I recently read Nuggets of Knowledge by George W. Stimpson, first published in 1928. It is a compendium of hundreds of commonly asked questions and well researched brief answers. I got this cloth-bound hardback — a “Pathfinder Edition” — at a church sale, and it came with a vintage silk Bible-quote bookmark. Yes, some small fraction of the questions are Biblical.

Two particular types of questions in this book fascinate me most. First, the questions to which we now have better answers, because of the subsequent 80 years of thorough research and documentation. Back in 1928, there was only one galaxy (the milky way), continents were static in relation to each other, germ theory was beginning to catch on in the popular consciousness, and that British beer company had not yet compiled an authoritative list of World Records.

Secondly, there are the numerous questions that were obviously couched in terms that everybody knew, but I’d never heard of. For example: “What was the occasion of the remark made by the governor of North Carolina to the governor of South Carolina?” From reading the answer about interstate negotiations about slavery before the onset of the war between the states, the remark alluded to was, “It’s a long time between drinks.” Okay. Now remember that the 18^th amendment to our constitution was in force at the time this was written. I infer that one might have commonly alluded to the remark by said Governor to imply that one hadn’t been to the bootlegger in a while.

Also, many questions were about details of The World War. You know, the last war ever, the War to End All Wars. It ended less than 10 years before. The Civil War was as current and familiar as WWII is now, radio was becoming popular, most neighborhoods had a phone, and movie houses were introducing air conditioning. Talkies were still in the future.

Reading this book feels like time travel.

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There was to have been a broadcast debate today between a Creationist and a Biologist. Ray Comfort (of the Banana Proves Creationism fame) against PZ Myers (a.k.a Pharyngula). But the station wimped out, and broadcast Comfort in relative quiet comfort today, and will allow Myers to respond tomorrow morning (Weds. Aug. 6, 2008 10:00 CDT (GMT-5)) on WDAY

Here is Pharyngula’s play-by-play, blogged during the first 40 minutes of the broadcast.

The first response comment was:

A friendly reminder to turn all irony meters and bullshit detectors to the lowest sensitivity, lest they be vaporized.

with a reply at comment #73 that I appreciated

Try our new line of Comfort-standard(TM) industrial grade irony meters. 2-ga. internal wiring, 3×10^6:1 step-down transformers, military-grade ICs, massive dual-blade fast-trip circuit breakers and Safe-Shatter(TM) non-shrapnel-producing casings. Each unit is hand-assembled and burned in on a steady diet of AM radio and Bush administration ‘We’re turning the corner… really now, honest’ press releases. Autoranging, and rated to 30 TeraHaggarts. Don’t browse the web without one!

I’ve blown up electronic panels with inadequately specified parts in the past, with actual noise and smoke. So I “get” each of these units. Except, how many MegaDubyas are there in a TeraHaggert?

The July 11, 2008 edition of Science (available only to subscribers on line) includes an article entitled “Modernizing the Modern Synthesis,” by Elizabeth Pennisi, regarding a group of scientists who call themselves “The Altenberg 16.” They have gathered together to explore the need to revamp the modern synthesis. What is the “modern synthesis”? According to Wikipedia, the modern synthesis “bridged the gap between experimental geneticists and naturalists; and between both and palaeontologists, stating that”:

• All evolutionary phenomena can be explained in a way consistent with known genetic mechanisms and the observational evidence of naturalists.
• Evolution is gradual: small genetic changes, recombination ordered by natural selection. Discontinuities amongst species (or other taxa) are explained as originating gradually through geographical separation and extinction (not saltation).
• Selection is overwhelmingly the main mechanism of change; even slight advantages are important when continued. The object of selection is the phenotype in its surrounding environment. The role of genetic drift is equivocal; though strongly supported initially by Dobzhansky, it was downgraded later as results from ecological genetics were obtained.
• The primacy of population thinking: the genetic diversity carried in natural populations is a key factor in evolution. The strength of natural selection in the wild was greater than expected; the effect of ecological factors such as niche occupation and the significance of barriers to gene flow are all important.
• In palaeontology, the ability to explain historical observations by extrapolation from micro to macro-evolution is proposed. Historical contingency means explanations at different levels may exist. Gradualism does not mean constant rate of change.

According to “Modernizing the Modern Synthesis,” the modern synthesis thus holds that:

Organisms have a repertoire of traits that are passed down through the generations. Vacations in genes alter those traits bit by bit and if conditions are such that those alterations make an individual more fit, and the altered trade becomes more common over time. This process is called natural selection. In some cases, the new feature can replace an old one; in other instances, natural selection also leads to speciation.

The modern synthesis has guided biologists for the past 70 years. The obvious question, then is what has happened since then to necessitate any changes to the modern synthesis?

