Signs of the Times

Evolutionary psychology: Another reason to ignore it

In "Art, sex and Darwin in the spotlight" in the Otago Daily Times, New Zealand (February 21, 2009), we read that art is an instinct:

To take just a couple of examples - Why did people worldwide, when polled about their artistic preferences, seem drawn to realist paintings of a certain kind?

"What everybody wanted was the Pleistocene savanna landscape," Dutton explained at the AEI.

Nonsense: The grossly overrated Denis Dutton obviously doesn’t live in Canada.

Here, people go for vicious, toothed mountains and really, really deep, cold lakes.

Makes us feel right at home, which we are.

And I don't care whether Ape Man or Cave Dude would feel at home. This is OUR home and we like it here.

Lots of people - especially people visiting from Europe - have complained that my own province, Ontario, could use more vicious, toothed mountains. Aesthetically much nicer. I agree, but look - we got lots of water, okay. Lots.

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

"Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain"

A quote from a story at treehugger.com:

Ingenious act of head turning activism, or wacko publicity stunt gone too far? You decide. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, has fashioned a will stipulating that upon her death, her body is to be donated to the infamous animal rights org. And she's written up a bizarre list of instructions on what they're to do with each of her body parts after she's deceased. Just a warning to the squeamish—this gets weird.

Newkirk has written in her will that her body is to be used by PETA "in a manner that draws attention to needless animal suffering and exploitation." And while the org retains the right to use her body in any way, she's outlined a detailed list of suggestions. They range from macabre to downright grotesque.

This is most likely a publicity stunt, but still. Come on. Animals eat animals. Sure, they don't turn slaughtering into an industry, but I'd bet to help their species survive they would if they were smarter.

Also, How is it that people like this are seen as sympathetic and warm-hearted and all that, but people who are against abortion are considered irrational religious fanatics?

Maybe in protest to partial-birth abortion I'll put in my will to have doctors destroy my brain to kill me when I'm no longer wanted. I'll also send my winking eyeball to Ingrid Newkirk.

Am I out of line on this one?

HT: Strange Herring

Science fiction: When the numbers run out ...

Nicolas Cage's movie, What Happens When the Numbers Run Out?, sounds like an interesting sci fi entry:

In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one of the students, a mysterious girl who seems to hear whispered voices, fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead. Fast forward 50 years to the present: A new generation of students examines the contents of the time capsule and the girl's cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb. But it is Caleb's father, professor Ted Myles, who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As Ted further unravels the document's secrets, he realizes it foretells three additional events—the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son.

Here's the trailer:

What happens when the numbers run out?, The trailer portentously asks. Well, I guess in that case we go back to "more," "less," "too big," "too small," "too expensive," and "I don't like this deal, but can't explain why." Numbers have their uses, after all, if not for divination.

While we are here, the Kepler mission is to hunt for Earth-like planets

Also just up at Colliding Universes (my blog about competing materialist and non-materialist theories about our universe):

Salvo and Starbucks

by Julie Grisolano

You may be wondering what Salvo magazine and Starbucks have in common.  Besides the fact that your local Starbucks might be a nice location to read your latest issue of Salvo, (which incidentally, is going to the printer this week), Salvo and Starbucks have one big thing in common:

You usually end up spending at least $5 or $6 in Starbucks, which is the cost of a single issue of Salvo. 

Now, stay with me on this one.  While you're at Starbucks (and for those of you who are Dunkin Donuts fans or other coffee houses this applies to you, too), it's safe to say that you buy a cup of coffee for a few dollars...that's if you didn't purchase one of the varied drinks at Starbucks in size names that are unintelligible for those who are not Italian speakers. 

As you're sitting in Starbucks sipping your Grande Tall Latte Frappuccino Macchiato with sprinkles and a topping of whipped cream, (while you're reading your latest issue of Salvo of course!), you might find yourself hungry from the hours you're happily spending reading the magazine.  And so, you buy yourself a low-fat blueberry muffin. 

By the end of your visit to Starbucks, which was well spent since you read Salvo the whole time, you've managed to drop a little over five dollars.

And how exactly does this $5 relate to Salvo magazine?  Because I'd like to ask you to help us by sending Salvo the $5 you would have spent at Starbucks (or Dunkin Donuts) for production, postage, and design work on the magazine.

As far as magazines go, Salvo is less expensive than most to produce.  But, being a small operation that leans on the conservative side of the issues, means that Salvo doesn't have the same financial resources as other magazines.

