Sequitur

Da Blog Has Moved!

2007-08-23T23:10:00.000-05:00

Hello Sequitur fans. Ginny's moved to a new domain, with a much more self-promotional name.

Please visit me!

http://virginiahughes.com

Knitted Brain

2007-08-17T14:52:00.001-05:00

It's accurately knitted. Yes, they're serious.

(via The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art)
(Hat tip: Sandra)

Another Strike Against the Panspermia Hypothesis

2007-08-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

The Earth's oldest ice has been thawed, and its drippings contained fragments of very, very old DNA. Scientists recently brought this DNA back to life.

As he describes in a recent PNAS paper, microbiologist Kay Bidle and colleagues at Rutgers discovered DNA pieces in thawed chunks of Antarctic ice that ranged in age from 100,000 to eight million years old.

When they tried to make the bacteria "viable" again—that is, when they tried to get it to grow and reproduce in lab cultures—the researchers found that the older samples were much more fragmented than the newer ones. From these samples, they calculated a "DNA half-life:" The length of DNA fragments in the ice breaks in half about every 1.1 million years.

They attributed the DNA breakdown to its long-term exposure to cosmic radiation, which digs another nail into astrobiology's Panspermia Hypothesis. The idea, which dates back to the writings of the 5th Century Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, is that the "seeds of life" are found throughout the universe. In 1973, the co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick proposed a "directed panspermia" theory: An advanced alien civilization, perhaps facing its imminent demise, intentionally spread small grains of DNA in random directions through the universe, some of which landed on Earth.

Panspermia, though an immensely popular idea in science fiction, has been widely criticized in the astrobiology field, mostly because the specific combination of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen necessary for life isn't found widely in the universe.

Moreover, stellar winds and cosmic rays make space is a harsh environment for poor little traveling microbes. Biddle's latest research seems to support this latter point. As he recently told Nature News: "If you take the speed of a comet and take the distance it would need to travel it would take longer than eight million years to do that. In a comet the DNA would be completely deteriorated."

(For more astrobiology goodness, check out my Master's thesis about the hunt for life on Mars.)

Autism and Neurodiversity

2007-08-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

Last week's PostSecret included the postcard at right, which shows an illustration of an Autism Awareness ribbon and reads: "I AM NOT A PUZZLE! I DON'T WANT TO BE CURED."

This brings up an interesting point that I didn't have space to cover in my recent Nature Medicine story about autism and the parents of autistic children who believe the condition was caused by mercury-based preservatives in vaccines. While reporting for the story, I interviewed several parents of autistic children. They fell into two camps: Those who believed that vaccines poisoned their otherwise normally developing children so that they developed the neurological symptoms associated with autism spectrum disorders; and those who believed that their child was born with a set of genes that would have caused autism regardless of whether their child had received a vaccination. At the heart of this bifurcation is a bigger question: Is autism a disease that can, or should, be "cured?"

One autism parent and fellow blogger, Kevin Leitch, says no. Leitch used to believe that mercury in vaccines caused autism, but changed his mind after several years of reviewing the scientific literature. His daughter's brain, he says, is not disease-ridden, but an example of "neurodiversity."

"The idea that shes damaged in some way became fairly repugnant to us," Leitch told me. "We just don’t see her like that. I objected very strongly to the language being used to describe them: poisoned, empty shells, dead souls, toxic train wrecks...You're talking about children here; we cant call them these things."

Another blogger, Autism Diva, has an autistic child and has been diagnosed herself with Asperger's Syndrome (an autism-spectrum disorder). Autism Diva, who obviously doesn't have a hard time accepting that the disorder has a genetic component, had similar sentiments:

"I love my autistic child. How could you think of re-wiring them and making them someone else?" she said. "My child’s very impaired and needs a lot of help. If I left her alone in the world she would die. That’s kind of scary, and I can't see a lot of parents signing up for that. But it's common, it's not a new thing. Not an infection that we all ought to be fighting, it’s a part of humanity. You get on a slippery slope to eugenics very quickly. Is every brain one day going to be uniform?"

This concept of "neurodiversity" is explored in depth—as it relates to autism but also to racism, sexual orientation, and even left-handedness—by yet another blogger, Kathleen Seidel at her website, neurodiversity.com.

Walk (and) Score

2007-07-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

When I visited my family in southwest Michigan a few weeks ago, the first thing I noticed was the twangy, excruciatingly-long-A accent. The second thing I noticed: Everybody was fat, and, despite the fact that my hometown spans a maximum of about two miles, the lanky members of the high school cross-country team were the only residents using the sidewalks.

That’s a shame. The average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling subdivision, according to one study done in Washington. And walking of course cuts down on driving, and thus car accidents and carbon emissions.

So just how walk-able is your neighborhood? I just found a fabulous site, www.walkscore.com, that will rate it based on its proximity to nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. (Unfortuantely, it doesn’t take into consideration other factors that make walking more attractive, such as the width of the streets, crime stats, topography, or public transit.)

My old haunt in southwest Michigan: 49/100

My current Greek ‘hood in Queens: 95/100 (Score!)

Joy to the Fishes

2007-07-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

Revenge of the Goldfish, Sandy Skoglund, 1981

Aliens in Queens

2007-07-26T16:01:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 2005, five illegal aliens were caught in Queens, skulking in the brackish water of Meadow Lake. After positive identification, New York State authorities cut them with knives until they bled to death. But the government had no other choice. These were alien fish, whose continued survival could lead to dire economic and ecological consequences.

The exterminated individuals were Northern snakehead fish (Channa argus argus), native to Asia. Also known as “Frankenfish,” the MO of these monsters comes straight from the annals of science fiction. Their heads, covered in snake-like scales that give them their name, also hold a mouth full of sharp fangs. Their torpedo-shaped bodies grow as long as 40 inches, as heavy as 15 pounds. They can breathe air, and “walk” on land using their pectoral fins. They’ll survive for several months under iced-over waters or even buried in mud banks. Scarier still is an insatiable and indiscriminate appetite—they’ll feast on anything on land or sea, from fish and frogs, to ducks, and even small mammals. Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton was apt to call them, “something from a bad horror movie.”

Yet the public has taken little note of the Queens incident, and the media has described it with tongue-in-cheek. In a New York Times article at the time, for instance, Anthony DePalma made light of the problem, writing “Lady Liberty…might have a hard time getting at all gushy about some of the most recent immigrants to the city.”

This mockery of the snakeheads is unfortunate, and surprising, because this isn’t the first time the fish have reared their ugly heads. Just five years ago, a tourist bought a snakehead at a fish market in Manhattan’s Chinatown. (Sold for about $9 a pound, steamed strips of fish are often combined with ginger and scallions in sweet soup recipes. Cooks like them for their freshness, since they can survive up to four days out of water.) The man took his new pet back to Crofton, Maryland to raise it. But there was a problem: No matter how much it ate—up to 12 goldfish per day—it wouldn’t stop growing. When he finally dumped the beast into a small pond behind a local shopping center, he had no idea he was breaking a state law, or that his act could lead to an ecological disaster for the entire Chesapeake Bay.

Sadly, most Americans are not now and have never been aware of the dangers caused by the introduction of invasive alien species. For hundreds of years, Europeans and Americans who ventured abroad have shipped slaves, gold and, yes, biological booty back and forth from their native lands. Take one romantic, if not odd, Eugene Schieffelin. In the late 19th century, this wealthy contributor to New York theatre was determined to give the New World all of the birds ever mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. Most couldn’t survive the American habitat. But he released 60 pairs of starlings (mentioned by Shakespeare just once, in Henry IV: “I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak…”) that would propagate to become our most abundant and annoying bird species, pushing out natives like bluebirds and martins.

Granted, creatures from afar are often romantic, novel, exotic—it’s why everybody loves the zoo. So an earnest public might ask, why not bring them here? What’s the big deal?

According to an extensive 1993 report by the Office of Tribal Affairs (OTA), over 900 exotic, free-ranging species have caused ecological or economic harm in the United States. To understand why, consult evolutionary theory. Alien species, by definition, did not evolve in or for our specific ecosystem. Thus, when thrown into a new environment—with a new climate, new food sources, new competition, new prey—their behaviors are unpredictable. Unsurprisingly, many cannot survive at all. But others are superbly equipped to travel, thrive and even dominate their new surroundings.

Take that wretched Northern snakehead, for example. In its native Southeast Asia, it lives in irrigation ditches and rice paddies. After the rainy season, these trenches dry out and the fish must migrate to a wetter place. Hence, for thousands of years, the creatures with fins that allowed them to flop around on land are the ones that survived. Similarly adaptive systems evolved in the snakehead’s digestive system, where it has an air sac that allows it to absorb oxygen when it’s out of water. The snakeheads, thus falling into the category of invasive foreign species, are a North American ecosystem’s worst nightmare.

The biggest ecological problem with invasive species is the loss of biodiversity. In the 1960s, a “walking” catfish from Sri Lanka was exported to a Florida fish farm. Within 10 years, the catfish had spread to 20 Floridan counties. In the decades since, up to 90%—that’s 4,000 pounds per acre—of the area’s fish kill has consisted of the catfish. In Australia, a similar invasion has caused the rapid decline of native frog populations. There, a deadly virus was introduced to Queensland and transmitted to frogs by an imported fish. The telling part: the fish was not sold for eating, but for ornament.

Another negative effect of invasive species is the destruction of natural resources. The Siberian gypsy moth, an insect that strips the leaves from spruce, larch, and fir trees, and in large numbers thus poses a great threat to coniferous forests, is ranked in the top three of Russia’s biological pests. The OTA’s report divulged that thousands of raw logs imported to the United States from Siberia carried—guess what?—Siberian gypsy moths.

And for those who scoff at the ecological consequences, perhaps they’ll sit up when they hear the situation affects their pocketbooks. Loss of biodiversity often translates into loss of money, and lots of it. The Australian Brown tree snake, accidentally introduced to Guam in the early 1950s, now thrives there with up to 13,000 snakes per square mile. The snakes, by crawling on power lines, have caused more than 1,200 power outages since 1978. Since its arrival in 1892, the Cotton boll weevil has cost the U.S. cotton industry $13 billion; Zebra mussels—introduced to the Great Lakes from Caspian Sea water dumped from a transatlantic ship—have clogged American pipes since at least 1988, demanding utility repairs to the tune of $3 billion.

So what ever happened to those snakefish dumped in the Maryland pond five years ago? Officials knew they had to be eradicated, for fear of their spread. Because they can “walk,” they could have left the pond, crawled a mere 75 feet to the Little Patuxent River, and from there invaded the Maryland river system and Chesapeake Bay. The pond could have been drained, except some of the fish would have inevitably buried themselves in the mud until they could make it to the Little Patuxent. Electroshock treatments didn’t work, due to dense vegetation in the pond. Traps were used with some success, but authorities still didn’t know for certain that all of the fish had been killed. A complete purge came finally when they poisoned the entire pond using a plant-derived toxin called Rotenone.

If not public awareness, the incident in Maryland at least spawned legislation. Within a few months, a federal law was passed banning the importation of snakeheads. But for many working on the problem, the ban didn’t go far enough. California is one of 13 states where it is illegal to import, transport, or even possess a snakehead. The state’s Fish and Game Commission has argued that the federal ban lacks teeth, as the high volumes of fish are imported together, and the snakeheads are small enough to hide behind larger ones. As Miles Young, a lieutenant in the California Department of Fish and Game, told the Sacramento Bee: “it’s been an enforcement problem.”