A lot has happened in the past half-century. DNA’s structure was revealed, genomes were sequenced, and developmental biologist turned their sights on evolutionary questions. Researchers have come to realize that heredity is not simply a matter of passing genes from parent to offspring, as the environment, chemical modification of DNA, and other factors come into play as well. Organisms vary not only in how they adapt to changing conditions but also in how they evolve.

One of the organizers of the group, evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci stresses that the need for a reworking of the modern synthesis doesn’t mean that the overall theory of evolution is wrong (as “intelligent design” advocates will no doubt argue). Rather, the group is attempting to “better incorporate modern science and the data revealed by it.”

The Pennisi article serves as a succinct review of some of the new research that needs to be incorporated into evolutionary biology. Many of these developments “are nudging evolutionary biology away from a focus on population genetics-how the distribution of genes changes across groups of individuals-and toward an understanding of the molecular underpinnings of these changes.”

One of the basic ideas that needs to be incorporated is that DNA cannot do it all–biology is highly constrained by physics and this needs to be recognized. Evolutionary biologist Gunter Wagner explains that under the “old” modern synthesis, “the body plan is a historical residue of evolutionary time, the afterglow of the evolutionary process such that more closely related organisms share more features.” The “new” view is that body plans have internal inertia and evolution works around this stability.”

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There is yet another story going around about dinosaur and human footprints found together in ancient (maybe 4,000 years old!) rock. Here is the local credulous Texas take on the find.

All the previous pictures of contemporaneous dinosaur and human footprints provided by these people showed that humans used to have 19″ long feet with only 3 toes. This new isolated sample, long removed from its secret setting, is available to view in person by true believers. The dinosaur track might be real, but any anatomist or gait specialist could tell you what is wrong with the human footprint, and its intersection with that of the dinosaur. Any paleontologist want to comment on the dino-print?

If they really wanted actual paleontologists to believe the evidence, they would invite them to the site of the find to seek the rest of the footprint trail. As an attempt to gain credulity, they claim that over 800 x-rays were taken of the rock (one CAT scan?) after the human footprint was “revealed”. Um, I guess they need to prove that it is a rock through and through. Actually, the claim is that fossil footprints are made by compressing layers of rock, rather than in a soft single sediment layer where they are usually found. The scans reportedly show that both footprints distorted underlying layers.

The daughter of the discoverer has studied some geology, so she is skeptical of its evidentiary value as proof of a Young Earth. But Dr. Carl Baugh, the founder and director of the Creation Evidence Museum in Texas, hopes to get these pictures into Texas textbooks (and therefore all other states) under the Strengths and Weaknesses doctrine of the Discovery Institute.

In case you’ve been out of touch, a student in Florida took Our Lord Jesus Christ hostage a few weeks ago. He walked out of church with a consecrated communion wafer to show to a friend, rather than promptly eating the true flesh of the 2000 year old man. Ignoring the question of whether Jesus really did say, “Eat Me”, this little event became big news. First, the college and the church denounced and eventually impeached the poor kid. Demands that he be expelled and/or excommunicated flew. (Orlando Sentinel summary article).

Then famous rationalist and biologist PZ Myers got into the act. He published a post in which he suggested that those incensed need to get a reality-based life: “It’s a frackin’ cracker” said he. Myers even suggested that someone should procure for him one of these blessed wafers, so that he could personally desecrate it.

Then the spam hit the fan. Thousands of comments and emails and demands for his expulsion and his firing and even death threats followed. Well, back and forth over several posts. One woman made international news for being fired for using a company computer to send her death threat.

Finally, Myers posted “The Great Desecration” beginning with “It is finished.” He discusses the way the church has used just the allegation of wafer misuse in history to spur mobs to mass murder (with specific examples). He posts a few of the more lucid (and publishable) denunciations of his proposed desecration, with commentary. And finally, he shows a picture of the desecration itself. Not only does he drive a rusty spike through the cracker (wondering in print if Jesus has a current tetanus shot), he nails it through the Koran and into one of Dawkins’ books, then artistically covered it all with the traditional banana peels and coffee grounds.

Desecrating the Koran was a suggestion made by many of his Catholic detractors, who suggested that he didn’t dare offend the Muslims, but only picks on Catholics (the group from whom he received the most death threats) because they are so kind and forgiving.

Desecrating Dawkins is to point out that he is not selectively suggesting that the Biblical injunction against worshipping images be used only against Judeo Christian churches. But that all icons be examined from the point of view that the symbol is not actually the object. Or to quote Korzybski, “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing”.

If you buy your child an expensive and detailed toy based upon the latest new movie, you’ll end up with a toy that can be used in only one way and your child will quickly get bored with that toy. It’s happened over and over. I’ve seen it with my own children and with many of their friends. The solution of many parents is to replace that new toy with yet another new toy based upon yet another newly released movie, all with the same result.

