What is it to be “sick”?   According to Merriam-Webster, there are two definitions:

1 : affected with disease or ill health
2 : spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt

This afternoon I viewed “Sicko.”  I was one of the many audience members at the theater who applauded at the film’s conclusion.  Sicko will serve provoke much-needed discussion regarding the American health care system.  Sicko invokes the second definition of “sick” as well.  My hope is that Sicko will also provoke desperately needed conversation, as well as substantive changes, to the American political system, where money acts as a virus and where the equivalent of white blood cells–the Media–has long gone into hibernation. 

I am not optimistic about any self-instigated change in the American political system, but perhaps Sicko will provoke the media to start digging into the millions of health care injustices in America.  These compelling stories are there for the taking.  Perhaps these many cases where health care is being unfairly denied to Americans will at least occasionally start showing up on the front pages of America’s newspapers.  Before Sicko was released, the undeniable fact that America is having a health care crisis was not considered newsworthy by the corporate media.  Nor has any real healthcare conversation occurred in this country since Hillary Clinton was bludgeoned into silence on the issue thanks to more than $100 million spent by healthcare corporations more than 10 years ago.

Our political system is wretchedly sick.  Moore makes this clear when he shows us a large room full of members of Congress, complete with little green tags superimposed to show how much money each of them has taken from big healthcare corporations.  

Sicko is not just about the uninsured.  It is also about those who have insurance.  For that reason, this film should be of interest to both the 50 million Americans who don’t have health insurance (18,000 of them die each year because they are uninsured) as well as the quarter of a billion Americans who do have insurance.

Our health care insurance system is horribly sick (again, in the sense that it is spiritually or morally unsound or corrupt).  American health care insurance is based upon the idea that you become highly profitable by denying claims to people who deserve reimbursement and who often happen to be dying.  They can always go to court, of course.  Then, when the jury renders a large judgment against the insurance company, the relatives of the now-dead insured person can enjoy the money.  How do those numerous healthcare claims get denied?  It’s easy.  Doctors hired by the insurance companies stamp their names onto denial letters that are cranked out en masse by insurance company computers. 

Keep in mind, that no insurance company executive needs to go around with horns or a pitchfork telling doctors to deny claims that they shouldn’t deny.  No one has to tell anyone else to screw the sick people.  All the insurance companies need to do is to put the right incentives in place.  In Sicko, Moore makes it clear that the insurance companies have implemented carefully crafted schemes along those lines.

As you might expect in a Michael Moore film, you will find some imaginative and effective ways of portraying complicated issues.  I don’t want to spoil the film by detailing any of these here.  Suffice it to say that you will get your money’s worth if you go to see the movie. (more…)

[Reprinted with the permission of Matt Bors]

[This idea was born as a comment here, but I decided to create a separate post out of it].

What if your mother stood right behind you, and your mother’s mother stood right behind her? Then your great grandma and then your great great grandma. Imagine them all lined up, one foot apart, stretching out into the distance. If a generation is deemed to be 25 years, a line of your ancestors as long as a football field (300 feet) would stretch backwards 7,500 years.  The woman at the end of that 300 foot line would have lived during the time when agriculture just began in ancient Egypt. You’d still recognize each of your ancestors in that 300 foot line to be fully modern humans, biologically speaking. 

Isn’t it amazing to think that you could run along side that entire 300 foot line of your ancestors in only 15 seconds (I’m assuming you’re not an Olympic caliber sprinter) to end up standing next to one of your own ancestors who was alive 7,500 years ago?

Now think even further back.  In An Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins calculated that 20,000,000 great-grandparents ago, our relatives were small shrew-like animals living at the end of the Cretaceous period. What if you spaced out your relatives one foot apart to extend all the way back to these shrew-like creatures? That line would be 3,787 miles long. That’s about the length of highway running from my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri to Anchorage Alaska. Imagine speeding alongside that line of your relatives at 60 mph, seeing the generations of your relatives whizzing by, more than 5,000 of them every minute.

It wouldn’t take long to reach the last of your relatives who looks like you. In fact, your trip would have barely begun.  Biologically modern humans (those whose bodies are the functional equivalent of our own bodies) came onto the scene between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.  Driving at highway speed parallel to that line of your own relatives, you’d run out of your biologically modern human relatives less than two-minutes after starting your trip. That’s only 4,000 generations.

If you wanted to drive all the way out to see your shrew-like relatives (at 60 mph), you’d need to drive alongside that entire 3,787 mile long line of relatives.  It sounds daunting, but you could do it in only 63 hours.  That’s only 63 hours of driving to get back to your relatives who were literally shrews!

You can’t possibly write a work of fiction that is more amazing than these facts.

We are all survivors. If any one of those ancestors failed to survive long enough to reproduce, you wouldn’t be there to read this post.  For me, that is an extraordinary thought. Just think of how likely it was that you would never exist, which brings me back to the idea of the post from which this post sprang. 

[After originally publishing this idea, “Ben” wrote this comment]

First and foremost, it would probably only take me 13 seconds to run the football field. That is, if I was not so intrigued by the figures I pass, to stop and have a quick chat. I’m a bit (lot) confused though. My mind can’t seem to get past the first few generations, without straining, then I end up at the end with a rodent. Are the folks (mice) way back at the beginning still my *direct* descendants? Or is there some extinctions or branching out or… okay it is just too hard to comprehend, for me.

Another interesting thing, not that it really matters, but EVERYONE reading this is part “black”.

DNA studies have shown that people shared a common ancestor who lived in Africa between 50,000 to 200,000 years ago. As our ancestors migrated out of Africa into the rest of the world, small changes called mutations occurred in their DNA. As generations passed, each mutation links our ancestor to a specific time and place in history. The mutations that we find in our own DNA tell the story of our own ancestral past.

[My response to Ben]

Ben, after you run past the football field length line, just to get an idea, you may, indeed, come back and chat with some of these folks. 

I would love to see the looks on the faces of so many bigots as they started noticing that the skin color and facial features of their own relatives started to change as they drove past that long line of their relatives. After only one-half mile, only 30 seconds of driving, they would start noticing that they were driving past their ancestors who lived in Africa “only” 60,000 years ago.  They would start noticing their australopithecine ancestors after driving for only 30 minutes.  If those bigots started their hypothetical driving trips from St. Louis, they’d notice their australopithecine Grandmas even before they left the St. Louis area. This makes me wonder . . .  would they get out of their car and hug their hairy naked ancestors or would they vomit? 

Someday I’m going to write a post called “I am African.”  The idea is that it doesn’t matter who you are–you come out of Africa.  Consequently, on the Census form and other forms that ask the meaningless and divisive “race” question, my habit is to check all relevant boxes, including “African,” because that’s where at least some of my ancestors are from. This is a thought that liberates, because it reminds me that we’re not so different from different-looking others after all.

Since my highway drive is a thought experiment–let’s take the thought to an extreme.   Let’s assume that all of your female relatives standing in that line were sexually mature adults. I’d bet you’d think some of those women were fetching.  The incest taboo wouldn’t kick in (no Westermarck effect), because you weren’t raised in the same house with most of them. This might cause you a conundrum. If you can marry a second cousin, can you marry your great great great (X20) grandmother? The shared genetic material you share with that woman would be far less than that of your second cousin. Such a potential, hypothetical conundrum! Not that I’m driving all the way to Alaska and dating a shrew!

It’s deemed “news” rather than advertising: It’s right up there with Paris Hilton.

Hundreds of people who lined up to be among the first to get their hands on Apple Inc.’s coveted iPhone are now the braggarts and guinea pigs for the latest must-have, cutting-edge piece of techno-wizardry. 

Gotta have it.  Gotta have it!

As though we haven’t been able to live happy and productive lives until now.    As though people who go out to by an iPhone are going to be happy now because they will own this new gadget.

I’m not anti-gadget.  I use a Blackberry.  I am webmaster of two sites.  I am proficient at using all kinds of PC software, including wordprocessing, finance, video editing and voice recognition. I own and use digital still and video cameras.  My rule, though, is that I don’t want to mess with it unless I’m really going to use it. 

Today, the iPhone story is about “needing” to own it and have it, needing to show it off and brag about it.  But people can do all of things that iPhone offers without possessing an iPhone.  They can easily email, surf the web, make phone calls, maintain my contacts and check maps.   Maybe they don’t do it with such an elegant package, but they can get it done.  They can get it done without fanfare, without standing in line at an Apple Store.  Those people are more connected to other people because they don’t display their gadgets to make conversation. 

Well, I can’t use my existing gadgets and software in a way that people will think I’m cool.  Not anymore.  With the launch of the iPhone something has been taken from me.

The secret is that new gadgets are not really about the gadget. They are about relationships. They are about possessing the gadget so that one can be noticed and admired as one who has the resources sufficient to own that gadget.  The urge to own is usually not about filling a need.  Here’s an example. A year ago, I was wandering about a Costco store passing by the rows of wide-screen TV’s, admiring the resolution, thinking it might be nice to own one.   I had this thought even though my wife and I have a perfectly functioning 27″ Phillips television that I bought in 1989.   I asked my wife what she thought about upgrading to a new hi-definition television.   She asked me a question.   “Have you ever been watching a movie on our current TV when it occurred to you that you weren’t able to appreciate the show because the TV needed to be twice as big?” 

Well, no.  Never.  That single question reminded me that the “need” to own a wide-screen television was not a need at all.  To continue thinking that one “needed” such a gadget reveals, in fact, that the consumer has an impoverished imagination.   We still have that 27″ set and I am still amazed at the quality of the new television sets at Costco.  Yet it hasn’t ever recurred to me that we “needed” one.

There are probably people out there who are always on the go who need ALL of the things that the iPhone offers.  They need one because they don’t have their own computer, phone or camera, for instance.  Maybe the choice of an iPhone makes sense for them.  

There are also people out there who don’t really need any of the things that the iPhone offers, yet they want to be noticed and respected by similar-thinking gadget-honoring others.  They are salivating for the newest gadget now available.  May they discover the peace that comes when one realizes that there is a difference between wants and needs. May they discover the peace of feeling whole even though they don’t own the newest heavily-hyped gadget.

Chris Kelly writes about that “thing” on the President’s mind during today’s 45 minute trip to Rhode Island.

Bush dropped in, to see what condition his condition was in, and to address the Naval War College. For the audience members playing the drinking game, the 9/11 references were:

1) “This is an ideological conflict we face against murderers and killers who try to impose their will. These are the people who attacked us on September 11th and killed nearly 3,000 people.”

2)”Remember, when I mention al Qaeda, they’re the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 on September the 11th, 2001.”

3) “Al Qaeda is responsible for most sensational killings in Iraq. They’re responsible for the sensational killing on U.S. soil, and they’re responsible for the killings in Iraq.”*

(*An allusion, not a direct reference. Take half a drink.)

4) “And what makes the war even more significant is that what happens overseas matters to the security of the United States of America, as we learned on September 11th, when killers were able to use a failed state to plot the deadly attack.”

And:

5) “September the 11th, we saw how a failed state, like I’d just told you, can affect the security at home.”

Is it just me, or are the interviews you see on television getting worse and worse?  There are exceptionally good interviewers, of course (such as Bill Moyers).  Bad interviews are the norm, however.  This is a shame, because most bad interviews could be cured if only the interviewers would follow a few basic rules

Before I go further, I should make it clear that my frustration is with interviews that are serious attempts to discuss a topic with a guest in order to inform or entertain the audience.  I am excluding from this critique interviews on comedy shows (such as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert), where the interviewer is expected to interject his or her personality with more gusto or even to toy with the guest. 

Without further ado, here are 10 basic rules for conducting effective interviews:

1.  The interviewer needs to shut up and let the guest talk.  How often is it that an interviewer just can’t hold back and ends up dominating the interview, failing to allow the guest a fair chance to talk?  I’ve often watched interviews by Charlie Rose that remind me of this point.  Although Charlie books some terrific guests and does some excellent work, he is one of those interviewers who is often incapable of staying out of the way.  Many interviews end up being “about Charlie.”  In the legal field, the trick to effective direct examination of a witness is to ask brief questions that allow the witness to “bloom” in front of the jury.  If successful, the lawyer asking the questions almost seems invisible.  Many television interviewers have much to learn in this regard.
 
2.  Even if the interviewer knows the topic well (usually they don’t know the topic nearly as well as their guest), let the guest talk about it.  Get out of the way of the guest and let the guest actually have the necessary contiguous blocks of time in order to strut his or her stuff.  Those guests are experts at what you called them on the show to talk about.  Truly, if they were worthy of being on your show, they are capable of filling those relatively few minutes of time. 

3.  Allow the guest an opportunity to put his or her best foot forward.  How often do you see an over-eager interviewer jumping in to interrupt the guest?  Really, I don’t care if the interviewer knows a lot of things about the topic.  I generally would rather hear it from the guest.  I don’t want to hear the interviewer paraphrasing or summarizing the guest’s own book in front of the guest.  I’d much rather hear the guest do that.  Sometimes, of course, an interviewer has no intent on letting the guest actually express a view point.  Many Bill O’Reilly interviews are cases in point.

4.  Don’t put words in the mouth of the guest and then, without allowing a guest to respond, ask the guest an unrelated question.  How often have you heard this technique: “As we all know, President Bush is really doing a great job over in Iraq, now tell me, who is the odds on choice for next president of the United States?”  In a courtroom, the proper objection would be “compound question.” (more…)

I don’t know how I started receiving Cagle’s emailing list, but it’s a list I’ve truly enjoyed. Cagle’s presents the work of a large number of cartoonists, topic by topic.

Today’s cartoon topic is obesity in America, and the cartoonists are merciless.

The following excerpts are from a report posted on the website of the plaintiff, the Freedom From Religion Foundation: 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision today in Hein v. FFRF granting the executive branch the freedom to violate the separation of church and state without court review spells “imperial presidency,” charges the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

“This means we have a constitutional separation between church and state, but no way to enforce it if the executive branch chooses to violate it with ‘discretionary’ actions,” added Dan Barker, a plaintiff and Foundation co-president.

“The only remedy left, since individual Americans are being barred from challenging this violation, is for Congress to defund the Office of Faith-based Initiatives at the White House and Cabinets,” said Barker. “Let Congress provide the oversight that the Court is refusing to give!”

The punchy and powerful dissent, written by Justice Souter and signed by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens, notes: “If the Executive could accomplish through the exercise of discretion exactly what Congress cannot do through legislation, Establishment Clause protection would melt away.”

Souter wrote: “I see no basis for this distinction in either logic or precedent, and respectfully dissent.”

Pollution is so bad in this part of China that this lake water looks like ooblick.   Here’s the photos of the lake.

When the Bible talks about people being resurrected, to what point in their lives are they restored?  Is it to the moment just before they die?  The Bible seems to suggest this, at least with the resurrection of Jesus.  But, if that’s so, then what about people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or have a stroke years before they die?  Are they resurrected with massive brain damage?  If not, then how long does God hold down the ‘rewind’ button?  Does God take them back to a younger time in their lives when they did not have the disease, or does he somehow keep them at their old age, but erase the illness?  If the latter, then how does he resurrect them without making them into people who never existed?

Erich just uploaded a short post noting that Americans feel sourly about nearly everything. With no sign of optimism, and marked lack of trust in virtually all institutions, does it come as a surprise that people often sigh hopelessly over the “good old days”? Many people cling to an image of past glory and happiness, even when their fantasy “good old days” never existed. Several writers on the blog, Jason Rayl and me among them, have pointed out the inaccuracies of such perfect, imagined pasts.

So when we look back to a “good old day”, hold it up to the light of present times and see a glaring gap, has the world changed, or have our perceptions simply matured, become more jaded with time?

Some psychological research has delved into this tendency of human cognition to misperceive the past, and of our additional tendency to ignore the role that perception plays in how the world looks. A recent Cornell University study entitled “When Change in Self is Mistaken for Change in the World” (Eibach, Libby & Gilovich, 2003) finds that:

“Personal changes in respondents (e.g., parenthood, financial change) were positively correlated with their assessments of various social changes (e.g., crime rates, freedom).”

Thus, if your world has improved in recent years, you may think that crime rates have lowered, drug abuse and dependency has shrunk, and that the country’s economy has brightened and bettered recently as well. But if things have gotten worse for you, perhaps you clamor for the “good old days” of yore.

And as it turns out, many generations before us have lamented about the worsening condition of the future. Eibach, Libby and Gilovich write:

“The belief that society is changing for the worse is not unique to this era. It has been evident in every generation of the United States since the late 18th century… Evidence of similar attitudes have been found among the ancient Greeks, and in myths of cultures as diverse as the Aztecs and Zoroastians.”

Eibach et al say that a huge flaw in human cognition fuels this frequent mistake. We have trouble noticing a change in ourselves, which leads us to look at the world with what these researchers call “a naïve realism”. Years of psychological research have revealed that we attempt to see our past and current selves as a cohesive whole, in spite of evidence that suggests the opposite. Historic research, for instance, reveals that we misremember our old attitudes and beliefs as in line with our current attitudes and beliefs, even if they have actually changed dramatically.
(more…)

According to this article at Reason, Americans are not optimistic about much of anything.  

Americans are currently in a very sour mood; a state of affairs that is reflected in the relatively low confidence ratings given many Americans institutions [including business, religion, the police, banks, and more] in Gallup’s latest survey….

The graphic accompanying the post is especially worth a visit. 

Think Progress reports on these findings from Free Press and the Center for American Progress: 

– In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.

– Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

– 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

And why is it that conservative viewpoints dominate a country where conservative attitudes no longer dominate?

Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.

Glenn Greenwald links to Josh Marshall, who published an e-mail from a reader “who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government ‘reporting’ yet”: 

It’s a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as “al-Qaida” fighters. When did that happen? 

Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were “insurgents” or they were referred to as “Sunni” or “Shia’a” fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as “al-Qaida”. 

Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.

Here’s what Greenwald has to say about this newest Bush strategy for concocting an enemy in Iraq:

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term “Al Qaeda” to designate “anyone and everyone we fight against or kill in Iraq” is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as “Al Qaeda.” 

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically.

This information comes from an article in the March 2007 edition of GQ.

That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new “intelligence,” and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold.

That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants—undercutting America’s best effort at war in order to expand his own power.

That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government.

Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health.

For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state.

No punch line here.  It really happened.

The Vatican has issued a set of “10 commandments” for motorists to promote safer driving.
The “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road” call on drivers to respect speed limits, refrain from drinking before driving and avoid cursing.

Roman Catholics are also urged to make the sign of the cross before setting off on a journey.

This is said to be the first time the Vatican has specifically dealt with the growing worldwide problem of road rage.

For the response of Cagle’s Cartoonist Index, see here.

My suggestion:  Make sure you don’t engage in sign of the cross behavior while driving.   As with cell phone usage, that could be distracting and thus dangerous.  Then again, perhaps the protection enhancement of making the sign of the cross while driving might nullify the increased danger caused by momentarilytaking one’s attention off one’s driving.   Perhaps this issue merits some work to human factors experts to quantify the dangers/benefits.  The real problem, of course, is that one might forget to make the sign of the cross until one has already put the car in drive and started the journey.  Then again, the St. Christopher statue might kick in during those moments of omission.

While we’re at it, let’s run a study to determine the effect of using legitimate birth control so that drivers don’t have so many babies distracting them in the back seat.  

We suspected it.  Now we know it.   The Gitmo trials were cooked, according to this article from MyWay: 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - An Army officer with a key role in the U.S. military hearings at Guantanamo Bay says they relied on vague and incomplete intelligence and were pressured to declare detainees “enemy combatants,” often without any specific evidence.

His affidavit, released Friday, is the first criticism by a member of the military panels that determine whether detainees will continue to be held.

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only “generic” material that didn’t hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

So how did the process really work?

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and 2005, with handcuffed detainees appearing before panels made up of three officers. Detainees had a military “personal representative” instead of a defense attorney, and all but 38 were determined to be “enemy combatants.”

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was “intensive scrutiny” when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn’t an “enemy combatant,” they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

Consider that 60% of the energy expended by a resting baby is consumed by the baby’s brain.  A resting adult brain uses 25% of its energy.  Compare this to the average ape brain, which uses only 8% of the apes energy.  In short, having a big brain requires a lot of energy.

The June 15, 2007 edition of Science presents the article “Food for Thought: Did the First Cooked Meals Helped Fuel the Dramatic Evolutionary Expansion of the Human Brain?” [Most of the articles of Science are only available to paid subscribers online]. Richard Wrangham, a Harvard primatologist, realized that when we started pre-digesting our food by heating it, this allowed us to spend less time digesting the food.  From this observation, he realized that this would have given our ancestors a big evolutionary advantage.  “With cooking, we should see major adaptive changes.”  What would you do with that extra energy made available by chewing less?  How about things like cave painting or writing poetry are inventing airplanes?

Wrangham proposed cooking as one of the answers to a long-standing riddle in human evolution: where did humans get the extra energy to support their large brains?  “Even small differences in diet can have big effects on survival and reproductive success,” Wrangham states.  This article points out that australopithecines, (which lived from 4 million to 1.2 million years ago) had brains the size of chimpanzee brains.  About 1.9 million years ago, the brain of H. erectus showed dramatic growth to twice the size of the chimpanzee’s brain.  It was about this time that archaeological sites showed that H erectus was moving animal carcasses into the campsites for communal eating.  “It’s teeth, jaws and guts all got smaller.” 

One prevailing argument is that H. erectus were simply better hunters.  Wrangham argues, however, that we learned to cook between 1.9 million to 1.6 million years ago, and our brains grew suddenly.  Studies show that “cooking gelatinizes the matrix of collagen in animal flesh and opens up tightly woven carbohydrate molecules and plants to make them easier to absorb.”  Whereas chimpanzees spent five hours per day chewing food, hunter gatherers who cook only spent one hour chewing each day.  It’s important to note that H erectus had smaller teeth than that of his ancestors.  The lack of the large teeth characteristic of its ancestor is additional evidence that H. erectus had learned to cook.

