUM]

Researchers have long puzzled over why a gene known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is crucial to the ability of neurons in the hippocampus to grow and connect to each other -- forming the basis of memory and learning -- produces two different transcripts, which then each fabricate identical proteins.

In the July 11 issue of Cell, the scientists report the answer, and it has to do with transportation. They found that the longer of the two transcripts (messenger RNAs, or mRNAs) include extra sequences that "motor" molecules attach to, in order to move the information far away from the nucleus of the cell and toward the long, tree-like branches of the nerve cell known as dendrites. There, protein-synthesizing machines use that mRNA to produce protein that helps small protrusions (called dendritic spines) on these dendrites grow.

[Article continues at link. Most of my readers will accept that the description of the biological process above, or something like it, is occurring in their own brains. But many of my readers will at the same time claim that there is a mind, or a soul, some essential part of themselves, an animating force. They will claim that consciousness is more than a biological process. The exact mechanism of consciousness is something we're getting close to understanding, while vitalism has always failed to provide us any evidence. Any evidence at all. I claim consciousness is a physical process that occurs in the body, primarily in the brain, involving chemicals and electricity and following the laws of physics. This claim has implications for the ideas of individuality and of free will. Perhaps I'm wrong. What do you think? - Trevor Blake]

Labels: science

Science Daily: Children Overestimate Cute Animals In Rainforests, While Underestimating Insects And Annelids [LINK-ZUM]

Edgar Turner and colleagues at the University of Cambridge investigated children's perceptions of rainforest biodiversity by asking young visitors to the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, UK to draw their ideal rainforest, as part of a competition, and found that while children have a sophisticated understanding of rainforest ecosystems, they tend to overestimate the relative numbers of some taxa (mainly "cuter" mammals, birds and reptiles) while underestimating the proportions of other, less charismatic taxa, such as insects and annelids.

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: B12, science

Science Daily: Rare Plants And Endangered Species Such As Tigers At Risk From Traditional Medicine [LINK-ZUM]

Two reports from TRAFFIC, the world's largest wildlife trade monitoring network, on traditional medicine systems in Cambodia and Vietnam suggest that illegal wildlife trade, including entire tiger skeletons, and unsustainable harvesting is depleting the region's rich and varied biodiversity and putting the primary healthcare resource of millions at risk. The results of field studies carried out between 2005 and 2007 found a significant number of Cambodians and Vietnamese rely on traditional medicine. Relaxation of international trade barriers, the impact of free market economies and complex national government policies have led to an increase in the demand and supply for flora and fauna used in traditional medicine. The growing illegal wildlife trade in the region is fuelled by the difficulty of sourcing prescribed ingredients, including parts, from globally threatened species.

[Article continues at link. Rather than blaming capitalism for the loss of these plants and animals, I'd blame superstition. There is no medicinal value to be found in a tiger skeleton. Keeping that superstition in circulation to honor cultural diversity is what's killing the tigers off. You can either have hurtful superstitious nonsense treated with respect or you can have tigers. You can't have both. Scientific criticism of these traditional medicines will save the lives of rare plants and animals. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: magick, science

Science Daily: Fortified Cassava Could Provide A Day's Nutrition In A Single Meal [LINK-ZUM]

Scientists have determined how to fortify the cassava plant, a staple root crop in many developing countries, with enough vitamins, minerals and protein to provide the poor and malnourished with a day's worth of nutrition in a single meal. The researchers have further engineered the cassava plant so it can resist the crop's most damaging viral threats and are refining methods to reduce cyanogens, substances that yield poisonous cyanide if they are not properly removed from the food before consumption. The reduction of cyanogens also can shorten the time it takes to process the plant into food, which typically requires three to six days to complete. Studies also are under way to extend the plant's shelf life so it can be stored or shipped.

[Article continues at link. When was the last time religion did something comparable? Who are held up as heroes of humanity, scientists or clergy? Here is science offering an actual solution to an actual problem. Religion offers imaginary solutions (salvation) to imaginary problems (sin). All praise to the scientists - practical moralists and hands-on philosophers - who are achieving this real-life miracle. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: religion, science

Kevin Kelly: The Unclear Origins of Oil [LINK-ZUM]

Crude oil is almost $140 per barrel. By now you'd think we would know where it comes from. No one really knows. The conventional wisdom is that oil descends from algae from eons ago. Lots and lots of algae. Unimaginable mounds of dead algae in quantities no longer found on this planet, pressed, and cooked into hydrocarbon liquids. Thus: fossil fuel. Others, notably the Russians, have an alternative theory that oil comes from non-biological carbon compounds deep in this planet, like the methane oceans we find on other planets. [...] An emerging third theory is that bacteria living within rocks produce oil. In this theory there is a biological component (the bacteria) which constitute the oil-generating process, but the originating material in not degraded organic material, but rather geological carbon gases. The path is carbon gas --> bug --> oil.

