Culture
razib | July 1, 2007I was chatting with my much younger brother recently and he mentioned an interest in philosophy. I asked if he'd read Plato, and he returned my query with a question: "Is Plato worth reading?" My own answer: I don't think Plato is really worth reading, but, many thinkers have disagreed and Plato is a place to start when attempting to comprehend the arc of human history. In other words, though I myself am no Platonist I think that to understand what it means to not be a Platonist, as well as grapple with a world influenced by Platonic ideals, one must know something about Plato. This…
sb admin | June 30, 2007Every day, reading the newspapers or listen to the radio, we are barraged with reminders of how screwed up our society, our country is. We see these things, and have a realization that there is little to no hope that they will change any time soon.
I can only take so much despair. I can only take so much reminder of just how screwed up things are. I have stopped listening to the radio on my way driving in to work in the morning, because too often the stories are about places in the world where horrible things are going on. Too often, that place is Baghdad, a place that was screwed up and…
cortex | June 29, 2007A comic discussion on the origins of life, the moral status of sperm, abortion and a few other not-safe-for-work topics. (It's a deleted scene from Knocked Up, which everybody should see, right after they see Ratatouille.) Judd Apatow, by the way, is a genius.
Update: the embedded video link was causing some problems, so watch the video here instead.
cortex | June 29, 2007I've got an article in the latest Seed on some research that applies metabolic theory to the metropolis:
Cities have always been compared to organisms - Plato talked about the city as a corporeal body - but being underneath the street makes the metaphor literal. These are the guts of the city, the metal intestines that allow the suburbs to sprawl and the skyscrapers to rise. The fiber optic cables are nerves, and the subway tunnels are thick jugular veins. Energy is being distributed and waste is being digested. All this work generates a sort of carnal heat, which escapes from the grates in…
cortex | June 28, 2007This is glass:
If you've never been to the glass flowers exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History then you are missing out on a truly spectacular fusion of art and science. Here's NPR:
Back in the late 19th century, botanical teaching models were mostly made of wax or papier maché. Or they were actual plants that had been dried and pressed.
But the replicas were inexact, the pressed specimens faded and flat. So professor Goodale asked the Blaschkas [a father-son team of glass blowers from Dresden] to make glass plants. Fifty years later, after Rudolph retired (and after Leopold had…
cortex | June 28, 2007This interview with the novelist from The Believer is a few months old, but it's well worth a read:
Something truly interesting is happening in many basic sciences, a real revolution in human knowing. For a long time--centuries--empiricism has tried to understand the whole in terms of its isolated parts, and then to write out precise and simple rules about the controlled behavior of those parts in isolation. In recent decades, with the explosion of the life sciences and with a new appreciation in physics and chemistry of emergent and complex systems, a new kind of holism has emerged.…
razib | June 27, 2007Someone named Schvach Yid left an irritated comment in response to my post about the term Judeo-Christian. He also sent me a short email clearing up the fact that Judaism is more than legalism, and that it is steep to consider Jews non-Western. I think addressing these questions is worthwhile insofar as others might wonder what business a blog whose central theme focuses on evolutionary genetics has with venturing into topics such as the discussion of the history of Judaism and Christianity.
First, the blog is an expression of my interests. My interests are rather broad. Though I tend to…
cortex | June 27, 2007An intriguing hypothesis:
Gopnik argues that babies are not only conscious, they are more conscious than adults. Her argument for this view begins with the idea that people in general -- adults, that is -- have more conscious experience of what they attend to than of what they disregard. We have either no experience, or limited experience, of the hum of the refrigerator in the background or the feeling of the shoes on our feet, until we stop to think about it. In contrast, when we expertly and automatically do something routine (such as driving to work on the usual route) we are often barely…
cortex | June 26, 2007According to a new study, conservative Muslim dress codes might be causing serious health problems for Muslim women:
In certain Middle Eastern and other countries where conservative dress curtails exposure to sunlight, high levels of vitamin D supplementation may be needed to raise serum levels sufficiently in women, investigators report.
"When sunlight exposure -- the main source for vitamin D in humans -- is limited," Dr. Hussein F. Saadi said, "much higher dietary intake of vitamin D is needed than currently recommended," especially for women who are breast-feeding.
As reported in the June…
cortex | June 26, 2007I've discovered my new favorite example of artists and scientists working together. It features Cecil Balmond, an engineer for Arup, and Anish Kapoor, the Turner-Prize winning sculptor. They collaborated on Marsyas, the spectacular 2003 installation inside the Tate Modern. David Owen describes their collaboration in The New Yorker:
Kapoor came to feel an unusual imaginative harmony with Balmond. "The traditional role of the engineer is to perform, so to speak, the ideas of the architect, or of the artist, or whatever," Kapoor told me not long ago. "But Cecil and I decided, quite clearly, that…
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…
cortex | June 22, 2007David Brooks makes a good point:
A little while ago, a national study authorized by Congress found that abstinence education programs don't work. That gave liberals a chance to feel superior because it turns out that preaching traditional morality to students doesn't change behavior.