Other scientists are showing enthusiasm about Wrangham’s proposal.  There’s a problem, however.  There is no clear evidence that anybody was cooking that long ago.  The article details solid evidence for cooking 250,000 years ago in southern Europe and indicates that there is evidence of controlled fire 790,000 years ago in Israel.  Wrangham notes, however, “that evidence for fire is often ambiguous and argues that humans were roasting meat and tubers around the campfire as early as 1.9 million years ago.

There’s also a classical approach to the question of where we got extra energy that does not necessarily require the cooking hypothesis.  The theory is that we began to eat more meat.  Eating more meat allowed our guts to shrink, which saves energy for digestion.  This is called the “expensive tissue hypothesis,” proposed in 1995 by Leslie Aiello.  This hypothesis is now receiving solid experimental support.

All of your suspicions are true and you can now find them in an article that is intensely compelling and distressing.  It’s the current edition (June 28, 2007) of Rolling Stone.

It’s not every day after all that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell.  But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science–especially when it comes from international experts.  So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming

We’re going to see a big debate on it going forward,” Cheney told ABC news, about “the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it’s caused by man.”  We know today, he added, is “not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy is going to” solve the problem.”  Even former White House insiders were shocked by the vice president’s see-no-evil performance.

The Rolling Stone article argues that the White House has actively worked to distort the findings of climate scientists, playing down the threat of global warming.  This investigation by Rolling Stone goes further, however.  It reveals that

these distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, and a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on environmental quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove.  An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act-as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration scientists and climate-policy officials-confirms that the White House is implemented in industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters.

Rolling Stone traces the revolving door through which those who worked for industry polluters have joined and then left the White House. The print version of Rolling Stone offers a telling graphic regarding this industry influence in the White House.  Another graphic in the print version (page 59) Is entitled “Lie by Lie: a Guide to President Bush’s Calculated Deceptions on Global Warming.  Included in that graphic are nine fundamental lies by the White House.  For instance, in February, 2002, Bush announced “we must and we will conserve more in the United States.”  Between 2002 and 2006, however, “Bush slashed funding for federal efficiency programs by nearly one-third.”  Here’s another Bush lie (more…)

Salmon Rushdie is back in the sights of Iranian clerics and Pakistani antiwesterners. Things had been quiet for the writer since Iran dropped the reward for his death and withdrew the fatwa placed on him by the Ayatollah Khomeini back in 1989 after publication of The Satanic Verses. But Britain just knighted him and so, with this renewed honor, he is once more held up as a standard of the disregard–-no, the utter disrespect—the West has toward Islam.

This cannot be doing the reputation of the broader Islamic population on the globe any good. This is a schoolyard game of “Take It Back!” Carried, certainly, to extremes. I find it ironic especially since the purported “insult” to Islam is nonexistent. Rushdie novelized an episode in Mohammed’s life which is known and discussed among Islamic scholars. His title refers to “insertions” in the Qu’ran which, historically, exist, and are attributed to Shaitan. Where is the insult?

Twofold, I believe. The first is quite simple and explicable in political terms. As in other instances of books which draw the fire of the intolerant, the “real” problem is not the stated problem. The stated problem is a question of ecclesiastical philosophy and common knowledge among mainstream thinkers. Rushdie possesses a sense of humor, evident in his writing, which usually rubs religionists of any stripe the wrong way. (I urge all to read Umberto Eco’s marvelous The Name of the Rose for a look at the problem of humor in religious scholarship—the maguffin in the murders is the existence of Aristotle’s apocryphal book on Humor, which an old priest believes must never come to light, since if Aristotle, the “good pagan”, declares humor acceptable, then ridicule will pour into religion, and the “seriousness and integrity” of faith will suffer.)

No, I do not believe that the real reason Khomeini declared his fatwa had anything to do with his portrayal of the Prophet’s life. It has to do with Rushdie’s characterization of a Khomeini in the same book, which is not flattering. Rushdie did not name Khomeini as such, but it’s clear to whom he refers, and his return from exile brings “the non time of the imam” to his native land. In my opinion, either Khomeini read this and thought “Why you nasty little…a writer…no, worse, a novelist—“ and, in a fit of personal pique, had his scholars come up with a larger excuse to rub the man out. Because Khomeini has spent many years in the west, he knew the power of fiction to undermine, to influence, to cause perceptions to shift, to draw the venom from self righteousness.