Back in Queens, now a two years since the finding of the five snakeheads, the problem rages still. Undoubtedly, kin of the five exterminated fish are lurking underwater, devouring what’s left of the carp, white perch, and pumpkinseed fish native to Meadow Lake. Now closed for fishing, activity on the lake consists solely of local biologists setting traps for more snakeheads. But so far, they’ve had no luck.

LOLZ

2007-07-21T08:14:00.000-05:00

(Hat tip: Dark Roasted Blend)

Nature's Fractals

2007-07-20T08:32:00.001-05:00

At right, feast your eyes on Brassica oleracea, a.k.a. fractal broccoli. Complex fractal, or self-similiar, patterns like this are ubiquitous in nature—in leaf veins, seashells, snowflakes, even blood vessels in the lung.

So what does self-similarity mean? As John Walker, the photographer of the image at right, explains:

The self-similarity of most of these patterns is defined only in a statistical sense: while the general "roughness" is about the same at different scales, you can't extract a segment, blow it up, and find a larger scale segment which it matches precisely.

However, some of the most pleasing patterns in geometric art exhibit exact or almost exact self-similarity. These are patterns which are composed of smaller copies of themselves ad infinitum, or at least until some limit where the similarity breaks down due to the granularity of the underlying material.

That fractal broccoli is one of those rare examples of "almost exact" self-similarity. Pretty. Damn. Cool.

Check out Walker's site. He gives lots of graphs and photos and math stuffs, but cutest of all was his closing recipe:

It's excellent raw, enhancing both the appearance and taste of an assiette de crudités. It's crunchier than cauliflower and not as bland. It has a nutty taste (and looks kind of nutty too until you get used to it!) and doesn't have the chalky edge which some people dislike in broccoli. Any dip that's good with cauliflower and broccoli will go fine with Romanesco, but be sure to try it by itself—you may decide to forgo the dip. It would be absolutely ideal to serve raw Romanesco on a platter with an image of the Mandelbrot set!

(Hat tip: Dark Roasted Blend)

Happy For You

2007-07-19T13:47:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, I caught an old episode of the Ellen show when Beyonce Knowles was the guest. It was Beyonce's 25th birthday, and Ellen surprised her by bringing out her childhood dance teacher. When Beyonce saw her teacher—for the first time in years—she was overcome with emotion. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, and started crying.

And to my surprise, so did I.

Could our brains have a built-in capacity for experiencing "altruistic pleasure"—that is, feeling good about other people feeling good? Last month, NYT columnist John Tierney wrote about new research done by neuroscientists at the University of Oregon, in which they scanned the brains of 19 female subjects while they made decisions, via a computer, about donating real money to charity. As Tierney explains:

Sure enough, when the typical student chose to donate to the food bank, she was rewarded with that warm glow: increased activity in the same ancient areas of the brain — the caudate, nucleus accumbens and insula — that respond when you eat a sweet dessert or receive money. But these pleasure centers were also activated, albeit not as much, when she was forced to pay a tax to the food bank.

Now the philosophical question (which Tierney explores in a related blog entry) is, Does activation of a neurological pleasure center mean that people are: Truly Altruistic (because we have this innate wiring system that makes us feel good about helping people); or, Truly Selfish (because we're not actually behaving in order to help others, but just to make ourselves feel good)?

Ouch, makes my head hurt even thinking about. But the distinction, though subtle, is important. Viewed through the "lens"—I hate that phrase, but whatever—of evolutionary biology, I don't see how we can be anything but Truly Selfish.

At the end of the blog post, Tierney asks his readers: "...what do you think is your chief motivation in making charitable donations? Do you give because it makes you feel good, or because you (in accordance with Kant’s ideal of praiseworthy altruism) are painfully carrying out your duty?"

Forty-nine people commmented...Some goodies:

Trite:
Does it really matter why a person does something kind or compassionate for another person, for an animal, or for the environment? The point is that if every single human being would perform an act of kindness, this world would be a better place. —Bobbi

Pretentious:
A world in which positive relational networks enable one’s own pleasure to be generated from facillitating another’s sounds pretty ethically desirable to me. —Chris

Dismissive:
What this debates lacks is the admission that nothing is ever simple in human culture. —Mitch

Either Chauvinistic or Insightful, can't decide which:
all the participants were female—motherly love is as altruistic as it gets —David

Harry Potter Secret

2007-07-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

PostSecret.

Capturing the Small

2007-07-11T16:05:00.000-05:00

For 33 years, Nikon has sponsored a "Small World Photomicrography" competition, what they call "the leading forum for showcasing the beauty and complexity of life as seen through the light microscope."

The official judging for the 2007 contest took place on May, and now website visitors may vote for their favorites among the top entries. Winners will be announced this fall.

The site also showcases winning entries from previous years. They are certainly beautiful, and certainly complex. At right, the 3rd-place winner from 2004: Differentiating neuronal cells (actin, microtubules, and DNA), by Torsten Wittmann at The Scripps Research Institute.

The deadline for entries in next year's competition is April 30, 2008. First prize gets $3000 toward the purchase of Nikon equipment.

Cartoon Contest Redux

2007-06-28T07:40:00.000-05:00

Remember that Science Idol cartoon contest sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists? Well the 12 finalists have been announced! Vote for your favorite (my pick below) before midnight on July 23.

It's POP, fools!

2007-06-26T19:42:00.000-05:00

Clever reader Jason sent me a link that just may beat out the site of (fake) sweet tea preferences. This one's a map of every county in the U.S., color-coded to show if residents call their soft drinks "Pop", "Coke", "Soda", or anything else. Best of all: It's based on real data!

Note, please, that most of the country calls soft drinks by the correct name, "Pop" (See map, gigantic chunk of royal blue that spreads from Washington state to western New York, and as far south as Oklahoma).

Apparently, the data was compiled by one Matthew T. Campbell of the Department of Cartography and Geography at East Central University in Oklahoma who, according to their website, received a bachelor's degree in cartography in 2004-2005.

Survey-takers in my Michigan homecounty, Calhoun, where I was born and raised for 17 years, answered in resounding favor of "Pop;" New York City, my current home, prefers to call it "Soda." Percentages below.

Calhoun County, MI (out of 95 respondants):
POP: 91%
COKE: 2% (I'd bet these guys didn't understand the question.)
SODA: 6%
OTHER: 1%

New York City (out of 484 respondants):
POP: 2%
COKE: 5%
SODA: 90%
OTHER: 3%

P.S. What are these "other" labels? "carbonated beverage"? "soft drink"? "liquid refreshment"? And what's with the east coast of Wisconsin?

There Once Was a Site that Ginny Adored

2007-06-25T17:04:00.000-05:00

My latest procrastination site: the Online Limerictionary, from which you may peruse limericks by topic, word, or author. I liked the science ones, 'course...A few favs:

"So you're Schrödinger's lab-mate, no blag?
Does it purr, then?" I purred (not to nag).
And he told me (sly fox)!
Well, he opened the box
And he let the cat out of the bag.

Arterial blood is bright red
As it goes from your lungs to your head.
You might find that it spurts
When you get major hurts—
If it ceases its flow, then you're dead.

The dollar? The pound? Guarani?
No! the "rich" cells all use ATP!
Since it offers a whole
50 kJ per mole,
This here compound's their energy fee.

(Hat tip: PZ)

Sweet Tea: Update!

2007-06-19T14:57:00.000-05:00

So, a funny coincidence (one of my favorite redundancies of all time) led me to the personal email address of Justin Stimmel, interactive artist and the brains behind that sweet tea map I wrote about earlier today. Turns out that he designed the map for a graphic design project using Flash, and the data was completely made up! As he explains:

Yes I did make the map, and sadly it is fake. I grew up in Arlington, VA...but I went to school at NC State. Several times a year I would make the drive up and down I-95 to DC. After a while I began to plan my rest stops based on whether or not I thought they would have sweet tea. Obviously, I'm a big fan. This went on for a year or two and developed a mental sweet tea map. I was studying graphic design at the time and we had an assignment to graphically map something of interest. Most students choose things like mitosis or the cycle of water, but I knew exactly what I wanted to 'map'. Because it was a student project, and I didn't want to actually contact every McDonalds in VA, made up the data based on my experiences.

Was is more interest, at least to me, is that I did that project in 2004, and it's sat on my personal domain, with no updates, and no visitors for three years. I'm not sure how it suddenly reached the blogosphere, but it's been a welcome spike in visitors.

(Go ahead, visit his site and contribute to that spike.)

Sweet Tea

2007-06-19T05:21:00.000-05:00

Whoa, here's a crazy-interesting way to visualize the Mason-Dixon line: map the location of restaurants that sell sweet tea.

Yellow dots are restaurants serving sweet tea; black dots don't serve it.

From EightOverFive:

The following is a nonscientific investigation into the relationship of Sweet Tea availability and the separation of northern and southern cultures in the United States. An interesting phenomenon exists somewhere in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The northern and urban areas of the state do not generally offer sweet tea in the most restaurants, where as it is a staple beverage for the southern part of the state.

Hat tip: Dave

Ouch!

2007-06-13T16:40:00.000-05:00

Neurophilosopher had a great post yesterday on the history of trepanation, the skull surgery that's been performed in one way or another since prehistoric times. The money quote:

In his treatises on surgery, Paré also described “trepanes or round saws for cutting out a circular piece of bone with a sharp-pointed nail in the centre projecting beyond the teeth,” and another trepan with a transverse handle. The mechanical cogwheel trepan (above left) was invented by Matthia Narvatio in Antwerp in 1575. The cogwheel was connected to a second wheel which rotated a circular saw that cut through the bone. This instrument was used much in the same way as a modern hand drill - held in one hand and cranked with the other.

Warning: Not for the faint of heart!

Evolution for Everyone (except UD)

2007-06-08T06:49:00.000-05:00

Today, some 54% percent of adults in the United States believe that humans did not evolve from some earlier species. This number is growing—up from 46% in 1994.

These statistics were called out recently in evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson's new book, Evolution for Everyone, and again in a Nature review (behind firewall) of the book by evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel .

That America is getting more and more scientifically illiterate is sad enough. But more sickening is the spin taken by popular creationist blog, Uncommon Descent. (Sorry, I refuse to link to UD as I don't want them to receive even one referral from Sequitur.) UD bloggger scordova says that the Nature review, because it mentions these statistics, puts out "an unwitting slam of Darwinism." Scordova excitedly continues:

The number of non-Darwinists is rising! Pagel then asks this rhetorical question, “Where have the evolutionists gone wrong?”

It's an apt question. And one that should be seriously addressed before another poll is taken, say in 2017, when the percentage of Darwin denialists has grown even higher.

J'adore les francais

2007-06-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

Hat tip: Grrl

EM Humor

2007-06-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

I heart xkcd.

Literally Inane

2007-06-05T14:59:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the infrequent blogging lately...I've been traveling and working and strolling and boozing too much to give Sequitur much attention. And that continues today...but! Wanted to at least give a quick shout-out to my new favorite blog, Literally which points out—what else?— ridiculous uses of the word "literally." Here's their latest post, a quote from the late Reverend Jerry Falwell:

Someone must not be afraid to say, ‘moral perversion is wrong.’ If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America! If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way … and our nation will pay a terrible price!”

(I, for one, can't wait for that homosexual meme to infiltrate the entire country...just think—better window treatments, mandatory Sunday brunch, AND I wouldn't have to deal with boys. Wink wink ECH.)