[Article continues at link. My father has been talking about this for years. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: science, transportation

Trevor Blake: Souls and Minds [LINK-ZUM]

Some people claim that souls exist. Souls are said to be something like the pilot for the ship of our bodies, the true animating agent in what would otherwise be base physical matter. Many earlier cultures claimed that the soul was located inside our bodies. Perhaps it was in our chest, because when we were inflamed with passion or danger something moved in our chest. Thus the word 'heart' has come to mean central (the heart of an argument) even though our hearts are not physically in the center of our bodies. As time passed it was learned the moving organ inside us was the heart but that it functioned to circulate blood, not as an animating agent. The more we learned about our bodies, the more our souls changed from a physical object inside us to a wispy ghost-organ that wasn't really in us, just... around. The evidence suggests that our consciousness, our animating agent, occurs mostly in our brains and entirely as a physical process. There is no soul, and there never has been. But belief in souls continues.

A few questions about souls may convince the reader what some have claimed about souls breaks down in the face of real-life evidence. Look at any two people. How many souls do they have? How many souls, then, did Joseph and Luka Banda have at birth, and how many souls do they have now? How many souls do Abigail and Brittany Hensel have? Lori and George Schappell? And Manar Majed? Lydia Fairchild is a chimera. While she still in the womb, her body and the body of a twin merged into one. How many souls does Lydia have? Did the species we evolved from have souls? What about the species before that one?

How a believer in souls answers these questions usually reveals that they actually hold the soul to be the mind - the functioning of the human brain. The mind is a more secularized version of the soul, one that places its seat in the physical organ of the brain but is still exempt from any responsibility to show evidence of itself. The mind is a small step toward accuracy but doesn't go far enough. We can delight in our consciousness as a physical process just as we delight in any other physical process. We become 'one with nature' when we abandon the supernatural.

Labels: atheist, science

AP: Divorce, unwed parenting costs billions [LINK-ZUM]

Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing cost U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion a year, according to a study commissioned by four groups advocating more government action to bolster marriages. Sponsors say the study is the first of its kind and hope it will prompt lawmakers to invest more money in programs aimed at strengthening marriages.

[Article continues at link. Full state and federal recognition of same-sex marriages would increase the number of families. Full state and federal support for same-sex couples to adopt would increase the number of families. Science-based sex education would decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. Increased access to contraception and abortion and sterilization would decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. I'm not all that smart or educated, but I'm quite sure the above four-point plan would work very well and cost very little. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: science, sex

Keith Lockitch: The Easter Masquerade [LINK-ZUM]

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII established our modern calendar and fixed the rules determining the date of Easter. This year Easter falls on March 23, but from year to year it can shift by as much as a month on the Gregorian calendar. Finding Easter's date for a given year requires a surprising degree of scientific acumen. The last things one might expect to see in, say, the Book of Common Prayer are tables of numbers and rules for mathematical calculations - but there they are, nevertheless.

At first glance, this seems to exemplify a kind of harmony between religion and science, a peaceful concord between faith and reason. Indeed, a variety of public figures - from prominent scientists to the Pope - have promoted the view that science and religion are not adversaries but complementary and mutually supporting fields. "Truth cannot contradict truth," they declare, implying that the truths discovered by reasoning from sensory evidence cannot clash with the "truths" of religious dogma. A closer look, however, reveals the long history of the hostility of faith towards reason - which continues to this day. Violent clashes between the two are not only possible but unavoidable, and the notion that religion can coexist on friendly terms with science and reason is false. [...]

At first Copernicus's work was warmly accepted by Church officials - but only because they didn't take it seriously. Sixteenth century common sense held that the Sun orbits the Earth, which is motionless at the center of the universe. More important, Church scholars held that the true structure of the world is established not by science but by official interpretation of Scripture. Hence, they regarded the motion of the Earth as nothing more than a convenient mathematical assumption - an idea justified solely by its utility in making astronomical predictions. Thinking they could evade a clash between reason and revelation, they denied the reality of the Earth's motion but used the Copernican theory nonetheless.