If you find yourself buying your child all of these new fancy toys, you will also depriving your child of creative play. The importance of creative play is the focus of a new book by Susan Linn, The Case for Make-Believe (2008). Susan Linn is a psychologist and therapist based at Harvard. She is instrumental in running Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. I’ve previously posted a video of an interview I arranged with Josh Golin of CCFC.

In her book, Susan Linn asks why there is so much interest in promoting expensive toys. The simple answer is that “Society on all levels conspires to keep children from playing; in a market-driven society, creative play is a bust. It just isn’t lucrative.”

Why isn’t creative play lucrative? It’s because satisfaction derived from creative play relies more on the child who’s playing than on the object with which the child is playing.

They can transform a blanket into a tent one day in a cave the next. A stick can be a magic wand, a sword, a light saber or a mast for a schooner. The toys that nurture the imagination–blocks, art supplies, dolls, and stuffed animals free of computer chips and links to media–can be used repeatedly and in a variety of ways. When it comes to make-believe, less really is more. In the United States, this means that nurturing creative play is inherently counter-cultural. It’s a threat to corporate profits.

These new toys aren’t designed for the purpose of being treasured for a lifetime. As Linn explains, “they are designed to sell. If interest wanes, so much the better–another version of the toy will soon be on the market.”

Linn explains that “play is in danger of extinction.” This is not sheer hyperbole. According to Linn, “play is linked to creativity and to mental health.” Creative play allows children to learn how to transport themselves to pretend worlds. Creative play “serves as an essential early experience of self reflection and expression.” In Linn’s experience, she can no longer assume that children even know how to play creatively. In her experience as a therapist, she repeatedly sees children trying to reenact scenes from TV shows and movies, “bringing nothing of their unique experience to their play.” All of this lack of creative play is exacerbated by the way in which parents so often over-schedule their children, leaving little or no time for creative play.

What are the specific benefits of creative play? Susan Lynn explains that creative play:

is inextricably linked to learning and creativity. The ability to play is central to our capacity to take risks, to experiment, to think critically, to act rather than react, to differentiate ourselves from our environment, and to make life meaningful. Children often use pretend play to reflect on their lives the way many adults use journal writing.

Near the end of her book, Lynn suggests that there’s no reason to buy electronic toys are toys based on media characters. She also stresses the importance of giving children lots of opportunities to play on their own. She suggests toys such as giant cardboard boxes or tents made out of sheets strung between two chairs. By strictly limiting a child’s access to television, one can use this newly found time to play games, read aloud, be silly, cook, do crafts, explore nature or dozens of other activities she recommends. She warns that some craft sets promote themselves as enhancing creativity, but some of them do nothing of the sort. Above all, she suggests investing in toys that promote open ended play. She recommends the website of Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (TRUCE) as a place where parents can learn to find age-appropriate toys that to promote open ended play.

Linn has special tips regarding traveling. Many people put DVD players in their cars or they hand children portable video games. Susan Linn warns that these screens seem to make traveling or waiting easier, but they do so at a price. They foster dependence on the screens to get children through the day–the children get a habit of needing to be amused through these gadgets all the time.

Based upon my experience as a parent, I think Susan Lynn really knows her stuff. In my experience, children will push hard to get you to buy them things or to amuse them as their personal entertainer. It’s happened over and over, in my experience, that when children are bored, they will get whiny until they realize that the adults around them are not going to tend to them–It is at that moment, just then their protests are loudest they get to work to amuse themselves. It’s a magic moment when children decide to start creating their own wonderful imaginary worlds devoid of adult input. It is in their own imaginary worlds that children learn how to communicate and engage in creative problem solving. For parents, the trick is to have the discipline to not jump so often to become the official entertainer of your children or to become the constant provider of new toys. The more parents do this, the less children will learn how to create their own play.

Also in my experience, it’s not good, in the long run, for parents to sit around applauding everything their child does. That can result in attention-addicted children who follow adults around to seek applause every minute of the day instead of being self-sufficient and emotionally centered. In my own experience, it is a parent’s job to appreciate rather than applaud. It’s difficult, though, to stay back and watch your child sometimes fail to figure things out. I’m not suggesting that parents should ignore their children. Far from it, parents should often spend extended quality time with their kids. But kids also need that time on their own to figure things out for themselves, without a parent-cheerleader and without a constant stream of expensive new toys to make them experience a false sense of success.  I’m concerned about this issue because it seems that many children are failing to become self-sufficient.  Here’s what Susan Linn has to say on this issue:

About 40 percent of college graduates are now moving back home after graduation.  They aren’t moving home, as would be the case in some cultures, to support their families.  They seem to be moving home to save money and to postpone having to take care of themselves.

The Case For Make Believe is a well written book with lots of common sense and market research buttressed by a good dose of science. I highly recommend it.  Linn’s book includes thoughtful discussions of other pressing issues regarding childhood education, including the ubiquitous violence found in toys and the Disney model of femininity.  What is the Disney model?  The “ultra-thin body types, their clothing and the stories they tell embody a commercialized, stereotypic image of beauty and womanhood.” (p. 175).