Well-rounded

2007-05-28T06:58:00.000-05:00

Einstein's general theory of relativity proposed that the all-encompassing blanket of space-time is warped, ever so slightly, by massive objects like the Earth. Al's theory was, you know, pretty genius. Still, so far there's been no way to measure these tiny distortions and actually prove his predictions. But a NASA/Stanford team of physicist- engineers might have finally found this proof.

In April 2004, the team launched the "Gravity Probe B"—a satellite-laboratory that contains the world's most precise gyroscopes. The satellite has been in orbit ever since, and the researchers are now starting to make sense of the data it collected. (Interestingly, the probe was first proposed in 1960, but funding and technological hurdles kept it from ever getting off the ground.)

To refresh your memory, a gyroscope is basically a wheel that's mounted within a ring so that it's free to spin in any direction. When the wheel is spun quickly (and in the absence of any pesky friction), it will keep its original plane of rotation no matter which way the ring is turned. Since gyroscopes always maintain equilibrium, they're used by experimentalists to define a fixed direction in space.

Gravity Probe B holds four super-accurate, 3-D gyroscopes, so accurate that they could detect a movement the width of a human hair from 20 miles away. Each gyroscope is made up of a spherical mass, about the size of a ping pong ball, spinning in a -271 degree-Celsius chamber of superfluid helium. The spheres are the most perfectly rounded objects ever made by hand—if blown up to the Earth's size, their biggest imperfections would form mountains only eight feet high.

If Newtonian physics is right, then the gyroscopes within Gravity Probe B should always point in the same direction. But if Einstein's relativity is correct, then the slight curvature of space should cause the spin axis of the gyroscope to change by a tiny, tiny bit (we're talking a difference of .0018 degrees in one year). As I mentioned, the data's still being analyzed...but preliminary results show the balls are indeed drifting. Way to go, Al.

Hat tip: Clive

Fair Warning

2007-05-28T06:39:00.000-05:00

PostSecret

Does Size Matter? It's all relative.

2007-05-23T19:30:00.000-05:00

When I was about 12, my piano teacher extolled my long fingers: thumb to pinky, when stretched, could span 10 keys. But she was the exception. My sister calls them “alien fingers,” and it’s generally an awkward moment when a date first discovers his hands are smaller than mine.

Finger length is determined by the precise mix of hormones a developing fetus is exposed to. Men, who were exposed to more testosterone in the womb than women, generally have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers. Women, exposed to more oestrogen, generally have longer index fingers. (The differences, of course, are but a couple of millimeters.)

A new study from the British Journal of Psychology found that this ratio of finger lengths may also indicate how well a child scores on math and verbal SAT tests.

After comparing the index and ring-finger lengths of 75 7-year-olds, psychologists from the University of Bath found the children whose ring fingers were longer than their index fingers--mostly boys--did better on math tests than verbal tests.

This makes sense, the researchers say, since previous research has shown that exposure to testosterone in the womb promotes growth in brain areas associated with math and spatial reasoning. It's not yet clear whether oestrogen exposure promotes growth of verbal areas of the brain.

...which means that apparently my hands are unusual in yet another way: unlike most girls, my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers. And indeed, my math standardized test scores were higher than my English scores. But what I really wanna know is: How'd I get all that extra testosterone? (And shouldn't I be, like, more competitive? Or at least less timid?)

eBay Allows Ivory Trade

2007-05-16T16:24:00.000-05:00

In a one-week period this February, more than 2,200 elephant ivory items were up for grabs on eBay, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

In Britain, it's legal to sell ivory only if it was harvested before June 1947. In the U.S., it has to be more than 100 years old. But for more than 90 percent of those listed ivory goods, sellers did not provide the required proof-of-age certificates, the report stated.

"What's happening online is that there's a totally unregulated trade. If you stop the selling of ivory, then the killing will stop," Robbie Marsland, director of the IFAW in Britain, told the AP.

Between 1979 and 1989, poaching for ivory in Africa cut its elephant population in half. About 1.3 million elephants lived in Africa in 1977; by 1997, there were just 600,000.

Marriage, Divorce, and Mitt Romney's Delusions

2007-05-14T18:45:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, we can all get caught up bemoaning the progressive decline of "American Family Values." I just wrote a piece on childhood obesity, in fact, that cited some discouraging statistics: 40 percent of American meals are eaten outside the home; Americans now spend more than $100 billion a year on fast food, up from $3 billion in 1972; 53 percent of kids aged 6 or younger eat meals in front of the TV; 31 percent of eighth graders watch four hours or more of TV per day.

This week over at denialism blog, Mark debunks another oft-quoted (like by the Family Research Council) sob-story statistic that 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. This is "statistical nonsense," he says, that:

...comes from comparing the number of marriages in a given year to the number of divorces in a given year. However, since the marriages and divorces aren't occurring in the same year, this doesn't give an accurate picture of how many marriages are failing and is notoriously susceptible to population dynamics. Your actual chances of a failed marriage are about one in four.

The myth is interesting in itself, but I was more interested in one of the comments made on Mark's post, by one Michael LoPrete:

The other, other, alternative is to abandon this notion of marriage as permanent.

They may only exist right now in Romney's bizzaro-France, but 7-year marriage contracts make a whole lot of sense.

What what what'd he do? About a week ago, Romney indeed said to a crowd of more than 5,000:

"In France, for instance, I'm told* that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Whatever jokester intern told Romney that must be having quite the chuckle now, for no such contract exists in France, or anywhere else. (*A few clever internet punks have offered various hypotheses for the source of Romney's misstatement...my favorite is that it's actually a reference to the 1992 sci-fi novel, The Memory of Earth, a fictionalization of the first few hundred years recorded in the Book of Mormon. In the book, marriages just so happen to be contracted out for seven years. Romney's not only Mormon, remember, but also loves sci-fi....)

Anyway, maybe a seven-year marriage contract DOES make sense. The scariest thing about marriage, after all, is that "forever" concept (which includes the "omg I'll never be able to sleep with anyone else for the rest of my life"). When I was young, my parents used to send me away to summer camp in Connecticut. Some days I loved it (especially archery and synchronized swimming), but some nights I cried my homesick self to sleep. The only thing that got me through the tough times was knowing that it would all be over at the end of the summer. I actually had a piece of notebook paper taped to the top of my bottom bunk bed where I tallied the days left until the end. But then, by the time the next spring rolled around, I was always itching to go back. Go figure.

Sperm Compete (duh)

2007-05-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

Here's a recent press release, from Blackwell, about an article (behind firewall) in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science. Not only are they three months late on getting out this "news," but please note the writer's egregious oversimplification of the work (in bold). Sigh. (The news is actually much, much older than than three months. Robin Baker et al. have been observing sperm competition in all kinds of animals, including humans, for, oh I dunno, 20+ years...still, glad to see it making headlines again.)

Research suggests men's sexual behavior adapts to perceived threats

Behavioral and physical characteristics allow men to compete in fertilization

Davie, Fla. May 08, 2007 -- A review of the latest research in sexual adaptation shows that evidence is building for what researchers call "sperm competition." According to a review appearing in Current Directions in Psychological Science, physical and behavioral sexual characteristics exhibited by human males indicate that males have evolved to deliver their sperm more effectively to females with multiple partners.

"Although many people are familiar with the idea of animals competing for mates before sex occurs, through mating displays such as bright feathers or butting antlers, we are finding more evidence that there is also competition after mating occurs," says author Todd K. Shackelford. "An alternative way of thinking about it is that there is not only competition between males for mates, but competition between males for fertilization."

The research presented in the review covers physical adaptations, including penis shape and style of intercourse, as well as behavior in response to perceived infidelity that all serve to increase the success of fertilization. "The studies have shown that when partners are separated for periods of time, males are more likely to arouse easily, produce more sperm, and even rape their partners," says Shackelford. According to Shackelford and co-author Aaron T. Goetz, this does not mean that women are promiscuous by nature, but it is evidence that humans are not naturally a monogamous species.

Shackelford is quick to point out, however, that females are not passive partners in the sexual relationship. "Although this review focused on male adaptations, sexual conflict between males and females produces a co-evolutionary arms race between the sexes, in which an advantage gained by one sex selects for counter-adaptations in the other sex."

"Proving" God

2007-05-09T09:09:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, two celebrity Christians debated a group called the Rational Response Squad about the existence of god for the televised "ABC Nightline Face-off." Evangelical author Ray Comfort and child actor Kirk Cameron intended to “prove god’s existence scientifically, without mentioning the bible or faith." After watching the clip (below), it's clear they failed. Not quite as funny as the banana video, though.

(Hat tip: PZ)

Charleston Punk

2007-05-08T20:25:00.000-05:00

Hat tip: Lee. Thanks for cheering me up. ;-)

Monkeys at the GOP Debate

2007-05-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

Thursday night, the 10 Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential race squared off in their first debate. They repeatedly mentioned Reagan (but rarely Bush), and also answered a few questions about global warming, embryonic stem cell research, and, bizarrely, organ donation. Three candidates raised their hands to show they did not believe in evolution.

Cartoon hat tip: John

Map of Online Communities

2007-05-03T08:21:00.000-05:00

xkcd, you never disappoint.

Violent Vaccine Denialists

2007-05-01T08:14:00.000-05:00

Sadly, the anti-vaccination lobby seems to be growing in political influence, according to an editorial in May’s Nature Neuroscience (under firewall). The editors point out (as I did this fall in a Nature Medicine feature story about how vaccine denialists affect public health) that a host of rigorous scientific studies have debunked each and every claim of a mercury-autism link. Nevertheless, in the same insidious style as animal rights wackos, the anti-vaccers won’t back down—on Capitol Hill, in the press, or in their personal attacks. The editorial’s money quote:

People who oppose the [mercury-autism link] have been harassed with repeated calls, whether they have written a letter to their local paper or an editorial for The Wall Street Journal. The harassment includes parents of autistic children who do not align themselves with the anti-vaccine movement. Kevin Leitch reports, 'I have personally been told that because I am not chelating my daughter, I am a child abuser. That I am a murderer. I have had threats of violence made against me, and a few people have even sent personal hate mail to my seven-year-old autistic daughter.'

As Orac points out, Kevin Leitch made further comments about harassment by anti-vaccers on his blog:

I know of four scientists whom I have exchanged emails with who have been targeted by this same extreme group and who had:

1) Threats of property damage made against their homes and property
2) Threats of physical violence made against them
3) Been the victims of concerted email and telephone harassment campaigns to the point where security services have had to get involved
4) Had their associations with entities that merely sound like Pharma organisations misrepresented
5) Been accused, on no basis at all, of fraud

These scientists are staggered that merely performing accurate science has led them to having to (in three cases I know of) inform Campus Police of the places they work at of their movements in order to remain safe.

Indeed, this behavior reminds me of an act of “protest” against esteemed UCLA neuroscientist Dario Ringach. Ringach’s lab used monkeys to study information processing in the visual system. (Primates are the only animals whose eye biology/physiology is comparable to humans.) In August, after receiving several threats from the Animal Liberation Front—including a bomb on his porch—Ringach sent the ALF an email saying, “You win,” and closed up his lab.