This contradiction became inescapable decades after the Gregorian reform when Galileo removed the objections from common sense by explaining the physics of the moving Earth. But the objections from faith proved more intractable. Galileo's outspoken defense of the Earth's motion as a serious physical idea forced Church leaders to take a stand - and when they got off the fence, they came down firmly against science. That the Church persecuted Galileo for defending Copernican theory is well-known. Less frequently acknowledged is the utter hypocrisy of that act: the Church persecuted Galileo for defending the very ideas on which its Easter reform depended.

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: christianity, science

Steve Packard: The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn [LINK-ZUM]

Maintaining the environment is a critical issue especially as evidence of accelerated global warming mounts and as energy becomes more of an issue than it has in recent past. Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be working for enviornmental improvements lack an understanding of a few basic concepts which are absolutely critical to accomplishing anything.

I often find myself in arguments over economics versus environmentalism. This becomes a very difficult situation because the immediate accusation is that I care only about money and need to realize that sacrifices must be made for the good of the planet. I am also told that wind or solar is the answer and the costs and reduction of energy output is acceptable. These ideas that it is okay or honorable to make such sacrifices are overly simplistic and lack a true understanding of the forces at work. To use a phrase I have come to like, they are “Not even wrong.”

Thus, the top ten list...

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: B12, science

Alexander Cockburn: I am an intellectual blasphemer [LINK-ZUM]

In magazine articles and essays I have described in fairly considerable detail, with input from the scientist Martin Hertzberg, that you can account for the current warming by a number of well-known factors - to do with the elliptical course of the Earth in its relationship to the sun, the axis of the Earth in the current period, and possibly the influence of solar flares. There have been similar warming cycles in the past, such as the medieval warming period, when the warming levels were considerably higher than they are now.

Yet from left to right, the warming that is occurring today is taken as being man-made, and many have made it into the central plank of their political campaigns. For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.

[Article continues at link. I have a suggestion as to why large groups of people are supporting the athropogenic global warming theory, but it is one I read long ago by an author I sadly cannot remember and credit. Ask yourself where the largest environmental movements are, and where the most radical / violent environmentalists are. The answer is, roughly, the USA, Canada, England and Germany. All of these countries are, among other things, largely Protestant countries. Compare the environmental movement in these Protestant countries with the environmental movements in largely Catholic countries, such as Italy or Mexico. Compare it also with the environmental movements in Islamic countries. It seems that Christianity co-occurs with environmentalism more than with Islam, and more with Protestant Christianity than Catholicism. Protestant Christianity is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction - including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Compare this to environmentalism, which is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction - including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Environmentalism is in part an echo of Protestant Christianity, which was relegated to ceremonial reverence as the West adopted secular values. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: B12, christianity, islam, science

Trevor Blake: Suffrage [LINK-ZUM]

Question: In the United States, is there a relation between when a group of people gains suffrage and the percentage of that group that is registered to vote?

Conjecture: The longer a specific group has suffrage, the higher the percentage of registered voters in that specific group will be.

Data: Voting in the United States is based on state law and not federal law. There is no nation-wide right to vote, only nation-wide laws that prevent states from excluding specific groups from voting. This survey uses federal laws preventing state exclusion of specific groups as data points.

1787: United States Constitution grants suffrage to 21-and-older land-owning white male non-Christians.
1856: Suffrage granted to 21-and-older landless white males.
1870: 15th Amendment grants suffrage to 21-and-older non-white non-Native American males.
1920: 19th Amendment grants suffrage to 21-and-older women.
1924: Suffrage granted to 21-and-older Native Americans.
1971: Suffrage granted to those 18-and-older.

The 2004 census makes suggests about specific groups and their rate of registration to vote.

I do not know how to make us of the following data in this investigation. These specific groups were granted suffrage in a staggered fashion. For example, blacks gained suffrage before women did, thus no single percentage can be listed for a group made up of both blacks and of women.

69.5%: white non-hispanic women.
67.9%: white non-hispanic, both sexes.
67.9%: black women.
67.6%: 18-and-older women, black and white.
66.2%: white non-hispanic men.
64.4%: black, both sexes.
64%: 18-and-older men, black and white.
60%: black men.

For the next set of specific groups, gender and ethnicity are not limitations to suffrage. All of the following specific groups have had suffrage for the same amount of time, 37 years.

55.6%: 19-year-old women.
55.1%: 20-year-old women.
53.8%: 19-year-olds, both sexes.
51.5%: 18-year-old women.
51.5%: 20-year-olds, both sexes.
50.2%: 19-year-old men.
47.9%: 20-year-old men.
46.8%: 18-year-olds, both sexes.
42.1%: 18-year-old men.

Conclusion: based on the data consulted and my limited statistical skills, I conclude that the length of time a specific group is granted suffrage is not related to the percentage of that specific group that will register to vote. Groups with the same time period of suffrage (37 years) vary by more than 13% in their registration rates. It is possible there is a relation between gender and suffrage, as women appear to register to vote more often than men no matter their ethnicity or age. My conclusion could be refuted by a better data set or increased statistical skills.

Note: this post has changed significantly over the course of the day, as I find and correct errors and omissions.

Labels: race, science, sex

Science Daily: Dropping Religious Activities Linked To Increased Anxiety In Women [LINK-ZUM]

According to Temple University's Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active. "One's lifetime pattern of religious service attendance can be related to psychiatric illness," said Maselko, an assistant professor of public health and co-author of the study, which appears in the January issue of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active.

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: religion, science, sex

Jeff Jacoby: The Islamist war on Muslim women [LINK-ZUM]

The "Qatif girl" won a reprieve last week. On Dec. 17, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah pardoned the young woman, who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she pressed charges against seven men who had raped her and a male acquaintance in 2006. Two weeks earlier, Sudan's president extended a similar reprieve to Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam because her 7-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons had been sentenced to prison, but government-organized street demonstrators were loudly demanding her execution. [...]

No international furor saved Aqsa Parvez, a Toronto teenager, whose father was charged on Dec. 11 with strangling her to death because she refused to wear a hijab. "She just wanted to look like everyone else," one of Aqsa's friends told the National Post, "and I guess her dad had a problem with that." No reprieve came for Banaz Mahmod, either. She was 20, a Kurdish immigrant to Britain, whose father and uncle had her killed last year after she left an abusive arranged marriage and fell in love with a man not from the family's village in Kurdistan. Banaz was choked to death with a bootlace, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in a garden 70 miles away. More than 25 such "honor killings" have been confirmed in Britain's Muslim community in recent years. Many more are suspected. [...]

By Western standards, the subjugation of women by Muslim fanatics, and the sometimes pathological Islamist obsession with female sexuality, are unthinkable. Time and again they lead to shocking acts of violence and depravity: [...] In San Francisco, a young Muslim woman was shot dead after she uncovered her hair and put on makeup in order to be a maid of honor at a friend's wedding. [...]

All these are only examples - the tip of a dreadful iceberg that will never be demolished until Muslims by the millions rise up against it. As for the rest of us, we too have an obligation to raise our voices. It took a worldwide outcry to spare "Qatif girl" and Nazanin. But there are countless others like them, and our silence may seal their fate.

[Article continues at link. The West is largely a Christian culture, but a secular Christian culture. Christianity is still tied to the Bible and all its support for slavery, all its oppression of women, all its scientific nonsense. But secular Christianity can simply ignore these cruel and foolish practices, picking out the good stuff from the Bible and getting on with things. The Muslim world has so far rejected the secular and has no intention of getting rid of its support for slavery, all its oppression of women, all its scientific nonsense. I hope the Muslim world can get its act together, keep the good stuff and join the rest of us in the 21st Century (even joining the 19th would be an improvement), but there isn't much the West can peacefully do to make that happen. But we can do something about honor killings in the West. Prosecute the murderers and their murderous support system. Use the same techniques that were successful against the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia - crushing taxation, relentless arrests and incarceration, and inescapable social opprobrium. No honor for honor killers, not one second of respect for their sacred traditions and ancient culture. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, islam, science, sex, slavery, theocracy

Uppsala Universitet: Number of conflicts in the world no longer declining [LINK-ZUM]

The trend toward fewer conflicts reported by peace researchers since the early 1990s now seems to have been broken. [...] Since the most conflict-ridden years in the early 1990s, a continuous decline was registered up to 2002. Since that time the number has held steady at around 30 active armed conflicts per year. This is probably also the case for 2007. [...] The Middle East is the region in which peace initiatives are most clearly conspicuous in their absence. The central importance of the region for the world's oil supply and for world religions makes this serious.

[Article continues at link. There are some limited tools at our disposal to change our dependence on oil. Where appropriate, we should employ them and thereby lessen that specific cause of war. There are 100% effective tools at our disposal to change our dependence on religion. They are called atheism and secular humanism. If we fail to employ them and thereby lessen that specific cause of war, perhaps we are not deserving of peace. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: fight, science, theocracy

BMC Evolutionary Biology: Cryptic diversity and deep divergence in an upper Amazonian frog, Eleutherodactylus ockendeni [LINK-ZUM]

The forests of the upper Amazon basin harbour some of the world's highest anuran species richness, but to date we have only the sparsest understanding of the distribution of genetic diversity within and among species in this region. To quantify region-wide genealogical patterns and to test for the presence of deep intraspecific divergences that have been documented in some other neotropical anurans, we developed a molecular phylogeny of the wide-spread terrestrial leaflitter frog Eleutherodactylus ockendeni (Leptodactylidae) from 13 localities throughout its range in Ecuador using data from two mitochondrial genes (16S and cyt b; 1246 base pairs). [...] Our findings uncover previously unsuspected cryptic species diversity within the common leaflitter frog E. ockendeni, with at least three different species in Ecuador. While these clades are clearly geographically circumscribed, they do not coincide with any existing landscape barriers. Divergences are ancient, from the Miocene, before the most dramatic mountain building in the Ecuadorean Andes. Therefore, this diversity is not a product of Pleistocene refuges. Our research coupled with other studies suggests that species richness in the upper Amazon is drastically underestimated by current inventories based on morphospecies.

[Something to keep in mind next time you read about how many species are dying out. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: science

Trevor Blake: The Transistor [LINK-ZUM]

Today (December 16th) is the anniversary of the invention of the transistor. The transistor is one of the most important invention of the 20th Century. Transistors are part of nearly all electronic devices, including computers, cell phones, radio and television. Most of humanity has been touched by the transistor.

What did religion (any religion) invent in the 20th Century? Or the 19th? Or the 18th... or ever? Religion is valued because it is the anti-invention. Religion has tradition. Religion comes from an eternal God. Sometimes religious people admit change, but only in the form of revelation - which comes from an eternal God, so it isn't really change at all. Nothing new comes from religion. Religion resists invention until it sees a means to profit from it, at which time a convenient revelation occurs and the invention is seen as part of God's eternal non-invented plan.

If a person or a society have all the answers, and if all the answers they have are the right answers, and if there are no other people or societies around to disrupt things in any way, and if there are no changes in the world uncontrolled by people, then there is no need for invention. But on my planet, we need invention to survive much less thrive. Religion is the enemy of invention. If you are reading this on a computer screen, some part of you must be in agreement with me.

Labels: religion, science

Trevor Blake: What Religion and Science Can Do for Us [LINK-ZUM]

Religion:
Tracy McVeigh, Children are targets of Nigerian witch hunt: Almost everyone goes to church here [the Niger Delta]. Driving through the town of Esit Eket, the rust-streaked signs, tarpaulins hung between trees and posters on boulders, advertise a church for every third or fourth house along the road. Such names as New Testament Assembly, Church of God Mission, Mount Zion Gospel, Glory of God, Brotherhood of the Cross, Redeemed, Apostalistic. Behind the smartly painted doors pastors make a living by 'deliverances' - exorcisms - for people beset by witchcraft, something seen to cause anything from divorce, disease, accidents or job losses. With so many churches it's a competitive market, but by local standards a lucrative one. But an exploitative situation has now grown into something much more sinister as preachers are turning their attentions to children - naming them as witches. In a maddened state of terror, parents and whole villages turn on the child. They are burnt, poisoned, slashed, chained to trees, buried alive or simply beaten and chased off into the bush. Some parents scrape together sums needed to pay for a deliverance - sometimes as much as three or four months' salary for the average working man - although the pastor will explain that the witch might return and a second deliverance will be needed. Even if the parent wants to keep the child, their neighbours may attack it in the street.

Science:
Robin Bal, Miracle Man Walks Again: He survived against all the odds; now Peng Shulin has astounded doctors by learning to walk again.When his body was cut in two by a lorry in 1995, it was little short of a Medical that he lived. It took a team of nearly 20 doctors to save his life. Skin was grafted from his head to seal his torso - but the legless Mr Peng was left only 78cm (2ft 6in) tall. Bedridden for years, doctors in China had little hope that he would ever be able to live anything like a normal life again. [...] But recently, he began exercising his arms, building up the strength to carry out everyday chores such as washing his face and brushing his teeth. Doctors at the China Rehabilitation Research Centre in Beijing found out about Mr Peng's plight late last year and devised a plan to get him up walking again. They came up with an ingenious way to allow him to walk on his own, creating a sophisticated egg cup-like casing to hold his body with two bionic legs attached to it. He has been taking his first steps around the center with the aid of his specially adapted legs and a resized walking frame. Mr Peng, who has to learn how to walk again, is said to be delighted with the device.

[Articles continue at links. Mr. Peng was cut in half and is today walking around, thanks to science. Those children murdered by superstitious monsters won't have a second chance. Sometimes theists talk about science and religion as seperate magistrate, each with its own contribution to the world. That seems supported by the facts, as science makes things better and religion makes things worse. Every day I ask myself what I can do to make religion less palatable to the average person. So far, the truth seems to be the most appropriate and effective tool. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, magick, religion, science, transhuman

Matthew Moore: Fighting the curse of the face-eating tumour [LINK-ZUM]

A Jehovah's Witness who for decades refused all surgery on his horrific facial disfigurement has been given hope by a British doctor and new medical technology. Unwilling to accept a blood transfusion, Jose Mestre has allowed the bloody tumour that first appeared on his lip in adolescence to obliterate almost all of his face. Now 15 inches long and weighing 12 pounds, it has blinded him in one eye and made eating a daily ordeal. As it begins to block his airways, doctors fear his life could be in danger. But now one of Britain's leading facial surgeons has proposed treating Jose, 51, by employing ultrasound waves to coagulate the blood before the operation. This should allow his growths to be removed without risk of heavy bleeding - satisfying his religious prohibition on blood transfusions that has so far hampered his search for treatment.

[Article with photographs continues at link. The Watchtower Society, also known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, have predicted the end of the world no less than five times. According to their founder Charles Taze Russell, their second President J.E. Rutherford, and their official magazines The Watchtower and Awake!, the world was to end in 1914. But 1914 came and went without the world ending. So the date changed to 1915. But 1915 came and went without the world ending. So the date changed to 1918. But 1918 came and went without the world ending. So the date changed to 1925. But 1925 came and went without the world ending. So the date changed to 1975. But 1975 came and went without the world ending. So they stopped making public predictions about the end of the world and purged members (nearly 30,000 in 1978 alone) who questioned these false prophecies. Making failed predictions is a sure way to look stupid, but looking stupid isn't so bad. Where the Watchtower Society really stands out is denying medical care for their children, based on fickle revelations from God to their leadership. Sometimes they ban medical procedures such as blood transfusions, sometimes they do not ban them - too bad for you if your was eaten away by a tumor while the ban was in effect. Blood transfusions were forbidden to members of the Watchtower Society, as described in The Watchtower on September 15 1961 (pp. 563-564) and February 15 1964 (pp. 127-8). Then again, Blood transfusions were not forbidden to members of the Watchtower Society, as described in The Watchtower on November 15 1964 (pp. 680-3) and June 15 2000 (p. 31). I am glad for advances in medical science, but it is upsetting that they are applied in the accommodation of superstition. Perhaps a God who would give you haemangioma isn't a God worth worshiping; perhaps a religion that convinces you to to do nothing about it isn't worth following. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, religion, science, watchtower

Jonathan Petre: Atheists behind the greatest cruelty, says Pope [LINK-ZUM]

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a powerful attack on atheism, saying that it was responsible for some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in history.

[Article continues at link. Image above depicts a devoted and life-long Roman Catholic, never once censored by the Pope, leaving a house of worship. Socialism, the true target of the Pope's missive, has indeed killed so many people that it is almost showing up on the charts as a distant number two compared to the body count of those killed by religion. Give it a few thousand more years and maybe it will be an honest contender. For now, nothing competes with religion in the murder department. What is it about religion that makes people so sure it is morally right to kill? Faith. Faith is not to believe where there is a lack of evidence. Faith is to go on believing when there is counter-evidence. That is where socialism and religion meet. Religion has an invisible monster that lives in the sky on its side, which justifies everything it does. Socialism has the Material Concept of History on its side, which justifies everything it does. I'm not a fan of faith, religion or socialism. I'm a fan of acknowledging that humanity will inevitably err, and the best we can do is limit the scope of our errors before we make them and learn from our errors after we make them. That is how democracy and science are linked; they grow on a mountain of errors, not from a soil of Absolute Truth. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: atheist, fascism, science, socialism

Richard Spencer and Juliet Turner: Doctors battle to save 'human pin-cushion' [LINK-ZUM]

Doctors in China have saved the life of a woman who had 26 pins and needles inserted into her body when she was a child in an apparent attempt to change her sex to a boy. The objects were discovered when the 29-year-old woman, named in local papers as Luo Cuifen, went to hospital for a check-up after she started experiencing blood in her urine. Doctors in China have saved the life of a woman who had 26 pins and needles inserted into her body when she was a child in an apparent attempt to change her sex to a boy. The objects were discovered when the 29-year-old woman, named in local papers as Luo Cuifen, went to hospital for a check-up after she started experiencing blood in her urine. [...] Since the one-child policy came into force, around the time of Miss Luo's birth, many girl children have been aborted, abandoned, or killed after birth - in some cases by grandparents. Miss Luo, who comes from a rural area in Yunnan, one of China's poorer provinces, told doctors she had two needles removed when she was a child but had had no health problems until she gave birth.