I’ll end this post with a presentation by a second thinker who has a somewhat different delivery, but a similar idea. This second thinker is George Carlin, who speaks about various problems concerning childhood. Listen closely to this video from “It’s Bad For Ya!,” his final performance before his sudden death in June. More specifically, in Part III of this seven part performance, go to the one minute mark and listen to his description of the ideal play toy for a child: the stick.

[If the video doesn't work, click here.]

Writing on a NYT blog, Olivia Judson argues that we should abolish “Darwinism.” Here’s what she means:

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today.

Sounds good to me. That way, it will be more apparent that the Creationists are arguing against an entire phalanx of theorists, biologists, statisticians, geologists and biochemists (among others). Without the term “Darwinism,” it would be more apparent that the Creationists can’t win simply by claiming that a single man stands between them and our science classrooms. I agree with Judson that to call modern evolutionary biology “Darwinism” is like calling aeronautical engineering “Wrightism.”

I only disagree with Judson in one regard. She suggests that Darwin accomplished more in his lifetime than any of us could accomplish in two lifetimes. I would suggest that the proper number is ten or more, based upon Darwin’s far-ranging achievements. He was truly an extraordinary scientist and thinker.

I learned about this sculpture in Nature (June 26, 2008 Edition, available online only to subscribers).  Scroll down after clicking the link.   You won’t miss it.

The creator is Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. What does the sculpture mean? In the Nature article, Martin Kemp indicates that Cattelan leaves some clues:

The title, La Nona Ora, or The Ninth Hour, the first of the time of Christ’s death on the cross. This representation of the death of Pope John Paul II might be an imitation of Christ. In a typically elusive interview, Cattelan said, “I like the idea that someone is trying to save the Pope, like an upside down miracle, coming not from the heavens but from the earth.” But he adds dismissively, “In the end it is only a piece of wax.”

Cattelan’s sculpture is certainly compelling.  Is it yet another unhappy encounter between science and religion?

The same issue of Nature features a spread of articles concerning the manner in which the solar system was pummeled by meteorites just after its formation 4.6 billion years ago.  According to the article on page 1160, “The hole at the bottom of the Moon,” It was a ferocious and sustained blast of debris.  “The barrage even knocked off enough of Earth to Create the Moon in the first place.”   By 3.8 billions years ago, though, “impact rates had tailed off to a level not too different from those of today.”

How often was the Earth a target of a big meteorite?  Author Eric Hand reports on a conservative estimate: “Every million years, something would come along big enough to make a 1,000 kilometre basin.  Such impacts would have vaporized Earth’s oceans ad steam-sterilized the surface . . . an atmosphere of rock vapor could linger for thousands of years after the impact.”

About some things, Americans are incredibly stupid. For instance, I’ve kept an eye on science and religion related ignorance for years. 15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”)  can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible.

There are a lot more statistics where those came from. If you’d like to read a few dozen zingers, read Rick Shenkman’s article in Alternet, “Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?” There are some real head-shakers in Shenkman’s article. Several might have you wondering whether we should require citizens to pass rudimentary intelligence tests in order to vote. Shenkman’s compilation of stupidity had me wondering this. I know that this is an extremely controversial idea based on the way it has been misused in the past. It is clear, though that huge numbers of people have no idea how their government is designed to work, who is running their government, the basic characteristics of the scientific method, the basic facts of the religions to which they cling, or rudimentary principles of geography, history or economics. Now really . . . should such a person vote? This question makes me squirm.

I’m not really suggesting that we should take official government action to keep people from voting based on their intelligence levels. On the other hand, reading Shenkman’s article makes me wonder whether our “Get out the vote” campaigns should be focused on getting people to vote only if they know something other than their favorite TV shows and sports stars. Rather than “get out the vote,” perhaps we should have “vote only if you’re informed” campaigns. Here’s one of Shenkman’s many statistics that especially got me thinking in this entirely unacceptable way:

In the election of 2004, one of the hot issues was gay marriage. But gauging public opinion on the subject was difficult. Asked in one national poll whether they supported a constitutional amendment allowing only marriages between a man and a woman, a majority said yes. But three questions later a majority also agreed that “defining marriage was not an important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution.” The New York Times wryly summed up the results: Americans clearly favor amending the Constitution but not changing it.

What is stupidity? Early in his comprehensive article on the lack of comprehension, Shenkman designates the five types of stupidity:

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who’s in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Although the article at the top of this post, “Ignorant America,” is full of compelling statistics, it (like many articles documenting American stupidity) is also riddled with many questions that confuse trivia for knowledge. How important is it for most Americans to know the name of the Secretary of Defense? Isn’t it possible that someone can be rather up to speed about America’s military policies without actually knowing the name of the Secretary of Defense?