The anti-vaccers whom I interviewed for my story presented themselves as helpless victims of some kind of medical/CDC conspiracy. I’d never suggest that any of them are instead violent manipulators. However, it’s time to start holding the activist groups they’re associated with accountable for their violent acts, regardless of their philosophical/political motivations. I thus agree whole-heartedly with the logical, if naïve, recommendation from the editorial:

In the end, these fears are driven by ideology rather than science. We urge legislators to base science policy on the best consensus among researchers in the field, rather than the emotional appeals of an agenda-driven group, especially one that attempts to bully into silence those with opposing opinions.

(Right, because our government always tries to base its science policy on sound science. Like our stance on stem cells, for instance, or the space program, or global warming. Sigh.)

The Blogosphere

2007-04-29T15:35:00.000-05:00

This month's Discover Magazine has a neat-o map of the Blogosphere:

Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange. Social media expert Matthew Hurst recently collected link data for six weeks and produced this plot of the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere.

1 White dots represent individual blogs, sized according to number of links. Nearly 500,000 people visit the DailyKos every day, making it one of the world’s most popular blogs.

2 The bright spot here represents the popular site Boingboing, a “Directory of Wonderful Things.”

3 LiveJournal bloggers (like my sista, Charlotte)

4 Blue means blogs are reciprocal (they link to each other). The brightest light belongs to syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.

5 Porn blogs. And no, I’m not going to link to them here.

6 Sports bloggers

But where, oh where, is the science blogosphere? Oh yeah, here.

Nostalgic.

2007-04-26T19:25:00.000-05:00

Rolling groggy into Baltimore on Amtrak train 185 I had forgotten that all the roofs are flat; bricks painted green, blue, pink; windows boarded up. I thought of that new Atlantic article about snitchers in Baltimore ghettos. But the streets looked empty. Too early for drug deals, I guess.

Squalor. S-q-u-a-l-o-r I counted walking north from Penn station on the durty North Charles sidewalk. My intended destination: Tapas Taetro, right up there at 20th, for an early lunch. Hummus, maybe. Or crab cakes. Nope. Closed until 5:00. I wasn’t planning to go all the way north, those 12 blocks to campus. I’d just walk until I saw a place to eat. But each one I came to was (card)boarded up—one Chinese, one Korean, one “cool Caribbean,” two diners. No restaurants, but five hair salons, two realty offices, WYPR public radio and a “Big Boyz” bail bond shop. A few stuttering fat women, old, tired-looking, probably strung out out of their minds. A few teenaged gangsters giving me the up-down. Got to that big Safeway on 24th, cut across the parking lot to St. Paul. A young man dragged a blue-sneakered limp foot across the road with his brown-sneakered left. His neck collared with a plastic grocery bag. The sun h-o-t hot. And I was so preoccupied with forehead sweat running my makeup that 32nd startled me, those brown dumpsters in the alley behind The Allston. Up on the wobbly fourth-floor fire escape, the black asphalt roof still inviting, no girls sunbathe in bikinis.

It was supposed to rain—60 percent chance—but it’s not. Sun’s so bright I have to scrape my white-tableclothed table (did they used to have tablecloths?) at Donna’s so that the awning covers my shoulders.

All of those 7ams at Donna’s, writing about Mars with cinnamon hazelnut in a paper cup. The two female waitresses still work here. (That one Meagan and I always thought was a bit slow in the head, she still seems a bit slow in the head. Perhaps more so with those ridiculously plastic, ridiculously sea-foam green hoop earrings.) My waitor, Josh P., is new.

Next door is still Rocky Run, with the pricey beers, and then Charles Village Pub with the cheap ones. We watched the Ravens there that one Sunday afternoon. (That was before the Warhol exhibit in Chicago—or was it after? And long before the Warhol sleep documentary at PS 1 MOMA. Remember the afternoon skyline from the rooftop? It was so fucking hot.) And there’s still Eddie’s, still—a banner on the window says “celebrating 45 years.” I laugh, not out loud but in my head, because last week, in a compulsive fit, I cleared my desk and threw away the tattered Eddie’s discount card, thinking, When’s the next time I’ll be in Baltimore again, anyway?

April 25, 2007. The streets are quiet, still, empty. The Hopkins kids at the next table—in suits and lacrosse t-shirts, some young entrepreneurs club meeting, no doubt—are pretentious, discussing “border theory” of South America, and the air smells like the water, I think as I sign the check. “Donna’s,” it says at the top, “Charle’s Village.”

Dawkins vs. O'Reilly

2007-04-24T22:40:00.000-05:00

Monday night, the Oxford evolutionary biologist (and ever-adorable) Richard Dawkins appeared on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor to debate the atheistic premise of his new book, The God Delusion. The final score: Roman Catholic imbecile host Bill O'Reilly uttered 609 words, Dawkins just 342. Try not to gag.

My last post on The God Delusion...

(Hat tip, PZ)

On Touching.

2007-04-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

When Roberto Salazar was an infant, his parents thought he was the perfect baby: he never cried, and slept most of the day. But at three months, they knew something was wrong. Roberto was losing weight dramatically, and not interested in food. He didn't sweat, even on hot summer afternoons. And most startling, when he started teething, he chewed apart his own tongue, lips, and fingers.

Roberto, now almost 6 years old, is one of a couple of dozen people in the United States with "congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis," or CIPA--he was born without a sense of touch. More than half of all children born with CIPA--the most severe type of sensory neuropathy--die from heat stroke before age 3. Those who live must be on constant alert for unfelt injury; they may walk on a broken leg, or stay in the cold after frostbite's set in. And a lover's caress will never make them shiver with delight.

Of all our senses, touch is certainly the most essential to survival. And interestingly, being touched may be almost as critical.

Duke neurologist Saul Schanberg first started thinking about the power of touch after meeting children with psychogenic dwarfism, the stunting of growth that occurs after extreme emotional deprivation. Children who were ignored at home--both emotionally and physically--just stopped growing. Not only that but, as Diane Ackerman explains in her charming, poetic book, A Natural History of the Senses:

Schanberg found that even growth-hormone injections couldn't prompt the stunted bodies of such children to grow again, but tender loving care did. The affection they received from the nurses when they were admitted to a hospital was often enough to get them back on the right track. What's amazing is that the process is reversible at all.

Ackerman goes on to discuss premature infants, who gain weight at a much faster rate when physically massaged by parents, nurses, and hospital volunteers. Schanberg's experiments on rats showed this happens in the opposite direction, too: when an infant rat was denied its mother's touch, even for as little as 45 minutes, it lowered its food intake and slowed its metabolism, presumably to save energy until the mother returned. But if she didn't come back at all, the baby rats stopped growing.

This evolutionary importance of touching and being touched may also explain why it makes us feel just so damn good. As Schanberg told Ackerman, "It's ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact, and it affects damn near everything we do. No other sense can arouse you like touch...We forget that touch is not only basic to our species, but the key to it."

Wikipedia on Psychogenic Dwarfism
FeralChildren.com

Heartening

2007-04-14T09:39:00.000-05:00

Greg Critser can feel good about this: Thursday the FDA rejected Merck's application to sell its new pain pill, Arcoxia, a Cox-2 inhibitor that Merck saw as the new Vioxx. The FDA panel's decision was unequivocal (vote was 20 to 1) , and the criticisms of the drug by FDA safety officers, who testified before the panel, were unusually harsh. The New York Times reports that one officer, Dr. David Graham, told the panel that if Arcoxia is approved for sale, “what you’re talking about is a potential public health disaster."

People with arthritis feel pain because of acids released by damaged cells. An enzyme system in the stomach, called COX, manages these and other acids. The Cox-1 system protects the stomach lining by producing acids that maintain cellular structure. The Cox-2 system produces acids that start the chain of reactions that leads to the pain response.

Traditional drugs for arthritis pain, including aspirin, inhibit both Cox systems--leading to a reduction of pain and inflammation, but also a damaged stomach lining. For people with arthritis who took anti-inflamatories regularly, this often led to gastrointestional bleeding, congestion, and ulcers.

Thus, when Cox-2 inhibitors--drugs that stopped the Cox-2 system without affecting Cox-1--like Vioxx were first marketed in the '90s, they were trumped as superaspirins that would take away the pain without hurting the gut.

So why do we even have that nasty Cox-2 enzyme system? Ohhh yea, it has lots of important functions, like preventing tiny bumps inside of arteries from exploding into blockages. But more problematic for heart health is that the Cox-1 system is also responsible for increases in blood clots, which often lead to heart attack; that is, it's good to inhibit it. So patients who switched from aspirin (6¢ per pill) to Cox-2 inhibitors ($3 per pill) were at a much higher risk of heart attack and stroke.

Between 1999 and 2003, Merck sold 92.8 million prescriptions of Vioxx. For .03% of cases, patients died from a heart attack, which doesn't sound like much--until you realize that's 27,785 people. This risk isn't for a life-saving cancer drug; Vioxx is a pain pill, whose huge customer base is exactly why ensuring its safety is so important.

The sales potential, of course, is also the reason Merck's fighting so hard to get back into the pain market. Arcoxia is a Cox-2 inhibitor and almost identical to Vioxx, and thus contributes to heart attacks for the same reasons as Vioxx. According to the FDA safety experts, Arcoxia alleviates pain no better than Aleve, yet causes three times as many heart attacks, strokes and deaths. Yea...I'd say that's a no-brainer decision.

As Martha Solonche, another member of the FDA safety panel, said: "The idea should not be that we need new drugs. The idea should be that we need better drugs.”

How to Detect a Liar

2007-04-12T07:34:00.000-05:00

I just found a fascinating post, via Kevin, about liars, how to detect them, and how to understand their motivations. (I say "them" in the most abstract sense...I lie every day, probably several times.) Kevin calls it "pretty basic stuff;" nevertheless, it's stuff that, despite my obsession with behavioral bio, I've never read before. Here's the gist:

Whether we lie depends on our calculation of the reward/punishment equation. This is called “situational honesty.” Because most of us are conditioned to believe lying is wrong, it creates stress...The degree of emotional discomfort is determined by two factors: the adverse consequences of the lie and our perception of being caught.

Those little white lies, the article explains, don't stress us out because a) there are no adverse consequences; and b) it's unlikely your deception will be found out. Conversely, if you're, say, Jeffrey Skilling (whom superlative-loving CBS news calls "the most vilified figure from the most notorious financial scandal of the decade"), then your lies have enormous adverse consequences AND are likely to be found out. Big lies thus put you in a high-stress mode, complete with "telltale behavioral changes."

What are these changes? I know from Meet the Fockers that your pulse races...but what do the real lie-detecting experts look for? The article mentions several lying behaviors:

Repetition of the question
Selective memory (I might have been there, I might have been off; I just don't remember)
Oaths (Honey, I swear on my mother's life, nothing happened!)
Character testimony (I'm an honest person--ask any of my friends)
Answering with a question
Overuse of respect
Avoiding emotive words
Covering mouth with hands
Assuming a "fleeing position" (That's because, when threatened, humans react with a “fight or flight” mentality....neat-o, right?)

This list is somewhat exhaustive, no? Makes me wonder, what behaviors are left for that hypothetical Ben Stiller, under duress, who's trying to tell the truth?

Angry Drunks

2007-04-10T17:57:00.000-05:00

We all love a cheap beer, especially in New York. But what if low prices lead to more violence-related injuries? A new study from Applied Economics suggests this is indeed the case.

Using five years of data from 58 hospital emergency departments in England and Wales, researchers from Cardiff University's Violence and Society Research Group found that the higher the price of beer, the lower the rate of violence-related injuries.