The magazine is a small operation---let's call it a labor of love.  We at Salvo believe that resistance against the culture is not futile!  And so we produce Salvo, to help shed light on the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

And this is why we ask for your assistance every few months.

So, you may not think that the $5 you would have spent at Starbucks is a big deal to Salvo, but it is.  In fact, if every person who reads the email blast we're sending out tomorrow and this blog sent in $5 today, Salvo will have raised---through your generosity---tens of thousands of dollars that will go towards operating the magazine.

Will you help Salvo by sending in a gift of $5?

Please know that we also welcome financial gifts of the larger variety too.  Any financial gift, whether it be the cost of a one-time visit to Starbucks, or your yearly coffee-house-outing-allowance, is a true blessing to the magazine.

Thanks so much for your generosity to Salvo.  We couldn't do this work without your wonderful support.

The Debate is Over, So There

If you consume mainstream media, odds are you’re not hearing much debate about climate change these days. We’re told the debate is effectively over. Scientists say so, too. It’s our consumption that continues to ruin our planet’s environmental health, so there’s no longer time to debate—it’s time to act. Every time we do anything, like flip on a light switch or charge an iPod or turn on the A/C, we’re contributing to the release of greenhouse gases, and so the oceans rise and that’s a problem for the polar bears and, well, you know—something like that. It may be difficult to explain, but we know the state of the environment is bad. Most recently, in fact, we were told that the effects of man-made climate change are all but irreversible.

So, yes, the debate is over. And yet for some reason, somewhere outside the fray, the weather sage John Coleman decided it shouldn’t be. That we’d been hoodwinked. That it was still worth talking about. So a year and a half ago, determined he’d heard enough of the noise and the Al Gore and the polar bears, he threw his voice into the conversation.

an excerpt from an article over at Good magazine. You Don’t Need a Weatherman

Speaking of climate change and media bias and how suddenly it's not cool to question the consensus (when did that shift happen, anyways?), here is an article we ran in Salvo 3.

United Church of Canada celebrates Darwin - en route to oblivion

In the most recent edition of the Canadian Science Writers' Association's ScienceLink (Vol 28, No. 4, 2008) there is an interesting piece by Graeme Stemp-Morlock on the decision by the United Church Observer , the leading United Church-related magazine, to co-sponsor the Royal Ontario Museum's "Evolution Revolution" exhibit ($15,000 cash and $35,000 advertising):

If a small operation like ours was able to stand up without fear and proudly support this exhibit then we thought it would draw attention to the fact that huge corporations much bigger than ours were afraid to," said David Wilson, editor of the United Church Observer. "We were trying to say 'you don't need to be afraid.'"

(Note: I have not so far been able to find Stemp-Morlock's ScienceLink article online.)

I suspect that Darwin's racism was a factor in corporate disinterest. What if someone started quoting key relevant passages from Darwin's Descent of Man? Like that black people are closer to gorillas than white people are? Not prevaricating or explaining them away, just quoting what the old toff actually said - and honestly believed?

In the early Nineties, there was an enormous, career-limiting uproar at the Museum - including daily demos - around allegations of racism in connection with an exhibit from Africa. I don't imagine anyone wants more of that.

Devilish thoughts on abortion

By Regis Nicoll

It has been nearly 70 years since C. S. Lewis made public a mysterious correspondence that became known as The Screwtape Letters. The “letters” contained advice, instructions, and warnings from a senior demon to a junior demon about the handling of an earthling in his “care.”

As disclosed in the last of the letters, Wormwood, the pupil, failed his commission. He has never been heard from again. It has been noted that his disappearance had some connection with a ravenous meal Screwtape, the tutor, enjoyed sometime shortly thereafter.

Recently, new correspondence has come to light that bears eerie similarity. With moist palms and brow, I share it with you now...

The Real Economic Solution

By Regis Nicoll

Apprehension over the global economic crisis overshadowed every other issue for Americans, according to Pew Research. Yet amid the growing wave of bank failures, layoffs, home foreclosures, and shrinking retirement accounts, Americans remain optimistic. Why? Because they have “confidence that the government still possesses the power to fix the economy.”

The unending succession of government buyouts, bailouts, and handouts has given confidence even to the adult entertainment industry to carry a tin cup to Congress. You read that right. Porn moguls Larry Flint and Joe Francis want $5 billion from Uncle Sam to help their industry through the economic slump. And with the passage of another economic stimulus package, is it any wonder that the State looms as Savior for the porn industry? That might explain another phenomenon.

In times of national crises, like the 9/11 attacks, there is usually a spike in church attendance. Not this time. According to the Gallup organization, church attendance remained flat, around 40 percent, even during the month of December.

