Social Sciences
drorzel | June 30, 2007My intention of reading all of the nominees for the Hugo Awards in the fiction categories hit a bit of a snag yesterday. I finished all the short fiction (novella, novelette, short story), and most of the novels, leaving only Peter Watts's Blindisght and Charlie Stross's Glasshouse. James Nicoll described Peter Watts as the sort of thing he reads when he feels his will to live becoming too strong, and the description of Glasshouse did not fill me with joy. Plus, my copy of Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson just arrived (a birthday present), and I'd really rather read that.
(I'll pause here for…
cogdaily | June 29, 2007This is a guest post by Martina Mustroph, one of Greta's top student writers for Spring 2007
Rats are often useful models for understanding human behavior,. Testing drugs on rats before testing them on humans is particularly enticing because it is relatively free of ethical concerns (relative to drugging humans, at least), and the amount of drug required to achieve an effect is relatively small compared to the amount it would take to see an effect in a human. As rats' nervous systems are very similar to the human nervous system, they lend themselves really well to drug studies. Rats have been…
jrosenhouse | June 28, 2007My SciBling Matthew Nisbet says no. I think he really means it, since he put the title of his post in all caps.
Matthew writes:
One of the common claims that has been amplified by the Dawkins/Hitchens PR campaign is that “atheism is a civil rights issue.” (For an example, see the comments section of this recent post.)
This false spin serves as a very effective frame device for radicalizing a base of atheists into an ever more militant &dquo;us versus them” rhetoric, an interpretation that is used to justify sophomoric and polarizing attacks on religious Americans.
Indeed, “atheism is a…
tfk | June 26, 2007Denyse "Buy my book" O'Leary thinks that evolutionary biologists are just like religious folk. Among the deep parallels she finds: Scientists and the religious both give booklets to children, celebrate birthdays of important figures, claim that certain things are facts, and seek official recognition. Finally:
- sacred bones. Christian churches have the bones of the saints; Buddhist stupas the toe-nail-clippings of Buddha; evolution is built on sacred bones, that the evolutionists read meanings into in the way that the pagan priests of Caesar's time read meaning into scattered bones.
What is…
nisbetmc | June 26, 2007The Barna Group maintains some of the best data tracking the consumer and opinion market for religious Americans, especially among Evangelicals. Though not an independent survey organization like Pew, over the years, I have found that their poll data is relatively consistent with poll findings from other organizations. In fact, often Barna has the most precise measures when it comes to segmenting the born-again Christian community across its diversity of doctrinal beliefs and group affiliations.
So yesterday, when Barna released a survey on American views of poverty and their personal…
scientificactivist | June 26, 2007The current political situation in Zimbabwe has been difficult for many people, but, as with any humanitarian crisis, some members of society are hit harder than others. A friend of mine--Clare Lobb, a current Zimbabwean Rhodes Scholar--recently passed along a plea for help from one of her former teachers--Catherine Jackson--who has been recognized for her work in helping the blind in Zimbabwe. She is currently trying to raise money to purchase a new building for the Dorothy Duncan Braille Library to provide care and education to blind students and adults. As described below, it's quite a…
tfk | June 25, 2007Researchers around the world have found signs of life fitfully adjusting to global warming. In Greenland, an earlier spring is causing insects and plants to emerge earlier. The problem is, the birds that feed on those plants and insects aren't adjusting as fast. Plants emerge 20 days earlier than they did in 1996, some insects emerge as much as a month earlier, but birds are only 10 days ahead of their previous schedule. Insects and plants can respond more quickly to changing environments because they produce so many more offspring per female. On average, no more than two offspring per…
thescian | June 25, 2007What are we going to do with the stupid? Assuming, of course, that you and me are not stupid. A contentious and explosive question in its political and moral implications. A New Scientist opinion piece:
They are the individuals who lie at the bottom of the normal range of human intelligence. I'm not talking about people with learning difficulties; these people are generally protected and helped by the state. I mean those too bright to qualify for such assistance but not clever enough to thrive easily in today's knowledge-based society.
The unfairness these people face is shocking. It is…
jstemwedel | June 24, 2007Since it has come up in the comments on my review of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, I'm going to go ahead and discuss some of the issues around cutting-edge biomedical technologies in the book that might, or might not, be plausible when pondered. (As Bill points out, the scientific details in the novel itself are pretty minimal -- the focus is squarely on the interactions between characters -- so plausibility is only an issue if you're not good at suspending disbelief.)
WARNING: This post will be packed with spoilers!
Unless you've already read the book, or you have sworn a blood-…
drorzel | June 24, 2007The other book that I've torn through really quickly this week is the sequel to Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. The first third of the sequel, Ragamuffin is freely available on the web page for the book, for those who are interested. I tend to find sample chapters frustrating, though, so I didn't read it until this week, when Kate brought home a hard copy.