If you ever get drunk with Irish guys, these results probably aren't too surprising. Still, the question of why alcohol spurs violence in some but not others is an interesting one. Mind Hacks suggests three theories of why alcohol and violence are linked:

because of the drug's effects on the brain [what effects, exactly, they don't explain. nor why these neuronal interactions would differ between individuals...]
because people use alcohol as an excuse for violent behavior
because people who use alcohol might be more likely to be violent, perhaps due to personality factors like sensation-seeking, impulsivity or risk-taking.

Anyway, alcohol's not the only culprit. The study found several others factors that independently correlated with increased hospital visits, including poverty, unemployment, major sporting events, and the summer months. (Which reminds me--Who's ready for summer at the beer garden?!)

And I don't know the man in this photo. It came up, quite appropriately, from my Google Image search for "angry drunk."

(Hat tip, Mind Hacks)

Easter Funnies

2007-04-08T19:03:00.000-05:00

(PostSecret is my new obsession. Shhhh)

Call for Nerd Cartoonists!

2007-04-03T06:46:00.000-05:00

Attention all doodlers! The Union of Concerned Scientists is now accepting entries for its second annual Science Idol: The Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest. The grand prize includes $500 and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. to tour the UCS offices and meet with Tom Toles, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post.

Here's the catch: You gotta make the distortion, manipulation, and suppression of science in the federal government, well, funny. An ambitious task, for sure, but the UCS does offer a couple of tips for creating that winning entry:

This year, we are especially interested in cartoons that focus on the recent actions the White House has taken to centralize decision-making authority...We'd also like cartoons that examine possible solutions to this wide-spread problem, including steps the next president might take to restore scientific integrity to federal policy making.

They also suggests steering clear of a few hot-button topics, including the morality of stem cells or cloning, the teaching of evolution (sorry PZ!), and ethical lapses of individual scientists. At right, one of last year's 12 finalists, drawn by Xeth Feinberg of New York, NY.

Make sure to enter before the May 22 deadline!

Despite the date, this isn't a joke.

2007-04-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

Salmon that have fled from the confines of the fish farm--beware! Forensically minded Norwegians are on your tails.

From the Institute of Marine Research (IMR):

A fish farm in western Norway is currently under police investigation after being identified by IMR as the source of a salmon escape. This is the first example of DNA methods being used to trace farmed escaped salmon to source of origin...

The Directorate took samples from all fish farms in the area and delivered them to IMR in Bergen. Samples from the escapees were also collected and analysed.

Results indicated that most of the recaptured escapees originated from a specific cage, and that it was highly unlikely that the escapees came from any other fish farm.

Needless to say, this technology is a monumental step forward in the quest to catch all of the world's marine fugitives. I'll sleep soundly tonight.

What's uniquely human? Religious indoctrination.

2007-03-29T14:49:00.000-05:00

My last Netflix treasure was Jesus Camp, a documentary about American evangelical children and their—sorry, gotta say it—deranged parents. To the uninitiated East Coaster, perhaps, the film seems far-fetched. But trust me, every bit is true. Even in my 9+ years of Midwest-Catholic-school education, which was considerably more progressive and reality-based than that of these home-schooled Bible-thumpers, one idea was repeatedly drilled into me: humans are different than all other species; we have souls; we’re “special.”

Of course humans have behaviors that are different from other species. Just as birds have behaviors that are different from lizards. Thanks to natural selection, every species has evolved, and continues to evolve, to survive in its own environmental niche.

The problem is when these differences between humans and other animals are presented in a species-ist fashion: that is, when they’re used as "evidence" of human superiority. Take these bulleted “facts” I found—from a quick Google search—at the website of The Good News Magazine, which is similar to what was touted on the Jesus Camp documentary (emphasis mine):

Consider some of the ways mankind differs from the animal kingdom:

Self-consciousness and intelligence. The human mind gives us capacity for reasoned thought. Instinct isn't the driving force that determines our behavior. This ability leads us to search for meaning in our individual lives as well as meaning in human life as a whole.

The capacity for empathy and sharing another's suffering.

The ability to think and plan in time. It's an amazing aspect of the human mind to think in terms of past, present and future. We have aspirations to achieve; we set goals and organize ourselves relative to time. When was the last time you saw a gorilla or chimp open his calendar and make an appointment?

The capacity to conceive of our own death.

The ability to create. Human beings are unlike other creatures in their concepts and development of art, music and literature. Beavers through instinct build the same types of dams generation after generation. There isn't a raging river on the globe that mankind cannot dam and use to create electricity.

The ability to create languages. Human beings comprehend connections between large numbers of words, including the ability to learn languages, even so-called animal languages.

The ability to create economic systems. Humans have the desire to work and be productive, to barter, exchange and set up economic systems.

The capacity for scientific thought. This includes experimentation and development of theories.

The ability to perform mathematics and construct computers.

The desire to find meaning in sex beyond procreation.

The ability to consciously change our environment, personality, character, habits and even physical appearance.

The ability to experience emotions such as happiness, joy, peace and, conversely, depression and despair.

The ability to conceive of morality. Because human beings can conceive of a choice between inherently right and inherently wrong behavior, we have a capacity for a relationship with God.

Most of this is bullshit. Anybody who’s seen the videos of Kanzi at the Great Ape Trust knows that humans don't have a monopoly on language. And even if you only scan the surface of the literature on bonobo sex behavior, you’ll see that those horny 'lil buggers find plenty of fun in sexual activities that don't necessarily lead to making babies. (Readers of Sperm Wars, meanwhile, will wonder if humans find “meaning” in sex beyond procreation.) And every dog or cat owner would take offense to the statement that their Rover or Claw doesn't have “the ability to experience emotions such as happiness, joy, peace and, conversely, depression and despair.”

I won’t argue that other animals have designed computers, or created economic systems—because they don’t need to. Humans, unlike dolphins or brown bats, don't use sonar communication. And humans, unlike most butterflies, can't see the intricate patterns of ultraviolet light on flower petals. By the Good News logic, doesn't this make us the inferior species?

The more I learn about evolution, the less I believe in human specialness. So I love any new study that shows that anatomical details, cultures, or behaviors that theologians, philosophers, anthropologists, or even biologists have labeled as uniquely “human” aren’t so unique after all.

It’s my pleasure to point out two such studies released in the last week:

The first, done by biological anthropologist Antonio Moura of the University of Cambridge, shows that primates can learn skills from each other just like humans do. While doing field research in Brazil, Moura watched Capuchin monkeys bang stones as a signalling device to ward off potential predators. The stone-banging was originally directed at Moura, but as the monkeys got used to his presence they stopped. Later, Moura saw both adult and young monkeys banging the stones without any signs of a predator, which he says suggests that the elders were teaching the skill to the younger animals. Moura also released captive monkeys into the area, and they, too, learned how to stone-bang from the others. Most interesting to me is that scientists have found evidence of similar stone-based technologies in the archaeological record of the earliest humans. Moral of the story: Monkeys are like us.

The second, presented at the 2007 conference of the International Association of Dental Research, deals with cranial anatomy…Decades ago, the famous archaeologist Richard Leakey wrote that man’s earliest ancestor had a vertical profile and a relatively large brain. But that idea was overturned recently, when NYU paleoanthropologist Timothy Bromage used a computer model to reconstruct the skull of this direct ancestor, 1.9 million year old Homo rudolfensis. Bromage found that rodolfensis had a protruding jaw and a brain less than half the size of a modern human. Moral of the story: Homos were like monkeys.

There is one cultural practice that I hope, for the sake of other species, is uniquely human: religiosity.

PostSecret

2007-03-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

Seems I was the last person on earth to discover PostSecret--"an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

The secrets range from the silly to the tragic. I'm not sure under which category this one fits:

Stories from the N Train

2007-03-25T22:32:00.000-05:00

It’s Saturday, late afternoon, and I’m riding the N train from the last stop in Astoria into Manhattan. Four stops in, all seats now taken, a small man, early 30s, boards the train. He’s an angry-faced punk: black hooded sweatshirt, piercings, silver wallet chains hanging from the belt loops of black jean cutoffs.

The punk’s left leg, from the knee to the black high-top sneaker, is made of a shiny metal prosthesis. His right leg is covered in a fresh white cast. He’s using crutches and winces with each step. He addresses the sedate group, flatly.

“This is the most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. I lost my left leg. And this week, I broke my right leg. I don’t have any money. I need Ace bandages, pain medication, and food. When I get off the train, I need to take a taxi to my house because I don’t think I’ll make it if I walk. I’m asking you, begging you, to give me money.”

He stops, leans both crutches against a center pole. He removes his prosthesis, showing the crowd his stump—covered in a bloody, torn Ace bandage. He reattaches the prosthesis, and begins a belabored lap around the train to collect his charity. But nobody gives.

One by one, each of the three or four dozen train riders—male, female, old, young, well dressed, poorly dressed, Mexican, Chinese, Wasp, Greek—diverts their eyes as the man waves his cup expectantly across their laps. Finally, defeated, he takes a seat at the end of the car.

“This ain’t a fun life,” he says, shaking his head disapprovingly. “I can assure you.” The guilt washes over me, and as I try to catch the eyes of my complicit neighbors, I feel theirs, too.

By the time we reach Lexington and 59^th Street, the train is packed, and that uncomfortable silence has been replaced by the rustling of newspapers and giggling of a few freshly Frappaccinoed teenagers. The doors close, the train lurches forward, and a petite, cheery-faced woman begins to sing.

She has a beautiful, resounding voice. She’s singing an aria; sounds Italian to me. She’s making her way, slowly, through the crowd, holding her trendy newsboy cap upside-down to receive contributions.

She nods politely to the passengers as, one by one, the vast majority give her $1, $5, even $10 bills.

She gets off two stops later, still singing. I look around for the punk, but he's already gone.

Extreme Landscapes

2007-03-23T16:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't been updating in awhile...my week has been a bit crazy. But thought I'd drop this amazing photo of Fort Bourtange, located in the Dutch province of Groningen. The fortifications were originally built in the 15th century, during the Eighty Years War. Neato, huh?

hat tip, BLDGBLOG

Ten Things You May Not Know About Carrots.

2007-03-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

1. The carrot is the second most popular vegetable in the world (after the potato, duh).

2. The carrot is the most popular vegetable in England (probably thanks to carrot pudding, a popular Welsh dish).

3. The carrot is a member of the parsley family.

4. The longest carrot ever grown, in 1996, was 16 feet 10.5 inches.

5. Sliced carrots may help physicists unlock the secrets of the universe.

6. Holtville, California, claims to be the "Carrot Capital of the World."

7. Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, did not like carrots.

8. The heaviest carrot ever grown, by mechanical designer John V.R. Evans in 1998, was 18.985 pounds.

9. In the late 19th Century, men in Teheran at carrots stewed in sugar to increase the quality and quantity of their sperm.

10. Carrots, unlike most other vegetables, are more nutritious cooked than uncooked. That's because cooking breaks down cellulose-heavy cell walls, freeing up nutrients within.

(Photo: USDA Agricultural Research Service)
(Hat tip: GrrlScientist)

Lard, that's funny.

2007-03-18T18:21:00.000-05:00

(Hat tip: Shelley)

In Honor of St. Pattie's Day...

2007-03-17T08:18:00.000-05:00

In our newly minted Best Picture Oscar, The Departed, Matt Damon's character, Colin, woos over his love interest, the psychoanalyst Madolyn, by quoting something Freud said about the Irish:

Colin: "Of course I want to see you again. What Freud said about the Irish is we're the only people impervious to psychoanalysis."

But as Dr. Charles points out, despite what you'll find on a Google search or the Boston Globe, Freud didn't actually ever say that! In a clever act of investigative journalism, Dr. Charles actually wrote to the director of research at the Freud Museum, in London, and asked him about the legitimacy of the quote's attribution. His response (which is also stated on the FAQ section of the museum's website):

"There is no evidence Freud said [the quote]. The only documentation seems to be Anthony Burgess, in his introduction to a book of Irish short stories: 'One of [Freud's] followers split up human psychology into two categories - Irish and non-Irish.'"

Impervious to psychoanalysis or not, here's wishing a happy St. Patrick's Day to all you crazy Irish!

Piss Off

2007-03-16T06:47:00.000-05:00

We all get a rise, now and again, out of seeing somebody pissed off. Like when your boss scowls after spilling coffee all over his shirt. Or when the girl who used to make fun of your frizzy hair in seventh grade flunks out of college. But most of the time, a friend, boss, or fellow subway rider's angry face is not something I want to see.

However, a new psychology study from the University of Michigan finds that people with high levels of testosterone like seeing angry faces. For these people, an angry facial expression "on a non-conscious level, can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," says Oliver Schultheiss, co-author of the study. Schultheiss says it might be why some people like teasing others so much.

In his experiment, subjects were asked to complete a "learning task"--pressing a sequence of keyboard buttons--after a computer screen flashed either an angry or neutral face. While most of the subjects did not show a learning difference between the two paradigms, the subjects with the highest testosterone levels learned the keyboard sequence better after looking at the angry face.

Well, the high-testosterones may have learned the task better, you say, but does that mean they actually preferred looking at the angry faces? Yes, says lead author of the study, Michelle Wirth: "Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat."

Assuming their results are valid, I wonder why these two opposite responses to social cues may have evolved. Why would it be evolutionarily advantageous for humans with lots o' testosterone to like pissing people off? Maybe it led to more fights, more outlets for their aggression...but how did it lead to them producing more offspring?

Praise for Facebook

2007-03-12T16:19:00.000-05:00

I love Facebook. You love Facebook (admit it, punks). Even this crabby, 50-year-old writer at Slate loves it. Her article quotes a new study by media professors at Michigan State:

They convinced me that it is the greatest breakthrough for improving social interactions since the invention of deodorant. As they point out, when students move from high school to college, it allows them to keep constant tabs on former classmates instead of naturally drifting apart. Also, before Facebook, when you met someone who might have potential as a friend or lover, you had to make yourself vulnerable seeing if the interest was returned. You were forced to do embarrassing things like make conversation, followed by trying to get a phone number or e-mail address. But now all that's necessary is the most cursory, name-exchanging encounter. Then you can go back to your room, look up the person's Facebook profile (Is he a Republican? Is she available?) and decide if you want to be "friends."

Mmmmmm...isn't New Media grand?

Robot Rights?

2007-03-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

Isaac Asimov, revered science fiction author of I, Robot and Foundation Series, died almost 15 years ago. Yet now, the South Korean government is looking to his writings to inspire a new Robot Ethics Charter: rules to keep humans from misusing robots.

Government representatives say the charter will be issued in April, spurred by the country's flurry of recent and soon-to-be robot releases: one carries a machine gun and patrols the border with North Korea; another does chores for the elderly; still another prototype, the creepily named "EveR-2 Muse," is a talking model of a female human that also makes elaborate facial expressions.

South Korean robots, apparently, will be given slave-status rights, according to three rules proposed decades ago by Asimov:

1. A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm

2. A robot must obey orders given by a human unless these conflict with the first law

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as this does not conflict with the first or second law

"Imagine if some people treat androids as if the machines were their wives," Park Hye-Young of the ministry's code of ethics team told New Scientist. "Others may get addicted to interacting with them just as many internet users get hooked on the cyberworld."

Ok...that thought alone is frightening. But more puzzling: the three rules outlined above wouldn't preclude this scenario. That is, people could treat robots "as their wives" or "get addicted to interacting with them" while still adhering to these proposed rules...right? Am I missing something?

For cool robot work done here in the U.S., check out the borgs chosen for the Carnegie Mellon Robot Hall of Fame.

Politically Incorrect: Adjectives?

2007-03-08T08:03:00.000-05:00

There's a post over at Language Log that made me chuckle. It starts with an incredible anecdote--I almost doubt its authenticity--from one of their readers, Lydia:

I was in the Children's Museum in Baltimore when I overheard this conversation between a mother and a young son, concerning a bizarre "fun house" installation, which had sloping ceilings, "wrong" furniture, odd colors, and all sorts of other things meant to delight children with its absurdity:

SON: I want to go in that silly house again!

MOTHER: Don't you remember? We do NOT use ADJECTIVES!

SON: Sorry, mommy!

If I'd been able to scrape my chin off the floor in time, I would have asked, "You don't let you child learn colors?"

What she meant, of course, which wasn't any less ludicrous, was that her child shouldn't "judge" anything because "judging" is bad, and adjectives imply some level of judgment.

What exactly did the woman think her son would gain from visiting the museum? Perhaps she just wanted him to be seen there. Or to absorb all information exactly as presented to him, without any kind of thoughtful processing. As LL points out, if the mother had allowed her precious boy to use adjectives, he might grow up "to be one of those people who are always making academic judgments or expert evaluations of things. The kid might grow up to be an art dealer or a business ethics specialist or a literature professor or a high court justice...The child might grow up to have an interesting job."

Hmm, I'm now trying to think of a job where one doesn't have to make value judgments... I got nothin. (And actually, isn't scolding her son for using adjectives a kind of value judgment in itself?)

But here's my big question: if this politically correct mother didn't want her son to judge anything, then why single out adjectives? To be absolutely nonjudgmental, you'd have to get rid of all qualifiers, including adverbs (is the mother truly asinine, or only temporarily?) and prepositional phrases (No, she's just out of her mind).

Do You Speak Michigander?

2007-03-08T07:10:00.000-05:00

Some of my friends tease me for my Michigan accent. Others say I sound like I'm from Connecticut. If you're looking for an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, check out this speech accent archive, sponsored by a linguistics professor at George Mason University. The site allows you to listen to hundreds of people--born in cities all over the world--reading the same passage in English. You can sort by geographic region (and click on, say, Detroit, Michigan), or by the speaker's native language (and click on, say, French10: male, Bordeaux, France).

My favorite?
54-year-old woman from Kiev, Ukraine

(hat tip: Dave and Greta)
(NPR report)

Blog Carnival: Mendel's Garden

2007-03-05T16:40:00.000-05:00

Check out Matt's excellent carnival, Mendel's Garden, in which he graciously includes my recent post on evolution, as well as other clever diddies about moths, DNA in criminal cases, social Darwinism, and the science of sex. At right, Gregor Mendel.

A Ph-atty (get it?) Pin Up from SCQ

2007-03-05T15:33:00.000-05:00

(Hat tip: SCQ)

Depressing Thought of the Week. Bah

2007-03-03T12:37:00.000-05:00

When it comes to scientific literacy, Americans aren't nearly as evolved as they may think. In fact, only about 40 percent of American adults accept the basic idea of evolution, a figure much lower than any European country.

source: Mr. Science Policy Statistics Jon Miller (Hat tip: Christopher)

"Online Disinhibition"

2007-03-03T09:12:00.000-05:00

One of the best parts about communicating via machines—whether by email, or instant messenger, or Google chat, or text message—is the lack of inhibition. I’ve known this since 10th grade, when I used to stay up late into the weeknight talking, on AIM, to my crushes from math class. The next day, in class and face to face, those same screennames transformed into real, scary boys, and we would barely exchange a few words.

About a week ago, the NYT ran a fun piece about this phenomena, which in the psychological literature is referred to as “online disinhibition.” The article mentions a paper published in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior (yes, that is a real journal, and even peer-reviewed) that lists five factors that lead to online disinhibition:

-the anonymity of a Web pseudonym;

-invisibility to others [I don’t understand how this is a different factor than the previous one…];

-the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback;

-the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and

-the lack of any online authority figure.

Thankfully, to dovetail this pop psychology, the article goes on to give a bit of neuroscience:

In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well…Socially artful responses emerge largely in the neural chatter between the orbitofrontal cortex and emotional centers like the amygdala that generate impulsivity. But the cortex needs social information — a change in tone of voice, say — to know how to select and channel our impulses. And in e-mail there are no channels for voice, facial expression or other cues from the person who will receive what we say.

Consequently, as we all know, words are often sent hastily in cyberspace. Words that you didn’t necessarily mean to send. Or words that were taken in an unintended tone. Happily for us, many bold NYT readers submitted their own stories of emails that were sent and later regretted. Here are a few snippets…

I sent an email to my daughter’s boyfriend telling him: “You suck”. He was playing the yo-yo game with her and my mother hen instincts drove me to do something I regret to this day! Even though they are no longer together…I still feel badly. — Posted by RJK

I once sent an email to my congressman and told him he was doing a good job. I wish I had never done that. — Posted by Ralph

I had a roommate, one of several at the time, who, delusional, believed he was “in charge” of our shared house and everything that went on in it. This drove me absolutely mental — the situation was so creepily inappropriate. The guy was sick. Anyway, the morning after a particularly objectionable in-person encounter with him, I woke up early, still seething, and typed up a long, detailed e-mail in which I told him off in technicolor. I was furious and took great satisfaction in hitting “Send”. Hoo, brother. He got me back in the cheapest way. He forwarded my e-mail around to our other roommates for “their insights”, and of course without anyone else’s saying anything he came off wounded and innocent and I came off like a monster. — Posted by Sparks

I was emailing back and forth with a “friend” about our upcoming date, and decided to raise the ante by describing the lovely red eyelet lace bra I would be wearing underneath my dark blue suit….his name and the name of my CEO are similar, and when I pressed send, I realized my smart little name feature had sent it to the CEO.

Fortunately for me, the CEO is a wonderful man with a great sense of humour….and he blushes easily, I have discovered since that day.

Oh - and the red lingerie - it worked! — Posted by Marie

Saturday: Lunar Eclipse!

2007-03-02T11:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, for 1 hour and 14 minutes around sunset on the East Coast of the U.S., the Earth--which, from the Moon, will look like a big, black disc--will block all sunlight from reaching the Moon.

Around this black disc, a red glow will appear where the Sun was before, and this glow will turn the Moon's surface a warm red.

If NASA's current plan of sending astronauts back to the Moon actually transpires, then those astronauts will experience lunar eclipses typically once or twice a year.

But how can YOU see it best from Earth? Steinn suggests:

To see it in the US, hope for clear skies, and find high ground with unobstructed view to the east and look for the moon rising right at sunset.

Ali G on Science...

2007-02-28T17:13:00.001-05:00

PETA Porn

2007-02-26T20:15:00.000-05:00

Feeling salacious? Feast your eyes on PETA's new ad campaign.

The text, in case you can't make it out under those mounting stick figures:

"Your parents do it. They are probably doing it right now. But you don't want to know that. Just like you don't want to know what happens to chicks and chickens on factory farms. You don't want to know that behavioral scientists have discovered that the cognitive abilities of a chicken rival that of cats, dogs, and even young humans. But, whatever, as long as it tastes good, right?"

The text of the ad resonates with me: indeed, if I really thought frequently about how animals are slaughtered, then I wouldn't eat meat. But since I like the taste of meat, I'd just rather not think about those unpleasantries. The problem with the campaign, for PETA, is that this ad doesn't make me think about it more; it doesn't linger. If they're going to take the "guilt trip" approach, then it seems like they should showcase some photo that elicits feelings of guilt: a bloody corpse of a cow, or some other scene out of Fast Food Nation.

(hat tip, Shelley)

Monkey Hugs

2007-02-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

When one human meets another for the first time, we gesture: the Americans shake hands, the Japanese bow, the French kiss. New field research in Mexico finds that when groups of spider monkeys want to avoid gang violence, they hug. Aww.

The monkeys, Ateles geoffroyi, live in large forest groups, but split into much smaller gangs when searching for food. When searching, the gangs will run into each other a lot, and sometimes these encounters turn violent. Other times, though, individuals from different groups will embrace.

In the new study, anthropologist Filippo Aureli of Liverpool John Moores University reports that the violent or aggressive encounters were more likely to happen when the monkeys didn’t hug first.

Interestingly, the monkeys don’t embrace members of their own groups, which makes Aureli think that, as he told Nature News, "The embrace could be a way of testing the bond between monkeys, as it exposes vulnerable parts of the body to attack.”

But wait! Wait! We don’t even need to go to Mexico to see this behavior in action...

Evolution (shhhh! that's durrrty)

2007-02-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

"Evolution" has become a dirty word in many places in America: Kansas (tho we had some good news there last week) and Ohio public school science classrooms, the White House, Fox News studios, my grandparents' Thanksgiving table...and that's all quite disheartening. But at least, I thought, evolution can plead sanctuary in the domain of real science--on college campuses, talks at scientific conferences, and papers published in scientific journals.

Now, apparently, even this latter asylum is under seige. According to a report released last week in PLoS Biology, when medical journals publish studies about things like antibiotic resistance, they avoid using the "E-word." Instead, antimicrobial resistance is (euphemistically, I suppose) said to “emerge,” “arise,” or “spread” rather than “evolve.”

The authors of the PLoS report searched scientific journals published since 2000 for any papers that discussed antibiotic resistance. They then compared 15 randomly chosen articles from evolutionary journals (such as Evolution, Genetics, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B) with 15 randomly chosen articles from medical journals (such as The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy).

The results, in their words:

The results of our survey showed a huge disparity in word use between the evolutionary biology and biomedical research literature In research reports in journals with primarily evolutionary or genetic content, the word “evolution” was used 65.8% of the time to describe evolutionary processes (range 10%–94%, mode 50%–60%, from a total of 632 phrases referring to evolution). However, in research reports in the biomedical literature, the word “evolution” was used only 2.7% of the time (range 0%–75%, mode 0%–10%, from a total of 292 phrases referring to evolution), a highly significant difference (chi-square, p <0.001).

What does it matter, you ask, what terms the scientists use, as long as they understand the process? To find out, the authors did yet another literature search with the E-word--this time in the popular press. They searched for articles about antibiotic resistance in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, and the BBC. Then they checked to see if a correlation existed between the number of times the word “evolution” was used in a popular article and the number of times it was used in the original scientific paper that the news report was based upon. And guess what? There was a HIGH correlation (graph at left). As the authors put it:

This clearly shows that the public is more likely to be exposed to the idea of evolution and its real-world consequences if the word “evolution” is also being used in the technical literature.

So bottom line, the E-word is likely to get even dirtier if scientists (or doctors, anyway) skirt around its meaning even within a scientific article. Here's a scarier question: Why does the disparity exist between biology and medical journals? Are doctors actually less likely to "believe" in evolution?! Yikes.

Stunning

2007-02-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Usually I'd say squid is best viewed after it's been cut into small chunks, fried, and dipped in marinara. But this video gives a new perspective: For the first time, Japanese scientists have filmed Taningia danae, a large deep-sea squid, as it attacks its prey.

As you can see, as Taningia swoops in on its prey (the long fish dangling in the middle), its tentacles give off blinding flashes of light to stun and disorient the target, creating a window of opportunity for the squid to mount its attack. Clever calamari!

(Hat Tip, Craig.)

Piggy PR

2007-02-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

The Chinese New Year is Thursday, and it’s the Year of the Pig. Though I love bacon, I’ve never been a big fan of the live porkers. They’re smart, sure, but they ain’t much to look at and spend their days rolling around in the mud.

But according to a bizarro press release that landed in my inbox this morning, swine expert Bruce Lawhorn from the veterinary school at Texas A&M (Texas is the biggest ‘show pig’ state in the country) has apparently taken on the weighty task of piggy PR. “There are a lot of misconceptions about pigs, and it’s one animal people don’t really seem to understand,” Lawhorn says.

The press release continues by listing all kinds of facts to make us love pigs. My favorites:

Intelligence. Pigs are highly intelligent animals and are ranked No.4 in the smart department, behind chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. “They are considered the smartest of the ‘barnyard’ animals and can be easily trained,” Lawhorn says.

Cleanliness. “People think pigs are filthy, but that’s not really true,” he adds. “Pigs can’t sweat because they have few sweat glands, so when they roll around in the mud, they are trying to stay cool. But in most months, they are clean animals.”

Tails. Not all pigs have curly tails – some have straight tails.

Hearts. Pig valves have been used in human heart operations for years and there are more than 40 drugs made from pigs, among them insulin.

And then, toward the end, to really drive the piggy-cuteness point home, Lawhorn notes:

“Pigs have four toes on each hoof but only walk on two of those toes, often appearing as if they are tip-toeing. Also, pigs can easily get sunburned and have sensitive skin.”

(mmm crispy bacon. oink oink)

MJ to brighten your day

2007-02-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

Be patient through the first 30 seconds. It's worth it.

Man, my wedding party better be that cool.

MoodJamz

2007-02-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

oooo my inner geek is loving the Google Gadget Awards.

The picture here is from My MoodJam--a website created by techies at Carnegie Mellon where users can record their moods with colors and words--which Google deemed the "Gadget most likely to get you a date."

After you register for an account, MoodJam lets you post your moods as often as you like, and then compare your moods with those of other users.

The head developer of MoodJam, computer scientist Ian Li, says he envisioned the gadget as a "visual diary" for self-reflection. But it's also turning out to be (yet another) tool of social networking: more than 2,000 people now share their MoodJam mood choices with family and friends.

To Google: I still don't really understand how using it could get you a date...

....reminds me of one of those Jungian personality tests.

I <3 Dogs

2007-02-06T08:08:00.000-05:00

The 2007 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is going on this week at Madison Square Garden. (Judging is next Monday and Tuesday, by the way, and tickets are $40, which I might actually pay if someone would go with me...)

In honor of the event, I took an online quiz to determine which breed of dog I'm most like. The test was fun, though I'm not so thrilled with my result: a poodle. Boooo. I would rather be an Akita or St. Bernard or Sheltie. Or a Pug! Anyway, here's their complete analysis (apparently I'm cold and intimidating):

Virginia, you're a Poodle!

No bones about it, you're a go-ahead-and-spoil-me Poodle. Intelligent and discerning, why should you settle for anything but the best? No good reason comes to mind. You appreciate the finer things in life, from the trendiest clothes to the best restaurants. Maintaining your health and appearance is a must — you owe it to yourself to look and feel tip-top. The result? An impeccable fashion sense, perfect grooming, and the latest must-have "toys" and accessories. Unfortunately, that can be a little intimidating to people who don't know you. They might think you're a bit cold or distant. But your close friends know better. Your nearest and dearest can see beyond the glitz and glamour to the smart, considerate person within. Woof!

(Hat tip: Abbie and Bernie)

For more on dogs, check out the NYT Magazine cover story this week about trendy hybrids (with adorrrrrable photos!)

A "Good" Investment

2007-02-02T12:14:00.000-05:00

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” –Henry David Thoreau

The question is, an investment in what?

Read Montague, a.k.a. The Hottest Man in Neuroscience, is perhaps best known for his research in decision-making. A few years ago, in what became his most celebrated experiments, he scanned people’s brains while they were looking at Coke and Pepsi advertisements and basically found a neurological basis of the former’s powerful branding. Now in this month’s Nature Neuroscience, Montague, my favorite neuroscientist, writes a delicious commentary tackling my favorite subject: the biological (and specifically, neurological) basis of human altruism.

Within the altruism debate—Is it really for the good of the group? Or is it ultimately just a behavioral ploy where the individual expects a reward, eventually?—I’ve always fallen in the latter, cynical camp. Still, until I read Montague’s piece, I had never actually thought about this idea in purely economic terms… he writes:

“Fairness is easy to understand as a kind of economic computation that all socially interacting nervous systems must carry out. Individuals who depend on one another must share if the group is to be valuable to them.”

Humph. I really have nothing more to say about that quote. It’s one of those ideas that I keep reading over and over without being able to fully process.

By the way, the research article on which Montague was commenting doesn’t really answer any of these fundamental questions about the origin and continued presence of altruism in human society. But its results were still cool. Basically, when humans were asked to watch a computer simulation in which money was raised for charity, a brain region lit up that had been previously linked to the evaluating other people’s motives. And since in order to be altruistic you have to be able to distinguish between yourself and someone else, the authors suggest this brain area is also involved in detecting agency in others.

(This “detecting agency” thing has been proposed by various idiots—oops—as something that makes us “uniquely human.” So I can’t wait until they do a similar computer-simulated charity experiment on macaques and find this brain region lighting up in similar ways….)

Molecules, Motion, and...Markets?

2007-01-12T13:55:00.000-05:00

In recent weeks, traveling, editing, and fraternizing with celebs has kept me from updating Sequitur…but a great topic came up the other night when I was out with a cute analyst (and self-described super-geek) who was attempting to teach me basic market theory. Most of it went right over my head, until he dropped a term that I remembered from—of all places—high school chemistry class: Brownian motion.

(Or, if you don’t happen to remember high school chemistry, you might recognize Brownian motion from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where Brownian motion powers a spaceship which is actually just a cup of hot tea.)

In 1827, a Scottish botanist named Robert Brown was looking under a microscope at a previously unstudied species of Australian pollen suspended in water. He noticed with great surprise that tiny particles within the pollen grains were “exhibiting a continuous jittery motion.” At first, he thought this movement might be the essence of life itself. But he later found the same jitterings when looking particles of dust. The phenomena was broadcast throughout the scientific community and, though he never proposed an explanatory theory, ultimately named for Brown. (Incidentally, historians now agree that the crude microscopes Brown was using could not have observed these molecular motions. Lucky break for him!)

It wasn’t until Einstein’s famous papers in 1905 that Brownian motion was fully explained: the random, jerky motions were caused by atoms striking the particles in uneven amounts from different directions. (Here's a cool animation of the process.) And Al being the genius that he was, he figured out mathematical equations (or more accurately, probability distributions) to model these motions. Al’s theory killed two birds with one stone: he not only proved the existence of atoms, but also used the motions to calculate the number of atoms in a particular lump of element and how much each atom weighed.

What’s all that got to do with economic theory?!

It turns out that the mathematical models Einstein came up with to describe the random movements of a particle may also describe fluctuations in stock market prices. And here’s where it stops making sense to me. This website seems to have it explained thoroughly, though, if you’re interested.

What’s more perplexing to me is the notion of one set of underlying rules that governs all aspects of our perceived universe. Though I don’t understand why the Brownian motion probability equations work in market theory, I’ll take Mr. Analyst’s word that they do. But whyyy? Why should a physical process—i.e., atomic motion—be governed by the same dynamic as a market based on human behavior?