America is obsessed with trivia and it is not unusual for trivia to masquerade as something important for tests that purport to measure intelligence. Knowing lots and lots of facts, though, especially the inert facts common for trivia buffs, is not the same thing as being intelligent. If these two things (knowledge and facts) were equal, we would regularly have great insights and discoveries occurring as a result of Trivia Nights, yet I don’t believe that has yet happened even once.

The problem with many intelligence tests is that they only measure ability to recall bits of information rather than detecting true understanding, much less wisdom. For this reason, many of the questions used to illustrate how “stupid” we are resemble the same problems found in many formal “intelligence tests.” A thorough review of those problems with IQ tests can be found in Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man (1996).

I recognize that we all have our focus when it comes to understanding the world. Someone who is dedicated to one field of study might not know as much about other fields of study. It is also important to remember that all of us have huge gaps in information. If we have dedicated our lives to understanding nanotechnology, how much are we actually going to know about the history of classical music ? If you work as a professional athlete, should we really be expected to know all five of the specific legal rights granted by the First Amendment? (Did you know that one of those rights is the right to petition the government?). Having written this, I think it’s more likely that those who truly excel at a field tend to be rather well-rounded.

There’s probably more than a few people who would insist that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of intelligence because of its insistence on proof. There is an uneasy truce between belief and proof, however. In the area of religion, belief is often said to be justified even in the absence of proof. But don’t forget that even very smart people find an irresistible urge to believe many things that they cannot prove.

Here’s another caveat for those who walk around wagging their fingers (like I do) at the large number of “stupid” Americans. Howard Gardner has put forth a strong argument that there were actually multiple intelligences. He holds that the concept of “general intelligence” is highly suspect and that there might not be such a thing as GI. There are those who are incredibly talented at reading the moods and motives of other people (he calls this interpersonal intelligence), but who don’t do well at mathematics. There are people who are terrifically talented in musical ways (e.g. Hillary Hahn), but might not be very good at biology (I’m not suggesting that Hillary on is not good at biology– because I am deeply infatuated with Hillary Hahn, I assume that she is excellent at everything she does!). Many of us do know some “absent-minded professors” who can talk for hours on esoterica such as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative but who seem inept at coping in the real world on a day-to-day basis. In the category of super-intelligent, I would quickly place my plumber (who can talk knowledgeably about almost anything, it seems) and a carpenter who has done work at my house, who has a superhuman grasp of his profession. I can’t imagine being as good as he is at the many arts of transforming a house, even if I trained for 20 years at the foremost “carpenter school.” (more…)

I’m learning a lot about honeypot ants. They are incredible little creatures.  Also known as repletes or storage ants, certain members of these ant colonies serve as living storage jars for the nectar gathered by the other workers.  Their abdomens extend many times bigger than the ant originally was, such that each of these living vessels looks like an ant with a grape stuck on its butt.

Image by Greg Hume

As I learned from reading an article called “Sweet Dreams,” in the April, 2008 issue of Natural History Magazine, repletes “hang from ceilings of domed chambers in the underground nest.”  The other worker ants fill up the repletes with nutrients.  The repletes get so large that they are forever trapped inside the nest, hanging from the ceiling.  What purpose do repletes serve?  “During time of scarcity, repletes regurgitate nectar to colony members, an especially valuable asset in arid environments.”

My question, then, relates to the dramatic onslaught of obesity in humans. If viewed traditionally, obesity is life-shortening and often deadly.   In fact, it’s senseless.   What if it’s not senseless, though?  What if the many huge people among us are sacrificing themselves for the well-being of those of us who are not huge?   What if the numerous humans who are obese are actually storing up nutrients to aid the rest of us in times of scarcity?

I know that this theory of human evolution might strike some as absurd and, indeed, it is (and I do speak as a former fatty).  Yet this is the image I had while reading about honeypot ants.

I was surprised yesterday to find a post by Jerry Pournelle (well known SF author and technology columnist) on MensNewsDaily (a starkly conservative news magazine site with pretensions of middle-of-the-roadism). His column, Intelligent Design: Answers and Questions, is openly favorable to the premise that Intelligent Design and Global Warming denial should be taught in science classes.

I have read much by Pournelle, starting with his collaborations with Larry Niven in the 1970’s and ’80’s, and then his columns in Byte magazine, and his solo novels more recently. There is a strong Libertarian feel in his recent works (such as “High Justice”), where big corporations are the good guys and “liberal” governments merely stumbling blocks to progress or even survival. But he does write some great adventure stories. I was only mildly put off by the contention in “Fallen Angels” that embracing the global warming hoax would lead into international Luddism. I figured that it was just a plot device.