[Article with photographs continues at link. Here is the side of 'alternative medicine' and 'Chinese medicine' and 'traditional medicine' that you don't hear as much about in the West. Although there are perhaps thirty (30!) wild South China Tigers left in the world, they continue to be butchered for 'medical' treatments that do not now nor have they ever worked. Acupuncture may be an effective placebo delivery system but it can also result in sickness and death. China is a socialist country, suggesting socialism does not provide an immunity to superstition or poor parenting. It isn't alternative medicine if there is no alternative. The real alternative here would have included access to actual medical care and not attempting to change the sex of an infant. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: krankheit, science, sex, socialism

Trevor Blake: Extremophiles [LINK-ZUM]

Extremophiles are living beings that thrive under conditions most living beings cannot survive. Some snakes can go six months without eating. There are fish that live in near-boiling, near-acid liquids. The plant welwitschia mirabilis can live for two thousand years, and the seeds of the methuselah plant can sprout after the same period of time. Bacteria can live for eight million years. The panspermia theory of life on Earth suggests that life arrived on Earth after surviving without atmosphere and under constant cosmic radiation while drifting through space, surviving also dropping into our atmosphere and crashing onto the surface of the Earth. There was some concern at one time that extremophile life on the moon posed a threat to astronauts. And, in fact, the bacteria streptococcus mitis is known to be able to survive a rocket launch, space vacuum, three years of radiation exposure, regular exposure to 20 degrees above absolute zero temperatures, and going without nutrients, water or an energy source on the surface of the moon. There are not many compilations of stories on extremophiles, but there are a one or two. What might humanity be able to engineer for ourselves to become extremophiles? What dangers do exremophiles present to humanity?

Labels: extremophiles, science

Trevor Blake: More Sperm [LINK-ZUM]

February 2005 saw the return of OVO after 13 years of hibernation. The theme for that issue was 'sperm.' Sperm remains in the news, and here are some of the top sperm stories from the past two years. Court in the United States and in Israel have ruled that sperm can be harvested from dead men for use in artificial insemination. Competition between males in the race to impregnate females has caused evolutionary changes in male sexual physiology and behavior. A woman named Holly Marie Adams had sex with identical twins. The DNA tests administered to determine who is the father of her child are a 99.999-percent match to either man. OVO 15 SPERM included information about the mood-altering effects of sperm, but there is also some evidence sperm is addictive. Crossing the trail of destruction left by OVO 16 ANTICHRIST comes Ezekiel 23. To quote the Skeptics Annotated Bible, this is a tale of two sisters: "Two sisters were guilty of 'committing whoredoms' by pressing their breasts and bruising 'the teats of their virginity.' As a punishment, one sister's nakedness was discovered, her children were taken from her, and she was killed by the sword. And the fate of the surviving sister was even worse. Her nose and ears were cut off, she was made to 'pluck off' her own breasts, and then after being raped and mutilated, she is stoned to death." We place emphasis here on the lusts of one of the sisters, who preferred a man with a penis like a donkey and who came like a horse. If you'd like to have the inspirational Ezekiel 23:20 on a t-shirt or a thong, Landover Baptist Church can provide. The Quran claims that sperm comes from somewhere 'between the loins and the ribs.' Islam also forbids the oral stimulation of men, lest such include the consumption of sperm, but does not prohibit the oral stimulation of women. And if all that isn't enough sperm for you, here's a few hundred more articles...

Labels: christianity, islam, ovo, periodical, science, sex, sperm, zine

Gary Taubes: The Scientist and the Stairmaster [LINK-ZUM]

For most of us, fear of flab is the reason we exercise, the motivation that drives us to the gym. It's also why public-health authorities have taken to encouraging ever more exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. If we're fat or fatter than ideal, we work out. Burn calories. Expend energy. Still fat? Burn more. The dietary guidelines of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for instance, now recommend that we engage in up to 60 minutes daily of "moderate to vigorous intensity" physical activity just to maintain weight - that is, keep us from fattening further. Considering the ubiquity of the message, the hold it has on our lives, and the elegant simplicity of the notion - burn calories, lose weight - wouldn't it be nice to believe it were true? The catch is that science suggests it's not, and so the answer to all of the above quiz questions is "no."