Well, contrary to the public trust, our government lacks revenues, now and in the future, to fill all those tin cups—not to mention those needed for social security and Medicare—and attempting to print enough paper to do so would cause a meltdown of the U.S. Treasury presses.

More fundamentally, the government cannot “fix the economy” because it cannot address what got us here in the first place: greed, self-indulgence, consumerism, and instant gratification from Main Street to Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

While our current fiscal situation is disturbing, it shouldn’t be surprising. Continue reading here.

Religion: When bad things are done by (supposedly) good people ...

Columnist Michael Gerson recalls

sitting at a Kigali restaurant with a Tutsi woman who described the death of her younger sister, a university student, during the Rwandan genocide. The girl had been given up for murder by one of her own teachers, who was a nun. The survivor across from me, previously a Catholic, had never attended church again. In the sacrifice of the Mass, she could only see the sacrifice of her sister.

Many items on the list of horribles laid at the door of religion are libels or exaggerations. But this charge -- the indifference or complicity of many Christians during the great genocides of modern history -- is one of the genuine scandals.

In Hitler's Germany, Christians responded to mass murder with general acquiescence and only isolated defiance. Protestants earned the most shame.

He's right, of course, and he adds

During the Rwandan genocide, writes Timothy Longman, "Numerous priests, pastors, nuns, brothers, catechists and Catholic and Protestant lay leaders supported, participated in, or helped to organize the killings." Two Benedictine nuns collaborated with Hutu militias in the murder of 7,000 people just outside their convent grounds. A priest participated in the burning and bulldozing of a church with 2,000 men, women and children inside.

It is very difficult to understand how those who worship a man on a cross could help to drive the bloody nails themselves.

He offers a useful analysis:

When religion is infected by racism, ideology or extreme nationalism, it can become a carrier of hatred instead of conscience. And when churches are concerned mainly for their institutional self-preservation, they often end up neck-deep in compromise or paralyzed by cowardice.

Yes indeed. The Vatican was not telling those people to do those things; rather the opposite. But the message they heard was "protect our institution, our culture, etc." this is a perennial temptation of religion.

Gerson is writing in the context of Pope Benedict XVI's lifting the ban of excommunication on a Pope St. Pius X Society bishop - in an effort to heal a long-standing rift. Unfortunately, the bishop turned out be a Holocaust denier. I am sure that "B16" did not know that. He fully intends to continue his predecessor's project of healing rifts. But one wishes that he had better research services. Perhaps he will take steps to acquire them now.

Gerson's reflections throw a curious light on Bill Maher's documentary, Religulous. Recently, on a radio show with host Barry Arrington, I expressed puzzlement that the film focuses on ridiculing simple peole who are religious and says comparatively little about evils committed orc ondoned by religious folk. But a moment's thought, and the picture comes in: It would then be necessary to talk about the good that far more religious people do.

Here's my review of Religulous. I was also on

See also:

Spotted: Neuroscientists in the movies ... Andrew Newberg!

Also just up at The Mindful Hack:

For one night only!: Hear Steve Fuller's "Lincoln and Darwin" play free!

Go here to hear the play online. Basically, here's the idea:

Fuller has an interesting premise: A postmodern talk show on which Charles Darwin (Chuck) and Abe Lincoln (Abe), whose birthdays fall on the same day, appear. They are interviewed, and decide if they want to stay in the present or go back to wherever they are now (not disclosed as a matter of broadcast policy). There are two hosts - the big hair hostette (Sheila) and a wisecracking dude on a short lead (Jack). Here’s just a snippet:

ABE [bemused]: Like it or not, Darwin, it seems that you’ve been turned into the God behind the new science of Genesis!

CHUCK [looks cross]: I fail to see the humour in all this. My good name has been misappropriated for some sophisticated form of alchemy!

SHEILA: Chuck, lighten up! The stuff works – at least most of the time. I mean – I’ve got this recent testimonial from an expert. Listen to what he says: “Genes are digitally coded text, in a sense too full to be dismissed as an analogy. Like human words they have the power to hurt and to heal, and that power is the greater because, given the right conditions, genetic words can dictate with stronger predictability than most human imperatives.”

CHUCK: That sounds like the ravings of some theologian still stuck in the seventeenth century with his Book of Nature and Book of God.

SHEILA: No, Chuck! That’s Richard Dawkins. He’s on your side. He’s the greatest evolutionist ever produced by television!

More here.

Also just up at Post-Darwinist: