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Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts

Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Limited God

Recently, I have realized that my non belief in Republican Jesus is too simple a way to characterize my distaste for the beliefs of most conservative Christians. Over the last couple of weeks, I've thought about how to expand my critique of their child like view of the Bible and have come to the conclusion that they start from a point of a very limited God.

For them, it's all about being naughty and hoping that the authority will forgive them. They are incredibly vain in assuming that we, as human beings, are the most important things in God's universe (especially our sexual habits which I will never understand as the Bible rarely talks about sex). One of my recent posts shows that if look at the percentage of time man has been on the earth as a part of the age of the earth...well...we really aren't all that important. Now, I know the Bible says we are but that was written by men so, honestly, would we expect anything less than such vanity?

Compare the small percentage of time man has been on the earth to to the age of the universe and we seem even less significant which is astounding. This general theme is explored in the wonderful Terrence Malick film entitled The Tree of Life. If you haven't seen this film, I highly recommend it. Here is the trailer.



All of this makes me ask the question...how significant are we to God? Given how long the universe has been around...how big it is...how it's very likely that there is plenty of life out there we have not yet discovered...how long the earth has been around...how big it is...how there is life on this planet we have not yet discovered...where do we fit in? God obviously has a wide variety and high number of other things with which to handle. Of course, it's God so H/She can deal with it:)

Generally speaking, starting with faith is good idea. My faith tells me that the most important thing we can do is love one another as we would want to be loved. We can care for each other and help out the poor and the sick, individually and collectively, privately or publicly. Doing His works and greater than these...

We don't do a very good job with the Golden Rule these days but we are better than we used to be. In some ways, we are ready to take the next step in human evolution and that's just what I think God wants us to do. We are very close to technology extending life indefinitely. Think of what it's like to be a parent. You want your children to do better than you did in every aspect of life (money, friendship, love, school, career). God wants the same thing for us. Science is indeed a part of God's creation so we need to take that as far as we can. Why limit ourselves/ Again, doing His works and greater than these...

I think our culture is on the cusp of a shift. It's time to shrug off thousand year old perceptions of God and not be content with having such a simple approach to our creator. The people that believe in Republican Jesus have a hostile fear of progress in just about every aspect of our society and that needs to left behind in history's dustbin along with the heavenly sphere, flat earth, and leech bleed believers.

We are clearly a small part of God's vision and we need to imagine how we, his children, might grow to a bigger role. Again, isn't what all parents want of their offspring?

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Finally

I'm happy to report that someone got the memo on the need for a real fucking news station as opposed to three we have now that can't resist bright shiny objects like Miley Cyrus. Al Jazeera America is simply fantastic.

I waited a few weeks since it launched to see if they could resist the paparazzi like stories we see on the other three networks and they have. In addition, they pick an issue on focus on it for a considerable amount of time. The show, "Inside Story," recently focused on climate change and to my complete delight, they did not play the Cult of Both Sides and focused on the actual science.

No doubt AJA will lead to several bowels being blown by those on the Right who just can't help themselves in predicting the coming End Times. Clearly, those who will engage in this haven't even watched the station. I was struck by how many average Americans participate in the discussions. These people come from all walks of political ideology and don't necessarily look great on TV which I think is totally fucking mega.

To see where you can watch Al Jazeera America, click here and enter your zip in the upper right hand corner.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

We Are All Stars



Could this be the answer to the meaning of life and death?

Friday, August 16, 2013

So Cool!

This story is so fucking cool!

In 2012, the owner finally revealed the site's location after swearing Raines to secrecy. Raines then did his own dive and discovered a primeval Cypress swamp in pristine condition. The forest had become an artificial reef, attracting fish, crustaceans, sea anemones and other underwater life burrowing between the roots of dislodged stumps.

The forest contains trees so well-preserved that when they are cut, they still smell like fresh Cypress sap, Raines said. Imagine what we are going to learn in the coming years of what life was like in this part of the world 50,000 years ago!


Friday, July 26, 2013

Monday, July 15, 2013

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Is It Time For Graphene?

I ran across this piece a few weeks ago and thought it time to share it as I'm still not really in the mood to talk about politics all that much.

Graphene is the thinnest material in the world, basically a sheet or layer of carbon only one atom in thickness, which has led it to be described as the world's first two-dimensional material. It's transparent, yet it's a superb conductor of heat and electricity. It's stretchy and flexible, yet it's harder than a diamond and hundreds of times stronger than steel. And it's so cheap and easy to make that a smart high school student probably could create a sample of graphene.

Well, that's cool but what could it do?

Among the few ideas being suggested for potential uses of graphene are flexible electronics, such as a cellphone that you could fold or roll up into a tube or a piece of clothing or a even a potato chip bag that could function as a digital device. Rust-proof metal coatings, medical sensors, seawater desalination, even a potential replacement for silicon in semiconductors are among the ideas being considered as graphene applications.

Wow. A cellphone you could roll up....crazy!

There is no doubt in my mind that, in the next 25 years, we are going to see some of the most amazing and awe inspiring innovations the world has ever seen.

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

The Future Looks Fantastic

Remember Zach Kopplin? Well, home boy just made the big time by being a guest on Bill Maher last Friday and he as fantastic. In fact, he reminded me of many of my ex-students who are now around his age. Zach Kopplin is a young man who gives me a great deal of hope for the future of this country and is a stellar example of how smart the young generation is today despite popular misconceptions.

Check out this clip which someone in the bubble put up on YouTube in the hopes that would expose Kopplin as an atheist but it ended up exposing (ahem) something else...



Thursday, April 04, 2013

Life?

Ever since I can remember, I have always wondered if there was ever life on Mars. Being the closest planet to us, I guess I have just assumed that perhaps at one time it did. Now it looks as though that was the case.

CheMin and SAM identified some of the key chemical ingredients for life in this dust, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, researchers said. Intriguingly, the mix also suggested a possible energy source for indigenous Martian life, if any ever existed in the area. "The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," Paul Mahaffy, SAM principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.

So, not just the possibility of life but also an energy source for that life. Stunning! I'm hoping that as more tests are done we will learn exactly what kind of life existed on Mars. And perhaps there will be more discoveries as Curiosity continues her mission?

Monday, April 01, 2013


Wednesday, March 13, 2013


Monday, March 04, 2013


Sunday, March 03, 2013

Daily Reminder

I need to remind myself more often that patience is all that is required when it comes to nearly all of the issues I gripe about on here. In the final analysis, reason always prevails.

For example, Oklahoma rejected SB 758 just a few days ago. This bill would have required teachers to address "controversies" like evolution and climate change.

In Arizona, SB 1213 didn't even make it out of committee. This bill would have allowed teachers to present creationism as a "balance" to evolution as well as right wing blogs in juxtaposition with the National Academy of Science.

And in Indiana, the Hoosiers rejected extremism again (remember Richard Murdock?) when HB 1283 died in the House. Check out the language in this bill.

“To help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the strengths and weaknesses of conclusions and theories being presented in a course being taught by the teacher.”

Funny, because they do that anyway. That's why evolution is settled science.

Of course, even if any of these bills had passed, it's not likely that any teacher would have used this leeway. While some of my colleagues are conservative, they haven't completely abandoned reason. They might believe in smaller government or have a different view of the Constitution but none of them would ever teach creationism in a fucking science class.

It's comforting to know that even in these deep red states, people can still be rational.


Thursday, February 28, 2013

A Profile in Courage

The media tends to love talking about conservative activists like James O'Keefe, Bill Whittle or Erick Erickson  but they never really talk about the liberal ones like Zack Kopplin. Man, is he making life hell for the creationists down in Lousiana.

Encouraged by Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University — and a staunch critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute — Kopplin decided to write a letter that could be signed by Nobel laureate scientists in support of the repeal. To that end, he contacted Sir Harry Kroto, a British chemist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. Kroto helped him to draft the letter — one that has now been signed by 78 Nobel laureates.

I can't figure out why creationists and intelligent design folks aren't content with teaching their stuff in church. They can talk about how Jesus rode dinosaurs or whatever they want in there. Kopplin had gone after the voucher program as well.

School vouchers, he argues, unconstitutionally fund the teaching of creationism because many of the schools in these programs are private fundamentalist religious schools who are teaching creationism. "These schools have every right to teach whatever they want — no matter how much I disagree with it — as long as they are fully private," he says. "But when they take public money through vouchers, these schools need to be accountable to the public in the same way that public schools are and they must abide by the same rules."

Those rules being a strict adherence to the scientific method. There is nothing scientific about creationism.

"Creationism is not science, and shouldn't be in a public school science class — it's that simple," he says. "Often though, creationists do not, or are unwilling, to recognize this." Science, he argues, is observable, naturalistic, testable, falsifiable, and expandable — everything that creationism is not. But what also drives Kopplin is the inherent danger he sees in teaching creationism. 

"Creationism confuses students about the nature of science," he says. "If students don't understand the scientific method, and are taught that creationism is science, they will not be prepared to do work in genuine fields, especially not the biological sciences. We are hurting the chances of our students having jobs in science, and making discoveries that will change the world."

"We don't just deny evolution," he says, "We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science. I'm calling for a Second Giant Leap to change the perception of science in the world."

In the final analysis, this is really the crux of the problem. In an age of globalization. we can't afford a bunch of religious nonsense to interfere with our economic growth and security. Young men like Zack Kopplin give me a lot of hope that intelligence is alive and well in young people in the deep south and the time to put this assinine, anti science garbage behind us is yesterday.

Honestly, I thought we already did that in the Age of Enlightenment but I guess we still have a few stragglers:)

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Science!

I've always thought that conservatives are simply wired differently than liberals. Now we have the proof, courtesy of...

(drum roll please)

Science!

Conservatives Big on Fear, Brain Study Finds

I suppose we could simply file this one under NO SHIT but the details of this study are quite fascinating.

Peering inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers at University College London found that self-described conservative students had a larger amygdala than liberals. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is active during states of fear and anxiety. Liberals had more gray matter at least in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that helps people cope with complexity.

Yep.

This would be why conservatives are so hard to understand by other people. Their fight or flight reflexes are at DEFCON 1 more often than not. It must really suck to be in such a state all the time. It's no wonder they are such assholes about everything! This study also shows why they have such a difficult time understanding more complex issues and have trouble with qualitative analysis. They simply don't have the brain matter to handle it.

In many ways, this study is a relief. Now we truly do know that conservative will never change their minds. They physically can't!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Why Do Meteors Like Siberia So Much?

Earlier today a meteorite exploded over Siberia, near the city of Chelyabinsk. The meteorite, called a bolide, was captured on cell phones and video cameras by numerous observers, many of whom immediately uploaded their videos to YouTube.

The explosion caused an intense flash of light, a loud boom and a shock wave that broke windows over a large area. More than a thousand people were injured, mostly by broken glass caused by the explosion's shockwave, as they rushed to see what caused the flash.

The Chelyabinsk event calls to mind the Tunguska explosion of 1908. That meteorite flattened all the trees in 770 square-mile area. People have theorized all sorts of causes for the Tunguska incident, from mini black holes to alien spacecraft. But as the Chelyabinsk event shows, the most likely explanation is just a larger bolide, estimated to be 100 meters across.

So why do meteorites like Siberia? It's big. Siberia covers almost 10% of the earth's land surface. It's 77% of Russia's territory, and also includes parts of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China.

It's estimated that the Chelyabinsk bolide was the size of an SUV, just a few tons. A bolide is a meteorite that explodes in the atmosphere with an apparent magnitude of -14 or brighter. Apparent magnitude is an astronomical term that describes the relative brightness of celestial objects. Magnitude is a logarithmic scale, and negative numbers are brighter. The sun as seen from Earth is about magnitude -27, or 400,000 times brighter than the full moon, which is almost magnitude -13. Planets like Venus and Jupiter are magnitude -4.89 and -2.94 at their brightest. The brightest star, Sirius, is magnitude -1.47, and the dimmest star visible to the human eye is about +6.50 under the best expected conditions.

Because there are nuclear weapons facilities nearby, there was initially some concern that the Chelyabinsk event was some kind of nuclear weapon. Russian news reports have repeatedly stated that "background radiation is normal."

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the Internet in general get a lot of heat for spreading rumors, misconceptions and lies across the world at the speed of light. But in this case cellphone technology and the Internet served to provide direct and immediate evidence of a natural cause for an event that in different times, say November, 1962 during the height of the Cuban missile crisis, could have sparked nuclear war.

The Chelyabinsk event comes on the same day that an asteroid, 2012 DA14, will pass within 17,000 miles of the earth (the two incidents are apparently unrelated). That's closer than geosynchronous communications satellites orbit the earth.

DA14 is estimated to be 45 meters across, or half the size of the Tunguska bolide. If it were to hit the earth, it would have the potential to kill thousands. But since most of the earth is covered by water, and a lot of the earth's land surface is empty like Siberia, the chances of a major death toll are low.

But the explosion over Chelyabinsk is a concrete reminder that the threat of asteroids and comets hitting the earth is not just science fiction. A relatively small asteroid could kick up enough dust and smoke into the atmosphere to start an ice age, as some scientists believe happened 2 million years ago. Sixty-six million years ago a bigger one hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. At some point we will know that an asteroid or comet is going to hit the earth and we'll actually have enough time to do something about it.

And we should make sure we're ready. NASA has the Near Earth Observation program to track such objects and predict their paths. President Obama's plan for an asteroid mission is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing. And it's exactly the kind of thing you need a big government and international cooperation to do, because no business or single country should be held responsible for protecting the planet.

With all the arguments about the deficits and tax cuts everyone should take a step back. Some things are bigger than our petty squabbles about who really won a mandate in the last election. Instead of wasting all our energy on bickering we should start building things, going new places and making the world a better, safer place.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

That Strange Yet Familiar Feeling

Deja vu. We've all experienced its mystery and I've always wondered if the phenomenon is related to the possibility that our minds could function outside of linear time. Are we remembering things that happened in the past? Or is it the future? As a recent piece by Amy Reichelt notes, the explanation is much simpler and less nerdy.

Many researchers propose that the phenomenon is a memory-based experience and assume the memory centres of the brain are responsible for it.

The medial temporal lobes are vital for the retention of long-term memories of events and facts. Certain regions of the medial temporal lobes are important in the detection of familiarity, or recognition, as opposed to the detailed recollection of specific events. It has been proposed that familiarity detection depends on rhinal cortex function, whereas detailed recollection is linked to the hippocampus. 

The randomness of déjà vu experiences in healthy individuals makes it difficult to study in an empirical manner. Any such research is reliant on self-reporting from the people involved.

This touches on something far greater than a routine phenomenon. In so many ways, we are computers. The bio-hardware in our minds act as hard drives and when we experience events that we may have experienced before, the memory stick engages and we remember. But perhaps the recollection is fuzzy and we can't quite place where or when it was. Imagine for a moment that we could have access to all of it whenever we wanted and in stark clarity.

With recent gains in technology and the ever present smart phone in the hands of nearly everyone, the merging of biology and hardware seems inevitable. This may mean that those memories could be accessed quickly for retrieval making the deja vu phenomenon a thing of the past. We'd know why we are experiencing that feeling that we've done something before. We'd also have clear and uncut access to everything we'd ever experienced. Reliving a long memory with a lost loved one...think about that for a minute.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

Friday, December 31, 2010

Critical Thinking, Science and Conservatives

Mark's post on critical thinking got me to thinking about an article I read recently. It said that the vast majority of scientists surveyed were Democrats, independents or undecided. Only 6% of them were Republicans. The right, of course, latched on to this as evidence of political bias in science. But it really reflects the sort of personality that's attracted to science in the first place.

Science is all about observations and the hypotheses that explain them. As scientists collect more data the hypotheses are refined. The theories change and are often thrown out completely when they don't fit the facts. In science there's always the possibility that the ground will be pulled out from underneath you. It doesn't happen overnight, but it happens in every field of study. Every theory is temporary, subject to change. That doesn't mean the theories are wrong; they're just incomplete.

People on the right seem to crow about never having changed their minds, as if it were some kind of badge of honor. They want an answer now, and once they have it they will not allow it to change. Even if the underlying facts change, or were initially misapprehended. They don't seem to trust science because science doesn't provide them a dogmatic answer that will justify what they've already decided they want. They hate uncertainty because it breeds fear.

Sure, there are some conservatives in science. But the very definition of science involves learning new things, and new ideas will of necessity change the way we think. And that's anathema to most conservatives: for them everything must remain static and unchanging. The way it was must be conserved for eternity. Even though that golden age was much different from what the conservatives of that time longed for.

A more cynical person would say that conservatives just aren't smart enough to be scientists, or are too greedy to waste time getting a PhD or working in academia for peanuts. But for many fields of study there is too much conflict between matters of fact and religious or political beliefs.

The foundation of modern biology and zoology is the theory of evolution. It explains pretty much everything, from why embryos develop the way they do, to how infectious diseases mutate. So a career in biology is out of the question for someone who thinks that Noah collected pairs of wombats, dodos, jaguars, penguins, polar bears, awks, platypuses, orangutans, bison, lemurs and aurochs from all across the world, put them on a boat for six weeks then led them back to their places of origin.

Astronomy and cosmology are similarly taboo: the creation of the universe is an open question for astronomers. For someone who thinks the earth was created six thousand years ago geology is right out. As is anthropology and pretty much any of the social sciences.

But there are some conservatives in those fields. One is C. Martin Gaskell, a conservative astronomer who is suing the University of Kentucky for not hiring him because he publicly questions the validity of evolutionary theory and theorizes on how the bible relates to contemporary astronomy. I thought Republicans were against frivolous lawsuits? I mean, it's a simple business question for the University: what serious student of the sciences would consider attending an institution that hires a guy like that? Such a hire would cast a bad light on the whole university, especially considering that Kentucky houses the Creation Museum and is providing public funding for a Noah's ark park.

The really hard sciences -- physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine -- would seem to harbor the most conservatives because they come into conflict with political beliefs only rarely. And they are clearly the most applicable to money-making opportunities.

But when hard science does conflict with conservative ideology -- especially when there are economic implications -- the science loses. A prime example is climatology. Some conservatives deny that it's happening. Other conservatives deny that we have anything to do with it. Others say the scientists are lying to make money. The remaining few conservatives who acknowledge the reality say that we'll just adapt.

Mainstream climatologists agree that we should adapt. The best way to adapt is to reduce carbon emissions and develop new energy technologies. The best time to adapt is now, while we have enough oil and gas to make the transition smoothly.

One of the most foolish things I ever heard George Bush utter was also the most illustrative of the conservative mindset. He said, "Do you want the terrorists to control the oil in 50 years?" In 50 years there's not going to be any more oil to for the terrorists to control. We will have burned it all. Or at least all of the Middle East's easily accessible oil.

When the oil is gone we will of necessity reduce our emissions and develop new energy sources. Why put that off to the time when competition for the little remaining oil will be bringing us to the brink of war with China, and we have total dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia and Venezuela for our oil?

Monday, September 17, 2007

Blinding Me With Science! SCIENCE!!!

You know what? When I was in school, I should've had more respect for science. All those years ago, I would thumb my nose at science and math geeks with their fancy schmancy numbers and dorkwad experiments. Little did I know at the time that it would be science that would save the day and answer the question that has confounded me from the very first day I started this blog. In fact, as if by some heavenly intervention, my question from last week regarding the giant chasm between conservatives and liberals has, at last been answered.

Why DO conservatives think the way the do? Why do liberals think the way they think? Well, now I know. Sadly, I also know that my quest to build bridges may be in vain. I have to say, folks, that it's over. It's all over......

Conservatives think the way they do because their brains are different. It's just that simple.

According to a new study from scientists at New York University and UCLA, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

The jounral reports that participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter. Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key).

Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M. Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Now, does all this mean that conservatives have smaller brains? Not enough synaptic connections? Are liberals actually smarter than conservatives?

No. What it shows that is that conservatives brains are wired to be more resistant to new ideas or change. Liberals, on the other hand, are more open to new ideas and the parts of their brain that deal with conflict are more active. This is not necessarily a good thing for liberals as they could be more open to (dunh dum dah!!) conservative ideas. Speaking for myself, I wish that I had the same synaptic connections that conservatives do so I could filter out bullshit as well. :)

This explains sooooo much, doesn't it? I mean, look at President Bush. I have always wanted to know why he is so stubborn and now I do. His brain is made that way. He can't process information that doesn't conform with his existing brain patterns. His mind is set...quite literally.

Think of all the debates we have had here over the years that have ended in frustration. Well, there is no need to be frustrated anymore. We have the proof! We have the evidence! I don't know about all of you but I take a great amount of comfort now in knowing that there is absolutely nothing I can do. It's impossible to physically change someone's brain.

Well, unless your last name is....Frankenstein. (Cue chilling organ music), (maniacal laughter)...Hah Hah Hah Ah Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!