Just last month, the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine published joint guidelines for physical activity and health. They suggested that 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five days a week is necessary to "promote and maintain health." What they didn't say, though, was that more physical activity will lead us to lose weight. Indeed, the best they could say about the relationship between fat and exercise was this: "It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling." In other words, despite half a century of efforts to prove otherwise, scientists still can't say that exercise will help keep off the pounds.

[Article continues at link. Fascinating and heretical. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: science

Science Daily: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors [LINK-ZUM]

In the last century, more than 100 million people have perished in violent conflict, very often because of local clashes between ethnically or culturally distinct groups. In a novel study recently in Science, researchers report on a mathematical model that can predict where ethnic conflict will erupt. The study, conducted by scientists at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) and Brandeis University, can be applied to many areas and its predictions were tested on distinct ethnic groups in India and the former Yugoslavia. The researchers applied a model of global pattern formation that differentiates regions by culture. They discovered that heterogeneous areas with poorly- defined boundaries were prone to ethnic conflict.

The research asserts that in highly mixed regions, groups of the same type are not large enough to sway collective behavior toward claiming any particular public space; likewise, well-segregated groups are protected by clear boundaries identifying their space. However, the study concludes that "partial separation with poorly defined boundaries fosters conflict."

[Article continues at link. When this article speaks of being of the same type or being of a well-segregated group, what does that mean? If we can judge people as individuals, perhaps battling over the shifting turf of who we are in groups might occur less. Who we are as part of a group has cultural weight, but sometimes that weight has a high cost and low return. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: fight, race, science

Trevor Blake: Evolution and Those Who Prefer Not to Evolve [LINK-ZUM]

From Gallup: "Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word."

If you are inspired to change these sad statistics, here's a tool box for you: Talk Origins, Skeptics Annotated Bible, Raving Atheist, Religious News Blog, American Samizdat, Internet Infidels, God is for Suckers, James Randi Educational Foundation, Free Inquiry, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. This atheist hopes to see you down here in the foxholes soon, tovarish.

[American Samizdat, November 27 2004. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: atheist, creationism, science

Carrie McGourty: Prayer to End Climate Change [LINK-ZUM]

Religious leaders from all over the world met at the mouth of a melting glacier in Greenland today to say a silent prayer for the planet, appealing to mankind to address the impact that humanity is having on life on Earth. [...] The pope delivered a message via video from the Vatican while religious leaders of Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths prayed silently.

[Article continues at link. Why didn't God prevent 'the impact that humanity is having on life on Earth' in the first place? In the case of apocalyptic superstitions such as Christianity, what does it matter if the Earth is impacted? What did superstition tell us in the past five thousand years about humanity's impact on the Earth, and what did science tell us in the past fifty years? - Trevor Blake]

Labels: buddhism, christianity, islam, judaism, science

Trevor Blake: Unit Bias as a Stressor for Media Piracy [LINK-ZUM]

Unit bias is the preference for a particular amount of food. It is as if the food contains a value not only of color, nutrition, taste and the like but also of 'amount.' Candy above a certain size is desirable because it is novel, because it is extra large. Candy below a certain size is eaten several at a time, to equal one 'optimal' unit of candy. People have been shown to consume a larger weight of candy if the individual units of candy are larger. That is, people seem to have a sense of how many pieces of candy are 'right' and that unit bias is stronger determinant of how much is eaten than the actual amount by weight of candy [1]. The same behavior is seen in food and drink. People are more willing to consume one larger unit of food or drink than two smaller units of food or drink, irregardless of whether one or two units weigh more [2]. The urge to complete sets or to collect is likely related to unit bias. Unit bias is an example of the tendency to confuse what can be done with what should be done.

The Apple ipod Classic can hold 40,000 songs [3]. Because this device can hold 40,000 songs, I predict some people are filling them up with songs they have no intention of listening to. Because it can hold that much, it is made to hold that much. Walmart sells legal mp3s for US$.88 [4]. To conform to unit bias and fill an Apple ipod Classic would cost no less than US$35,200. This is an unlikely expense for most people. Thus, unit bias is a possible stressor for media piracy. People with a sense of unit bias need to fill their ipods but the means to do so legally are not as readily available as the means to do so illegally.

- Trevor Blake www.ovo127.com

Labels: science