Signs of the Times

Happy Thanksgiving . . .

. . . from the staff of Salvo magazine! Here's a little something to read in anticipation of the holiday. It was enough to make P. Z. Meyers furious, so you'll probably enjoy it. God bless!

Extraterrestrial life: Here's a story you could only read in New Scientist ...

by Denyse O'Leary 

"Why the universe may be teeming with aliens" by David Shiga - Have faith, baby, they are really, definitely out there!

After a list of reasons why they are really not likely out there, and in spite of this:

Despite this broadening of the criteria for potentially habitable planets, not everyone is convinced that these new insights are particularly helpful in the search for worlds that might support life. There is a lot left to figure out, even for Earth, says Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona. "I don't think we really understand how or why the Earth has been habitable in its history and what the excursions from habitability really were," he says, "and until we do, it's hard to be anything but sceptical that some of these models are really going to inform the search."

the New Scientist staff are keeping the faith that they are really, definitely out there ...

Faith is so touching ... I really wish I could find them some aliens for Christmas!

Also at Colliding Universes:

Not just aliens - the multiverse has gotta be out there too!

Extraterrestrial life: Here's a story you could only read in New Scientist ...

The universe has the hallmarks of design and what can anyone do about it?

Free stuff: Ivy League University lectures of interest. No need to pay thousands of dollar to hear these profs. Stay home and make yourself a cup of tea ...

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain

It Might Be Time to Decide For Real: The Bro or The Manzier

Here is a link to a story about a possible trend in the garment industry. Key phrases from this news video are "men looking for a change in wardrobe" and "a new trend for men in the 21st century?". I wonder what the motivation is for a man to wear a bra. Should I care? Is it my business what people do? (or, is it any of my "f'ing business!?," as it is usually so eloquently stated in actual discussions about such topics). Technically, I guess it's not. But I still wonder.

See also this link for a good take on it.

source: breitbart.com

Say It Ain't So, Tyra

Survey says:

• On average, girls are losing their virginity at 15 years of age.
• 14 percent of teens who are having sex say they’re doing it at school.
• 52 percent of survey respondents say they do not use protection when having sex.
• One in three says she fears having a sexually transmitted disease.
• 24 percent of teens with STDs say they still have unprotected sex.

I know the suggestion of abstinence only education makes some people see red and freak out, but maybe the idea that sex is kind of a big deal isn't so bad after all. Are these stats really that surprising in a culture that has so whole-heartedly embraced the sexual revolution? Or maybe these girls just need more "education".

We Have Ways of Making You Accept Gay Marriage

by Bobby Maddex

"This is a list of some of the people in the entertainment industry that not only voted to take away equal rights for all citizens of California, but also donated money to assure that their rights were taken away. It would be wonderful if we could reach out to these people, and educate them."

This is the first paragraph of a letter that is currently circulating throughout Hollywood. The list it mentions includes the names of individuals who gave money to the "Yes on 8" campaign that successfully limited marriage in California to a union between one man and one woman. Apparently, the jobs of several such donors are already in jeopardy because of the list.

I find it all very chilling. "Educate them"? I picture the Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange wherein the offending individual is strapped to a chair with his eyelids propped open and then forced to watch hour upon hour of man-on-man action until he gets used to it.

Seriously, this is like McCarthyism in reverse. Now it is the liberal Commies who are on a search and destroy mission, seeking out suspected closet conservatives who disapprove of homosexuality and then upending their lives.

Farewell, fat gene ... goodbye gay gene ... so long, sloppiness gene

by Denyse O'Leary

When someone tells you it (whatever it is) is in their genes, show them this article:

new large-scale studies of DNA are causing her and many of her colleagues to rethink the very nature of genes. They no longer conceive of a typical gene as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. “It cannot work that way,” Dr. Prohaska said. There are simply too many exceptions to the conventional rules for genes.

It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but another chemical known as RNA. The familiar double helix of DNA no longer has a monopoly on heredity. Other molecules clinging to DNA can produce striking differences between two organisms with the same genes. And those molecules can be inherited along with DNA.

The gene, in other words, is in an identity crisis. - "Now the Rest of the Genome" by Carl Zimmer (November 10, 2008)

And would someone please text Lamarck and tell him all is forgiven?

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

One third of British teachers think ID or creationism okay

Can we all just spell out together "U-S-E-F-U-L I-D-I-O-T-S" and have done with it?

Why does it matter if humans are not just the "third chimpanzee"?