In this sense, the condemnation of Salman Rushdie was an assault on the whole edifice of western culture. Part of the difficulty in the west even our own homegrown clerics must deal with is our built in capacity to fatally cripple any extreme movement by simply rendering it human…

Which is the second part of the problem Khomeini and the radical elements in Islam have with Rushdie’s novel. It renders Mohammed human. Really human. Even though the Qu’ran does not deify him, even though it is a given in Islam that the Prophet is not divine, he is nevertheless exalted to such a position that to discuss him as a real, living human being risks Insult To Islam.

We have precisely the same problem in christianity. You can’t talk about Jesus as a man without getting some “cleric” all in a huff. Take, for example, our own instance of outrage over Nikolas Kazantsikos’s novel The Last Temptation of Christ. I do not know if it caused much furor upon publication, but Msrtin Scorcese’s film. And, just as in the instance of The Satanic Verses, the rank and file fundies didn’t even protest the truly radical part. They got all bothered by the suggestion that Jesus got laid. The genuinely radical element had to do with a post-crucifixion Jesus’ encounter with Paul, who is preaching in the square about the Jesus who died on the cross. When Jesus confronts him and tells him “You don’t know what you’re talking about–I’m Jesus and I didn’t do that” Paul smiles and says “I’m glad I met you, because now I can forget you–because my Jesus is stronger than you.”

That’s powerful. But the robots marching up and down in front of theaters protesting didn’t know about that. It may be uncharitable of me, but frankly I don’t think most of them would have understood it. Such theological speculation is fairly sophisticated and sophistication is not a product of the kind of environment in which people can be molded and made to march in lock-step to autocratic mandate.

Just as with Rushdie.

In an exchange many years ago over this issue with a relatively moderate Moslem, I was astounded that this person (living in Canada) had not read the novel. She could not get past, she said, the sexual perversion in the opening scene.

“What perversion?” I asked, wracking my brain.

The opening scene is the Lockerby airplane explosion. The two main characters are falling to earth and have a conversation. There is nothing sexual in it at all.

“He has them doing a 69 with each other,” she said.

“Huh?”

The configuration they fall into as they plummet is head to toe. Since, as the novel proceeds, it is clear that these two personify good and evil (loosely speaking—it’s more complex than that, but for now it will do) I read it as a symbolic Yin-Yang motif.

“What is that?” she asked.

She simply did not know.

This was not an unsophisticated woman, but she was culturally provincial and isolated. She didn’t bother studying any other religions, even lightly, or take any interest in cultural motifs outside Islam. She had no other way to “read” that scene other than through the lens of assumed Western hypersexualization–-and it was an absurd reading.

The ability to interpret—creatively—is a learned skill. Certainly some native intelligence and talent is required, but you can have an I.Q. in the stratosphere and if you are never exposed to a range of ideas in opposition to each other, you never develop the ability to sort them and understand them. I doubt seriously that the throngs of protestors in the streets of Islamabad, calling for renewed condemnation of Salman Rushie—Sir Salman Rushie—have seen a copy of The Satanic Verses much less read it. Such people rely on their leaders to tell them what the think, what to read, what to feel—who to condemn and, in some instances, who to kill. Their leaders for the most part keep them isolated from any range of competing ideas, because to do otherwise would risk their power base.

The irony in all this is that Shaitan is itself no more than an idea, and if these people actually sat down with the idea and examined it they would find that the devil they fear is nothing, and exists only and ever in the presence of ignorance.

In her review of Douglas Hofstadter’s new book (I Am a Strange Loop) in the May 3 edition of Nature, Susan Blackmore has this to say:

At the age of 12 or so, it dawned on [Hofstadter] that consciousness is a peculiar kind of barrage that perceives itself and yet doesn’t believe it’s perceiving MRIs should.  This insight leads directly to the stated aim of this book: to try to pinpoint that “special kind of subtle pattern” that underlies, or gives rise to the “soul”, the “buy”, “having a light on inside” or “being conscious”.

This is a grand aim, and Hofstadter joins countless modern writers and struggling to explain consciousness.  He’d be rise of zombies and qualia, has harsh words for philosophers David Chalmers and John Searle, and skillfully sweeps away all sorts of nonsense, from old-fashioned kinds of dualism to the more prevalent believe that consciousness is still something “extra”-an elan mental.  Instead, he argues that the self is a strange loop that automatically arises in a machine with a sufficiently sophisticated repertoire of categories.  It is a myth, a mirage, like a satellite to your brain whose resident strange loop decides that “here” is whereever that brain happens to be.  And, he claims, once you have explained the self, you have explained consciousness.