But now I see that the writings of Pournelle reflect an overall feeling that Nature and Man are but players on a stage that no mortal can understand. Perhaps it has something to do with his recurring close brushes with mortality. If you read some of his other columns at JerryPournelle.com, you’ll see that he champions all manner of oddball challenges to “Mainstream Consensus Science”. Sooner or later, one of these challenges may turn out to be valid. But historically speaking, successful challenges to the well established theories of thermodynamics and quantum theory are far between.

It is often observed that girls do not perform as well as boys in mathematics. This difference is often overstated and it’s cause is often highly debated.  Many people have suggested that the basis for this difference is essentially biological.

It is now well established that a society’s attitude toward gender will significantly affect the performance of its girls in mathematics.  That was the result of a study described in the May 30, 2008 edition of Science (available only to subscribers online) in an article called “Culture, Gender and Math.”  That study attempted to analyze the cause of the “gender gap” (the difference between the scores of boys and girls) in mathematics.  The conclusion of this comprehensive study is that “Social conditioning and gender biased environments can have a very large effect on test performance.”

The study examined cultural attitudes regarding women in various countries and compared them to math achievements of girls in those same countries.  It found that the gender gap in math tends to disappear in more gender-equal societies.

The authors of the study commented that the math gender gap has been narrowing over time in the United States.

These conclusions dovetail well with the concerns raised by Mary Pipher, in her book, Reviving Ophelia.

Absolutely! As long as we teach ALL of the controversies. This is some clever science/religion/humor.

In brief, Stephen Jay Gould proposed the idea that evolution is truly stochastic (a particular technical kind of random), that if we started evolution over as of a million years ago, we probably wouldn’t be here in our current form. That is, any evolutionary step is contingent on the history of steps that went before, each based on a combination of random mutation and environment.

I’ve read several posts about the new discovery today, and the best summary with accurate excerpts and clear analysis is this one from Pharyngula (PZ Meyers Myers).

In brief: A single experiment ran over 20 years, or 33,000 generations of bacterial cultures, where they froze a sample every 500 generations from each of 20 separate populations, all nurtured identically over the entire time with a particular set of stressful conditions. When a particular beneficial change occurred to the population, they could track back genetically and see what the genetic change was, and what probably allowed it to manifest in a visible way. Then they tried to get the same thing to happen again starting from various suspected branching points. In some cases, the same mutation happened again.

Of course, Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute quickly posted a sort of rebuttal to the idea that yet another piece of evolutionary theory has been proven, so Meyers took him to task. Behe claims that the experiment proves how incredibly unlikely such changes are, and therefore they need an Intelligent Designer to guide them. Apparently he missed the point that the complex series of changes did happen, and were repeatable, but only in a statistical manner. As opposed to in a pre-ordained, designed sort of way.

Or possibly his point is that God individually guides the evolution of laboratory E. Coli to fool scientists into thinking that supernatural intervention is unnecessary. It’s hard to tell.

[Admin note:  here is the description of the experiment by New Scientist]

As the mercury rose past 90 on this sunny Sunday, I biked over to see the Pagan Picnic in Tower Grove Park. I attend this event regularly, and it gets a bit bigger each year. There are many booths selling fair foods and drinks, and psychic readings, acupuncture, massage, crystals galore, and anything else out on the loose edge of New Age (”Ancient Wisdom”) Credulity.

It’s fun.

What I like most about the event is its disorganized ability to weird the normals. Does a top hat go with a black leather skirt and army boots? That guy seems to make it work. One post-apocalyptic sort with a blond Mohawk is videotaping the Creative Anachronisms/ Dungeons and Dragons/ Swords and Sorcery crowd beating each other about the limbs with padded swords and staffs. And the damsels. I admit that it is fun to see what young women wear to scandalize their elders. In the flesh, as it were. Well, one man with bones through his earlobes only had on “primitive” jewelry and a loincloth. But his tan seemed up to the job.

Yes, that woman is sitting under the tree spinning her own thread from wool she probably carded herself. Does Dr. Pepper go with a pterodactyl leg? Why not? Well, turkey, actually. But the hawker is convincing. Do glacier spalled obsidian needles make good wind chimes? Ya bet! I bought. And there are many drums. Several booths provide different sorts of handmade drums with wood or skin tops.

Various musical and dance troupes perform in the Bardic Circle, one of the pavilions in the park. Somewhere there is a schedule posted. But this crowd is anarchistic. No one seems to be in charge, but it works.

What is the entry fee? Well, free. But donations to a local food bank are suggested, and bins for collecting cans of food are provided.

Charity, like honor, mercy, and tolerance, are basic pagan family values.

Chimpanzees aren’t the only spectacularly intelligent animal species.  Sometimes human beings act intelligently!  Yes, humans are animals, as difficult as this is to believe for many people.

In this TED video, Joshua Klein reminds us about the intelligence of yet another species: crows.  Using their  intelligence, crows continue to flourish among human populations.

You read that right! No reader of Dangerous Intersection, radical materialist or hard-bitten skeptic believes in science. To say otherwise is to give a false impression of what science actually is. Science is not something in which a person believes or does not believe. Science is not a belief system; it has no holy screeds or sacred tenets. It is merely a tool, a method of gleaning knowledge, and the language used in reference to it should reflect this.

What on earth am I ranting about? Well, it goes back a few years to the Discovery Institute, and spans all the way to the present with Ben Stein’s film Expelled. The intelligent design/evolution debate has become quite the pop topic, and hence, the endless battle of science vs. religion has come into everyday discussion as well. Everyday people in normal daily settings run through these issues, turning any public place into a potential battleground.

I’ve heard a lot of the less experienced science advocates say things about science that frankly aren’t accurate. While these people mean very well, they fail to frame their debates properly, and the content of the discussion suffers for it. Since science vs. religion has become as much a layman’s debate as an expert’s one, I think the time has come for those of us on the science side of things to agree on the language we should use.

I have no expertise in science, religion or philosophy, I have no refined understanding of the psychology of persuasion, and I am no orator. However, I still have the gall to make a few semantic suggestions for any person who plans to engage in a lengthy discussion on evolution, intelligent design, or the general clash between religion and science. My tips, and their justifications, are as follows: (more…)

For three decades I’ve puzzled about the idea held by Christian Fundamentalists that the Bible must be proven absolutely and literally true in every way, or else Christianity is false. The latter clause being accepted as silly, therefore most science of the 19th and 20th century is patently on the wrong course.

I think I finally get it: It isn’t so much about the whole Bible, as about a literal Adam and Eve and serpent and fruit. If one even momentarily entertains the idea that this particular tiny part of the Bible is allegorical, then where is the original sin? If A particular orphan named Adam didn’t bite of a particular forbidden fruit, then the underlying momentary lapse of ancestral judgment for which Christians claim God holds all living people responsible didn’t happen. Therefore Jesus died in vain, if one belongs to a congregation for whom Original Sin is The Big One.

Therefore, one must reject the geology, astronomy, and functional biology as was available to 19th century discoverers like Darwin. One must also reject all the subsequent discoveries that frustratingly and consistently reiterate his conclusions, like the periodic table, plate tectonics, cell biology, quantum theory, biochemistry, radiological dating, germ theory, cosmology, dark matter/string theory, genetics, chaos theory, and so on. If it can cast doubt on the timing or existence of biblical original sin, it must be wrong.

It makes perfect sense, in a narrow world view sort of way.

Many people still bristle at the idea that chimpanzees can have “cultures.” The evidence is accumulating, however, as documented in “Almost Human,” an article found in the April, 2008 edition of National Geographic. The article was written by Mary Roach, with incredible photos by Franz Lanting.

In 2007, an Iowa State University anthropologist named Jill Pruetz reported that while studying chimpanzees in the field (two years earlier) she noticed a female chimp:

Sharpening a branch with her teeth and wielding it like a spear. She used it to stab at a bush baby–a pocket-sized, tree dwelling nocturnal primate that springs from branch to branch like a grasshopper. Until that report, the regular makings of tools for hunting and killing mammals had been considered uniquely human behavior. Over a span of 17 days at the start of the 2006 rainy season, Pruetz saw the chimps hunting bush babies 13 times. There were 18 sightings in 2007. It would appear the chimps are getting creative.

Pruetz has spent more than four years studying the Fongoli chimpanzees (they are savanna-woodland chimps from eastern Senegal, across the border from western Mali). Pruetz has been habituating the Fongoli chimps (allowing them to get used to her) for the past three summers. She has done this hot, filthy and exhausting work six days a week, from dawn to dusk. She has gotten sick with malaria seven times. In the course of watching the Fongoli champs, she has also noticed them engaging in other behaviors unique to these Fongoli chimps: “soaking in a water hole and passing the afternoon in caves.”

Spearing bush babies is only the most recent of the many cultural behaviors documented regarding chimpanzees. Jane Goodall was the first to report seeing chimps making tools (for termite fishing). The world-famous bonobo named Kanzi has learned hundreds of symbols to communicate. This National Geographic article reports numerous other behaviors unique to various communities of chimpanzees have been documented. Some communities of chimpanzees use rocks to smash open nuts much like we would use hammers and anvils. Other champs chew leaves into a spongy wad to soak up water for drinking. Several communities of chimps cool down by a wading into pools of water. Numerous communities of chimpanzees throw rocks, sometimes as weapons and other times as part of displays.

The article notes that chimpanzees and humans share between 95 and 98% of their genomes. The article cautions, however, that this is “less meaningful than it sounds. Humans share more than 80% of their gene sequence with mice, and maybe 40% with lettuce.”

The author of this article, Mary Roach, was surprised to learn that chimpanzees’ yawns are contagious, “both among each other and to humans.” In the course of writing this article, she also learned that chimps laugh, and even get upset if someone laughs at them. They sometimes spit in disgust. Some chimps have been known to adopt other species of animals (one chimp named Tia adopted a small kitten).