If the universe was designed, it does not follow that your grandmother's superstitions are true

All the junk that's fit to debunk: "Neuropolitics" is up next

(Note: This was my ChristianWeek column, published in print as "Neuroscience hits the junk science circuit" November 15, 2008)

Methods of probing the brain at work - while communicating with the research volunteer - have made neuroscience a very cool toy indeed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has done for brain studies what the diving bell did for ocean studies. But all good science risks attracting junk science. And today I am going to talk about a junk science - neuropolitics.

With any luck, by the time this column sees print, we will no longer be hearing much from politicians for a while. But, knowing a timely fad when they see one, enterprising groups of researchers in psychology and neuroscience have been dabbling in “neuropolitics” — with predictable results.

In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite skeptically chronicles neuroscience-based explanations for voting behavior. Here’s an attempted explanation of a surge of sympathy for the Republican VP candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, after she was announced: In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite skeptically chronicles neuroscience-based explanations for voting behavior. Here’s an attempted explanation of a surge of sympathy for the Republican VP candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, after she was announced:

Circuits of cells called mirror neurons that fire or send out signals when we see someone act in a way that's familiar may have played a role in a 20-point, post–Republican Convention swing in allegiances among white, female Obama supporters to the GOP ticket, says Marco Iacoboni, author of the book Mirroring People: The Science of How We Connect with Others. Pundits credited John McCain's pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate for the shift, but Iacoboni says there's reason to believe biology played a role.

At the most basic level, mirror neurons—in the form of empathy with Palin—may have temporarily dazzled swing female voters, says neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of the 2006 book The Female Brain, which explores hormonal and other influences on the brains of women and girls. "The mirror neurons in your brain are going, 'ding, ding, ding—this person is just like me,'" Brizendine says. Those mirror neurons are working with the insula, a section of the limbic system involved with emotions and gut feelings, she says.

Both operate at a subcortical, or nonthinking, level dubbed the "sub-Blink level" after New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling 2005 book Blink about gut instincts.

These comments handily illustrate a common factor in junk neuroscience: The attempt to find occult explanations for behavior. By “occult” explanations, I mean explanations that are not needed if we assume that the voter is behaving consciously and (in her own terms) rationally.

The text of the proposed explanations addresses mechanisms in the brain, but the subtext is that no one could conclude on rational grounds that sitting governor Palin might make a better vice president than career senator Biden. So we are asked to consider neurons or hormones or the “nonthinking” “sub-Blink” level as an explanation instead.

Lite quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps’ caution that “neuropolitics” is “too nascent” a discipline to justify such strong conclusions. Actually, neuropolitics is a bogus discipline whose purpose is to use the trappings of neuroscience to flag the generally liberal political beliefs of academics as more scientific than those of the average voter. Such studies are an excellent demonstration of confirmation bias — seeing only the evidence that supports what we already believe.

As it happens, much sound research has been done on how people decide who to vote for. Briefly, many voters do not think much about politics, but vote for a candidate who sounds “reasonable” — generally, the one they hear the most positive news about. Some always vote for or against the incumbent. Others are canvassed at the workplace to vote for, say, the “pro-union” party or the “pro-industry” party. In some regions, the region-friendly party routinely wins. Religious figures often suggest a direction for the vote of the faithful. Some voters, having paid little attention to the issues or party policy, “do their duty” by voting for an ethnically reassuring name or photo.

Some factors are harder to predict. There is the disputed Bradley effect, for example — voters may reassure pollsters that they intend to vote for a minority group member, when they will in fact vote for reasons listed above.

The neuroscience around how we make choices is a fascinating study, and I certainly don’t want to discourage it. But serious study must begin by addressing the large existing fact base of rational and conscious factors that sway voters, not by proposing exotic theories about irrational and unconscious factors, theories that merely flatter the vanity of professors.

Denyse O'Leary is the co-author of The Spiritual Brain (Harper One, 2007)

Also just up at Mindful Hack:

Non-materialist neuroscience: Jeffrey Schwartz on business leadership

Multidirectional skepticism? - skepticism finding its true voice?

All the junk that's fit to debunk: "Neuropolitics" is up next?

New Scientist hit piece an "unusually atrocious" article?

New Scientist: From the "Just connect the dots, and ... " files

Lighter Moment: Why Richard Dawkins's anti-God bus ad campaign would tank in Australia

And at the Post-Darwinist:

Intellectual freedom in Canada: Will Toronto Life to be the next "human rights"media victim?