Crystal Rain was Caribbean-flavored steampunk set on a lost colony world, where a war between humans and the alien Teotl has left both groups stranded on the planet Nanagada with very little technology. The war is still being waged, though…
razib | June 23, 2007The New York Times has an article up about the trend of young Muslim women donning the niqab in the United Kingdom, the practice of wearing a veil and covering the body with a shapeless shift. The simple narrative is this: Muslim women are reasserting a particular part of their religious tradition which Westerners feel is illiberal and medieval. Normally I get tired of the anecdotal modus operandi which dominates newspaper reports, though I do understand that it makes for engaging prose. Nevertheless, in the articles about extreme veiling the assertions by Western born women who choose to…
voltagegate | June 20, 2007Found this on ECOLOG this morning:
Dear Colleagues:
We are writing to invite your participation in a survey of wildlife
responses to climate change in the Rocky Mountains. Results of this
important project will help frame policy decision making, media reports to
the public, and the direction of future science and management programs.
Climate change is no longer a matter of "what if" or "when." The
scientific community agrees: a growing body of evidence indicates that
human activities are causing unprecedented disruptions to the global
climate system. Furthermore, it is clear that these…
evolvingthoughts | June 19, 2007
What happens when you put journalists in contact with scientists? To hear some people tell it, it results in an antimatter-matter explosion that destroys careers and causing black holes of ignorance in the general population, particularly when the density is already great, as in political circles.
Tara, from the scientists' perspective, gave a list of rules for science journalists. Her commentators broadly agreed, ranging from gentle to vociferous. Chris Mooney leapt to the defence of what is, after all, his profession (and one he's damned good at if his book is anything to judge by), and…
hrynyshyn | June 19, 2007The headline for this post is stolen verbatim from a section headline in a paper on climate change just published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. It's yet another depressing read by NASA's Jim Hansen and five co-authors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Hansen has been trying to get our attention for some 20 years now with a series of papers laced with alarmist language, but in an email to the Independent, says "this one probably does the best job of making clear that the Earth is getting perilously…
denialism | June 18, 2007It's time to talk about the anti-vaccine (or anti-vax) denialists. Considering the Autism Omnibus trial is underway to decide whether or not parents of autistic children can benefit from the vaccine-compensation program, a fund designed to compensate those who have had reactions to vaccines and shield vaccine makers from the civil suits which drove them out of the country in the early 1980s. I think it's topical and necessary to set the record straight about vaccines, their risks, and many benefits. To do this though, we'll have to talk about the history of and resistance to vaccination…
pharyngula | June 17, 2007The fundamentalist nuts in this country leave us goggling aghast at the lunacy they propagate, but man, some of the in-betweeners are almost as creepy—and I get to pick on somewhere other than America! This page on the "noble lie" brings up the Straussian hypocrisy that many confused pro-religion people are supporting in the UK — we have to support faith to keep the masses placid.
Many of those who support religious belief agree with Plato. It is not important that religion is a lie - the important point is that the people believe in it and that this belief maintains social order and moral…
evolvingthoughts | June 15, 2007
After the Flood, the earth is repopulated, and so R and P give us a list of notable ancestors. In 10:4-5 they say "And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations." [Taken from here]. This could mean either the coastlines of the nations or, as the NAS has it, the maritime nations spread out into their territories or something similar. No matter what the best translation, it is clear that each one of these sea peoples has their own language.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 15, 2007Joe Klein was very angry last week at 'uncivil' bloggers, and in a storming fit of something that kinda looks like anger, only wimpier, came up with a list of attributes belonging to "left-wing extremists." I've gone through the list and added my own commentary.
Klein's list:
A left-wing extremist exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes:
--believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.
Nope.
--believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.
I think it is one cause. That's why cluster is in the word…
pharyngula | June 14, 2007Well, you know it's not going to be a good article when it's found on Newsweek's goofy "Beliefwatch" section, and it has this kind of inauspicious beginning:
It may not be fair to call what's happening in the atheist community a backlash, since atheists have always been and continue to be one of the smallest, most derided groups in the country.
Right. And since we're a minority and we're derided, why, we must be wrong! Of course, the facts are on the author's side—we are a minority. We need to grow. I think we'd all admit to that. What's weird right now is how journalists report it.
In a…
evolvingthoughts | June 14, 2007
New Scientist is reporting that a case in Austria (not Australia - we share a love of beer, but that's about it) is set to decide if chimps have rights. They already do in Spain, and in New Zealand (which was, I think, the first country to enact rights for chimps).
They do not have rights in Australia, or America, or most of the world apart from these few countries that have what I consider are sensible and inescapable laws. Why do I think so?
Chimps, and indeed most of the great apes if not all of them, share an enormous genetic heritage in common with humans; they are capable of…