I found Blackmore’s description to be delightful.   In the end, however, Blackmore is dissatisfied with Hofstadter’s description, because it ignores “the many profound moments of utter stillness or absorbed below when the self is an abeyance.”

This is a detailed article by Expose, starting off with some of the excuses reporters hear:

In 2005, the Associated Press collected and published a list of novel excuses government officials used to deny FOIA requests, many of which failed the “my dog ate my homework” test. The list included, in perhaps a first-of-its-kind denial, a Texas National Guard spokesperson refusing an FOIA request for some of former pilot George W. Bush’s flight records because of the difficulty of searching boxes full of dirt, dead bugs, and rat excrement.

How does the Act really work?

[T]hough the law states that requests be answered within 20 days, there’s a lot of drudgery involved with trying to obtain information through FOIA. Nelson, who was with the investigative units at the LOS ANGELES TIMES and THE WASHINGTON POST before taking her current post at the University of Maryland School of Journalism, describes the process this way: “On paper, you put in a request for documents and wait 20 days for the response. In practice, a request for even simple info can take months or even years.” How can this be? “You’ll get a response in 20 days. It’ll be a one-page letter that predicts how many months it will be until the FOIA office has time to get around to your request. When you finally get the long-awaited envelope, there will be a page or two of non-responsive documents, the rest being withheld under an exemption that you have to spend months fighting.”

Are there any fixes in the works?   Thank goodness for Henry Waxman:

The House bill, championed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), intends to strengthen FOIA by, among other things, making it easier for requesters to recoup legal fees when they win FOIA cases in court (thus giving agencies less incentive to hold back information they know they’re eventually going to have to give up anyway); penalizing those who don’t respond to FOIA requests within the required 20 days; and “hold[ing] agencies accountable for their decisions by enhancing the authority of the Office of Special Counsel to take disciplinary action against government officials who arbitrarily and capriciously deny disclosure.”

Not in resurrection of the body, according to this Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.  Only 36% believe in it.  This presents a problem for many theologians, since bodily resurrection is a prominent Christian teaching (see the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed):

Only 36 percent of the 1,007 adults interviewed a month ago by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University said “yes” to the question: “Do you believe that, after you die, your physical body will be resurrected someday?” Fifty-four percent said they do not believe and 10 percent were undecided.

Americans apparently prefer spiritual or metaphoric resurrection.  Despite their rejection of bodily resurrection, many Americans still embrace other basic Christian beliefs.  Here are some findings of note: 

The poll found that most Americans embrace other major elements of traditional Christian dogma. Ninety percent said they believe in a God or a Supreme Being, with 65 percent saying they are “absolutely certain” that God exists. Seventy-two percent said they believe in an afterlife in which they will have “some sort of consciousness,” although slightly less than half (47 percent) said they are “absolutely certain” of this.

Previous Scripps Howard polls have found evidence that Americans embrace other key elements of the creeds. A survey in 2003 found that 63 percent were “absolutely certain” Jesus died and physically rose from the dead. That poll also found 60 percent “absolutely believe” that Jesus was born of a virgin mother.

As you can read at FreePress.net, the Senate appropriations subcommittee has provided $420 million in advance funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for FY 2010.

Mirroring its House counterpart, this represents the first increase to this critical line-item in four years.

The subcommittee also provided level funding of $29.7 million for the CPB Digital program to assist stations in making the transition to digital. The federally mandated Feb. 17, 2009, switch to digital television is only one budget cycle away. This money will allow stations to create and deliver a new generation of digital content and services.

The appropriators also increased funding by $1 million for Ready To Learn to approximately $25.3 million. The program is an early learning partnership between PBS, public television stations and the U.S. Department of Education.

Finally, the subcommittee provided $10.9 million in level funding for Ready To Teach, a program that ensures teachers have access to educational services aimed at enhancing teacher performance, in turn raising student achievement.

There’s a lesson to be learned regarding exercise and transportation here:

The British Medical Association found that every hour spent walking or biking adds more than an hour to one’s healthy lifetime.

In the Netherlands, 27 percent of all trips are made by bicycle, compared with 1 percent in the United States.

In 1974, 60 percent of children in the United States walked or biked to school, whereas in 2001, only 13 percent did.

Two-thirds of all school-aged children who live within a mile of their school still travel by car.

What’s wrong with this picture?  We hear people rationalize that we drive our children to school for reasons of “safety.”  But what if most children started walking to their neighborhood schools?  There’s great safety in numbers.  And what’s “safe” about driving children to school, thereby depriving them of several hours of healthy lifetime each week?