We are 98 percent chimpanzee? Scratch that.

Intellectual freedom in Canada: Civil rights on the agenda at Conservative Party Convention?

Painting with an undirected brush

Vindication for ID guy: Forrest Mims one of "50 best brains in science"

Obama and the Coming Utopia

by Bobby Maddex

You get the feeling that people really believe that this is how it will all go down. Never mind that, given Obama's unequivocal support of abortion rights (and particularly that of partial-birth abortion), a much smaller contingent of Americans will be there to witness it; some expect heaven on earth with Barack as the reigning messiah. We shall see.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Memory police - down the memory hole with YOU!

by Denyse O’Leary

In "The freedom of historical debate is under attack by the memory police" (Guardian, October 16, 2008), British historian Timothy Garton Ash skewers the European Union's new "memory police," noting that "Well-intentioned laws that prescribe how we remember terrible events are foolish, unworkable and counter-productive." Unless you are a bureaucrat with a taste for bending minds, right? In which case, you will think God sent it express from heaven just for you. For example,

More and more countries have laws saying you must remember and describe this or that historical event in a certain way, sometimes on pain of criminal prosecution if you give the wrong answer. What the wrong answer is depends on where you are. In Switzerland, you get prosecuted for saying that the terrible thing that happened to the Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman empire was not a genocide. In Turkey, you get prosecuted for saying it was. What is state-ordained truth in the Alps is state-ordained falsehood in Anatolia.

Fortunately, a group of non-barking mad European historians is starting to push back against the memory police. No surprise that the "Kafka is supposed to be fiction, okay?" group is spearheaded in France:

A further law, passed in 2001, says the French Republic recognises slavery as a crime against humanity, and this must be given its "consequential place" in teaching and research. A group representing some overseas French citizens subsequently brought a case against the author of a study of the African slave trade, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, on the charge of "denial of a crime against humanity". Meanwhile, yet another law was passed, from a very different point of view, prescribing that school curricula should recognise the "positive role" played by the French presence overseas, "especially in North Africa".

Where's comedian Guy Earle (charged under B.C.'s human rights tribunal) when you need him, anyway? A funny man has got to be pretty good to improve on the memory laws farce.

Speaking of the French presence overseas, imagine applying memory laws to Canada: It would be illegal to say in Quebec that French President Charles de Gaulle was way, way out of bounds when he shouted "Vive le Quebec libre" during some speech he gave - and it would be illegal to say in Ontario that he was within bounds. Heck, a historian could spend her life shuttling from courthouse to courthouse, and from one jail to the next ...

Just when I think that I spend too much time worrying about the growth of the nanny state, another nanny appears with another dose of something awful that's Good For Us. Fire. Them. All.

Also, just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Straws in the wind: Atheists and agnostics support constructive debate on design

A thoughtful engineering prof skewers the big mantra - "Natural selection does it all"

Evolution does and does not predict irreducible complexity, and anyway it doesn't exist

Infidel blogger awards ... Canadian blogger awards

Mark Steyn on Michael Crichton

Darwinism and popular culture: Richard Dawkins to write "improving" children's literature

by Denyse O'Leary

A friend points me to this item: "Harry Potter fails to cast spell over Professor Richard Dawkins" by Martin Beckford and Urmee Khan (Telegraph, 25 Oct 2008). Where "Harry Potter has become the latest target for Professor Richard Dawkins who is planning to find out whether tales of witchdraft and wizardy have a negative effect on children." (Re spelling, sic)

Not if you go by my kids, decades ago. They regularly heard tales of talking, reasoning cats and yet they lived with non-talking, non-reasoning natural cats parked near the radiator. I cannot think of a single instance where anyone confused the literary cat with the heat-hogging feline.

Actually, the celebrated atheist and Darwinian spear carrier is becoming something of a legend in his own laundry room. In fact,

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales.

Yawn. Glad I'm not the hall monitor.

Prof Dawkins is targeting children as the audience of his next project because he believes they are being "abused" by being taught about religion at school and labelled Christian, Jewish or Muslim from a young age.

Tell that to a kid celebrating First Communion/Bar Mitzvah/Bat Mitzvah ... .

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Intelligent design and popular culture: Going all "viral" on the Explore Evolution text

Catholic Church and evolution: Exquisite pleasure in skinning a cat?

Do we belittle God by calling him an intelligent designer?

Darwinism and popular culture: Op-ed writer in Canada's National Post doubts Darwin