But in this realm, nobody has the right to feel smug. American schools are awash in moral instruction -- on sex, multiculturalism, environmental awareness and so on -- and basically none of it works. Sex ed doesn't change behavior. Birth control education doesn't produce measurable results. The fact is, schools…
cortex | June 21, 2007This is what happens when a wine critic decides to scientifically test his sense of taste:
She first handed me a cotton swab and instructed me to rub it vigorously against the inside of one of my cheeks. This was the genotype test; as soon as I was done, Reed's assistant, Fujiko Duke, whisked the sample to the lab. Reed then handed me a Q-tip, and told me to dab the end of my tongue with some blue food dye, which would more clearly reveal the fungiform papillae. I placed a white binder ring on the tip of my tongue, at a slight angle from the center, and Reed began counting the bumps inside…
cortex | June 20, 2007So the Times is reporting that online sales are starting to stall/ (Jack Shafer disagrees.) This trend certainly jives with my own shopping experiences. While I still buy most of my things online - the only thing I will never buy online are pants - I've grown disenchanted with the vast majority of online retail sites. Simply put, they offer me way too many options.
Take flip-flops. A few weeks ago, I decided to get a new pair of flip flops. I dutifully went to Zappos (free shipping!) and looked in the "casual sandals" section. There were 1590 options. Just for men. In my size. So then I…
cmooney | June 20, 2007posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
We all know music is powerful. It moves and motivates us. Makes us feel something. The latest issue of Vanity Fair features Bono as guest editor and draws attention to AIDS, genocide, and poverty in Africa. Folks at the magazine seem to be getting accustomed to framing important social and environmental issues by way of celebrity icons in order to reach out to a broad demographic. They've also figured out that a social conscience is more fashionable and profitable these days than even the latest from Manolo. Just weeks ago we saw Leo and Knut the polar…
cortex | June 19, 2007n+1 nails an important psychological aspect of blogs:
Imagine a grandfather clock that strikes at random intervals. You can't tell time by it and yet you begin to live in constant anticipation of the next random chime.
Pavlov was there first. He realized that there was something especially alluring about random reinforcements. When the reward was unpredictable, it was extra rewarding. Blogs take advantage of this mental principle. (So do slot machines.) After all, the updating of blogs is inherently idiosyncratic. Bloggers don't have deadlines.
I'm acutely aware of this whenever I visit The…
cortex | June 19, 2007It was one of those unquestioned rituals of childhood: after getting a little scrape or cut (generally in the knee or elbow area), your mother dutifully applies some hydrogen peroxide to the injury. The peroxide burns, but the pain is just evidence that the peroxide is working. The cut is being cleaned. That, at least, was my childhood understanding of bacterial theory. Only it turns out that hydrogen peroxide isn't useful at all. In fact, it may actually make things worse:
In a study published in The Journal of Family Practice in 1987, scientists compared the effects of various topical…
cortex | June 18, 2007Another heartbreaking tale of improper medical care for veterans from The Washington Post. This time, the article is about the lack of mental health care for mentally troubled veterans, especially when it comes to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). While the Army excels at providing emergency trauma care for veterans injured in the body - only ten percent of wounded soldiers have died in this Iraq war, compared to 24 percent for the first Gulf war - the Army and Veterans Administration have consistently failed to adequately care for the injured brain. It's as if the Army still subscribes…
razib | June 16, 2007A few days ago Ross Douthat started a blog-conversation about the rise of secularists as a conscious cultural movement or tribe, and of course there's been plenty of talk about the new atheism. So I thought it was interesting that fundamentalist Christian pollster George Barna has a new survey out titled Atheists and Agnostics Take Aim at Christians. Barna finds that:
20 million Americans are of "no faith," that is, they are atheists, agnostics or avow their nonaffiliation with a religion
Of those 20 million 5 million accept the label "atheist."
Those with no faith tend to be youger, more…
razib | June 16, 2007The debate below about circumcision has gotten fast and furious. I stand in the untenable position of neither believing that circumcision should be promoted by the authorities as a "health" precaution in the modern world, but also not considering it an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That being said, one thing that should be value neutral are statistics. Here is a description of the regions of the world where circumcision is and isn't routine. In short, it is a common practice in most of Africa, with the exception of the southern portion of the continent. It is normative amongst…