Chimps get up to get snacks in the middle of the night. They lie on their backs and do “the airplane” with their children. They kiss. Shake hands. Pick their scabs before they’re ready.

The observations reported in this article certainly blur the cultural boundary between humans and chimpanzees. These sorts of observations will make many people upset, however. They want to believe that humans are sui generis among animals, of their own kind and that there is no real comparison, certainly no cultural comparison between humans and animals of any other species.  In fact, there are hordes of people who resist thinking of humans as animals at all (and see here) (and here and here).

Perhaps it won’t soothe the critics to view the situation in the way suggested by a famous evolutionary biologist:

It is perhaps less problematic to view the situation as does The Third Chimpanzee author Jared Diamond: Not that chimps are a kind of human, but that humans are a kind of chimp.

This is an article that truly transported me around the world. It made me feel that I was almost there, observing these magnificent animals. As I’ve commented before, this type of writing and photography is nothing out of the ordinary for the National Geographic.

Ouch! The serious study of philosophy or neuroscience might make you less moral. That’s my take-away from a recent article: “The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating,” by Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler. This particular article by Vohs and Schooler purports to find a direct link between exposure to articles criticizing free will and self-centered conduct.

I suspect that the conclusions of the article by Vohs and Schooler tap into the concerns of many conservatives, that too much intellectual activity (too much science and free-thinking philosophy) can cause a person to become self-centered and immoral (or, at least, amoral). I don’t agree with that assessment as a general rule. Based on my experience, many intellectuals, as a result of their wide-ranging studies, actually expand their realm of moral concern well beyond the narrowly-defined types of in-groups honored by many conservatives. Obviously, there are free-thinkers of all stripes and I need to be careful to not over-generalize. Also, I’m not suggesting that my personal opinions and anecdotes could possibly serve as a counter-balance to a carefully controlled study.

The authors of this particular study recognized that belief in a free will is strong and pervasive. On the other hand, they also recognize the view of many scientists “that genes, underlying personality dispositions, brain mechanisms, or features of the environment cause behavior.” The authors’ hypothesis was that “cheating would increase after persuading participants that free will does not exist.”

Although some have speculated about the possible societal risks that might result from adopting a viewpoint that denies personal responsibility for actions, empirical exploration of this hypothesis has been absent. In two experiments, we manipulated beliefs related to free will and measured their influence on morality as manifested in cheating behavior. We hypothesized that manipulations of lay beliefs about free will would affect cheating behavior, such that participants induced to believe that human behavior is under the control of scientifically predetermined forces would cheat more than would participants not led to believe that behavior is technically predetermined. The results of two experiments supported this hypothesis.

The authors manipulated the subjects’ belief that free will is an illusion and that free will is a side effect of the architecture of the mind by exposing them to arguments criticizing the belief in free will. The subjects who were exposed to these anti-free-will arguments tended to act in more self-centered” ways on subsequent tasks. The conclusions of the authors:

The present findings raise the genuine concern that widespread encouragement of a deterministic worldview may have the inadvertent consequence of encouraging cheating behavior.

The Vohs and Schooler experiments involved only about 30 subjects, although the statistical significance of their most outcomes was p<.01.

I’m not entirely convinced by the conclusions of this study, for the reasons I set forth above. I suspect that there is something else that might combine with a free-thinking intellect that can (and does) often lead conduct less responsive to one’s most salient in-groups. If this study indeed shows what it purports to show, however, it has highlighted “free will” as a highly useful falsehood. I suspect that all of us cling to many such useful falsehoods.

Full disclosure: I have strongly criticized the notion of “free will.” Perhaps that belief taints my opinion on this study.

I started thinking about the the “reductionist attitude” in presenting science when I read Erich’s Post To deal with “arrogant” scientists we need to move beyond reductionism and break the “Galilean Spell” (from May 7, 2008). Curricula seem to begin with biology, work through chemistry, and finally introduce physics. If English were taught categorically as science is now, students would go through phases in this order:

• Elementary English: Analysis of Literature (done orally)
• Intermediate English: Sentence structure, paragraphs, and essays (done graphically)
• Advanced English: Introduction to the Alphabet and Spelling Lessons

The alphabet of science is made up of basic natural “laws” as discovered by Newton, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Heisenberg, and so on. Sentences and paragraphs are like molecules and chemical syntheses. And finally you have enough structure to begin to see how biology works from cells (essays) through organisms (stories) and populations (novels).

One could be taught holistic science, building to the grand ideas from the simple ones. By constructing the ideas instead of breaking them down, the interrelationship and the interactions of the parts can be seen, as well as the nature and function of the parts themselves. A whole is never the sum of the parts; it is the sum of the interactions between the parts set on a foundat