Brainlova signing off, from the UK. Cheers!

P.S. I read a fabulous book a couple of years ago that I think touches on similar themes: Chaos by James Gleick.

Virtual Economies

2006-12-26T15:40:00.000-05:00

I’m a technology fan, really. Shotgun gene sequencing, faster computers, cars that parallel park themselves…all sweet. But for whatever reason, reading about “virtual worlds”— computer-simulated environments in which human users interact via cartoon avatars—makes me shiver. One of the most famous virtual sets is World of Warcraft, where thousands of players compete against one another, sometimes for months or years, in a weapon-and-token-driven quest to take over the world. These virtual games have taken on lives of their own; on eBay, for instance, real dollars can now buy these virtual tokens.

A piece in today’s Washington Post profiles Veronica Brown, a real person who makes her living--$60,000 a year!—by designing fashions for a virtual world called Second Life. One of her creations is pictured above.

To me, her job in itself is fascinating/creepy. But the Post’s story one-ups even it: Brown’s work is being copied by a “rogue” software program that copies animated objects. Apparently, even virtual entrepreneurs need virtual patents.

As the article explains:

As virtual worlds proliferate across the Web, software designers and lawyers are straining to define property rights in this emerging digital realm. The debate over these rights extends far beyond the early computer games that pioneered virtual reality into the new frontiers of commerce.

"Courts are trying to figure out how to apply laws from real life, which we've grown accustomed to, to the new world," said Greg Lastowka, a professor at Rutgers School of Law at Camden in New Jersey. "The law is struggling to keep up."

I need to get away from my computer. Right now.

(In the blogosphere: Read what Jake has to say about WoW; or Matthew on the pros and cons of virtual communities. )

Ingenius!

2006-12-26T10:51:00.000-05:00

Amazing nerd website of the week, or maybe the month: Ingenius, a new site from the UK’s National Museums of Science and Industry (NMSI) that “brings together images and viewpoints to create insights into science and culture.” Ok, sounds cheesy, but I promise it’s, well, ingenius. NMSI puts together a huge collection of well researched—and well-written—articles (when’s the last time you read about Thalidomide? or how a science museum builds its collection?); forums to discuss scientific and cultural ideas (“Should the state pay to make ugly people beautiful?” or “Has technology given us a home life filled with opportunities?"); and best of all, 30,000 science-related images. I know I’ll be spending many future procrastinating hours at this site…here are a few of the cool photos I’ve found so far.

"Jedi" Helmet
Used by Ian Young at the Hammersmith Hospital as an experimental device to get the best possible pictures of a child's brain. The helmets are named after and resemble those used for training by apprentice Jedi knights in the 'Star Wars' films; this name was chosen to encourage children to put them on. The coils on the helmet are 'aerials' for picking up MRI signals. MRI builds up pictures from the magnetic behaviour of water molecules inside the body. It is used to diagnose diseases and injuries affecting the brain, nerves, bones, muscles and internal organs, especially the liver.

First Brain Chemicals
Test tubes with original hand-written labels containing the firstchemicals isolated from the human brain, prepared by John Louis William Thudichum (1829-1901) at St Thomas's Hospital, London, between 1865 and 1871. They are: choline platinochloride; lecithin cadmium chloride; phrenosine; kerasine. These test tubes are icons of the earliest history of biochemistry. J L W Thudichum made a significant contribution to neurochemistry and the Biochemical Society awards a Thudichum Medal to those who have made outstanding contributions to neurochemistry and related subjects.

The Taj Mahal of Astronomical Instruments
This is one of a series of models (scale 1:36) made between 1884-6, showing the astronomical instruments of the Jaipur Observatory in India. Built of masonry, the Jaipur instruments were used to accurately measure the position of the Sun, stars, moon and planets. They did not have telescopes but used naked eye sights and massive, but precise construction. Known as Narivalaya ('Double Equinoctial Dial'), it was built and designed under the supervision of Maharajah Jai Singh II (1686-1743). Finding European, Islamic and Hindu astronomical tables inaccurate, Singh decided to make his own observations to improve matters. As ruler of Rajasthan he built several observatories, starting in 1724 with one near Delhi.

All images credit: Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

Bored? Browse the collection for yourself!

Holiday Humor

2006-12-19T20:49:00.000-05:00

Best Christmas Present…Ever.

2006-12-14T11:26:00.000-05:00

I've been window shopping quite a bit lately in this most-fabulous-of-fabulous window-shopping cities. But this year’s hottest gifts—the Gucci black ankle boots, the Pierre Hardy animal print tote, the Tickle Me Extreme (TMX) Elmo, a subscription to Murray’s Cheese-of-the-Month Club—they’re they’re all so stale, so impersonal. I want to give gifts to my nearest and dearest that are perfectly tailored for them. Something that just says, “I know you better than you know yourself. You will never be able to match my good gift-giving ability. I am a better friend than you are.”

And today I’ve finally found that perfect choice: the DNA 11 personal portrait. The description from the company website says it all:

DNA 11 creates personalized and original abstract art from a sample of your DNA or fingerprints. Each piece is as unique as you. Personal. Beautiful. Absolutely one-of-a-kind. Modern masterpieces that are truly the timeless portraits of this millennium.

Basically, after you pick out the color and size of your print, the company will send you a "collection kit" with complete instructions on how to sample your own DNA. (They don't say whether this sample is from a cheek swab, blood, hair...) Then you send your (or your lucky recipient's) DNA back to their labs, where it is electrophoresed in a gel, photographed, and finally printed on canvas.

And the cost? The DNA portraits (like the lovely saffron piece above) start at only $380; “FingerPrints” at $190.

Alas, this king of gifts has a major downside: the process takes about four weeks. So sorry guys, I guess this year you're stuck with cheese.

Ok, this is cute but...

2006-12-05T21:54:00.000-05:00

...there is an error in the logic. Points to anyone who catches it! (hat tip, Steve)

Marie Howe

2006-11-30T09:36:00.000-05:00

...is such a great poet. And I get to see her read tonight! If you're in the city and interested, come to Hunter College (68th and Lex) at 7:30. from What the Living Do:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It's winter again: the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat;s on too high in here, and I can't turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping the bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless. I am living. I remember you.

Pick-up Lines for Nerds

2006-11-28T19:06:00.000-05:00

Anybody who gives me one of these has it made...

Hey baby, that's a nice cleavage furrow, how about we introgress? I promise, no incomplete penetrance.

You're must be like a carbon molecule, 'cause every part of me wants to bond with you.

I'm attracted to you so strongly, scientists will have to develop a fifth fundamental force.

You must know Bernoulli's Principle, 'cause damn, you so fly!

You can put a Trojan on my Hard Drive anytime.

Say, isn't that Schoerdinger's Dress you're wearing? I don't suppose there's a chance that perhaps later on I might get to collapse your waveform?

...and the similar:

I'm like Schroedinger's cat, because every time you look at me, I die.

Wanna recombine our DNA?

I must have a Bunsen burner in my chest, 'cause darlin', my heart's on fire.

I'd like to find the area under your curves.

10001100101000101111010

Dark Chocolate Melts My Heart

2006-11-18T09:08:00.000-05:00

Dark chocolate has got to be the finest food on earth. Unlike its sweeter cousins milk chocolate and white chocolate, dark gets its oh-so-bittersweetness because it’s made from at least 70 percent cocoa powder. And now—thanks to a few chocoholics who couldn’t stand to give up their favorite treat while taking part in a heart study—researchers have found that just a few squares a day of the dark stuff can halve the risk of heart attack.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve read this already, you say. And it’s true: since the 80s, researchers have known that the “flavonoids” in dark chocolate can reduce blood pressure. But previous studies had only used massive amounts of flavonoids—equivalent to gobbling up several pounds of chocolate per day (which actually might not be all that improbable…..)

Anyway, this new study, released Tuesday at the American Heart Association conference in Chicago, studied the effects of smaller, everyday doses of chocolate. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health used 139 people who had been disqualified from a much larger study about the effects of aspirin on blood platelets. The larger study had required its subjects to stick to a strict regimen of exercise and a modified diet that did not include caffeine. But these 139 just couldn’t keep their hands off of one caffeinated treat—chocolate.

Though these people had to be disqualified from the larger aspirin study, the researchers looked at their blood results anyway, and found a big surprise: even a little bit of chocolate reduces the time it takes for blood to clot in narrow arteries. But before you reach for the Hershey’s, there’s of course a but: This beneficial effect comes from chocolate’s cocoa, not its (equally tasty) butter or the sugar. So how much can we have? The researchers recommend about 2 tablespoons a day—but only of the dark stuff. Mmmmm.

They totally pegged me...

2006-11-10T17:54:00.000-05:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

The Day After...

2006-11-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

So midterms were yesterday, and with the Dems taking back the House, Stephen Colbert was predictably upset. As he lamented on last night's Colbert Report:

"It's a brave new world, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research lab run by doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where tax-and-spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars for National Public Radio and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh! And everybody's high!"

"Get Your Heart Racing"

2006-11-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought Harlequin romance novels couldn't get any, well, racier, they're now introducing a new series "set against the backdrop of the thrill-a-minute world of NASCAR."

For your titillation, here's the synopsis of one of the new books, On the Edge (pictured right):

Unknown NASCAR driver Adam Drake has some of the best moves Rebecca Newman has ever seen, both on and off the track.
But she can't afford to feel anything but respect for the new driver she's hired to pilot her race car. With the financial security of her team hanging in the balance and everyone in the series thinking she's nuts, the last thing she needs is lust getting in the way of logic. Too bad Adam has other ideas.

And the publisher's clever tagline for the new series?

"Falling in love can be a blur. Especially at 180 mph."

Knit Your Own Uterus...

2006-10-31T13:51:00.000-05:00

Thank you knitty.com

AIM addiction

2006-10-24T07:08:00.000-05:00

When people turn to drugs, say alcohol or cocaine, they often abuse to get rid of negative feelings, or to forget their stress. They often abuse by themselves, and hide it from their friends and family. A new study says now something else can be added to the list of highly addictive and socially debilitating substances: the internet. (dun dun dunn)

Neuropsychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude, lead author of the study, says about 1 out of 8 Americans use the internet to “self-medicate,” and often hide their use from others.

The study found that 13.7 percent of respondents found it hard to stay away from the internet for several days at a time, 8.7 percent attempted to conceal non-essential internet use from family, friends and employers and 5.9 percent felt their relationships suffered as a result of excessive internet use.

In Australia, they’re taking action to fight this dangerous addiction. NetAlert, a group organized by the Australian government, even offers a free hotline—like those for potential suicides or rape victims—for those looking for help with their internet addictions.

NetAlert calls instant messaging "particularly addictive."

Hi, my name is Ginny, and I’m an internetoholic.

Space Yogurt

2006-10-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

I found out a bit about sending bugs into space when writing my thesis last year. But this tops all: a Japanese daily manufacturer strapped bacteria to a rocket, shot them into cosmic-ray-happy space for 10 days, and then made yogurt (like, to eat) out of the strains that survived. Not only that, but Himawari Dairy says this space yogurt (called Uchu O Tabi Shita Yogurt) has a more full-bodied flavor than yogurts made with terrestrial bugs.

More details at Pink Tentacle.

Making Physics Funny.

2006-09-27T20:21:00.000-05:00

...More hilarious webcomics at xkcd

NYC's Latest Evil: Trans Fats

2006-09-27T07:23:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports today that NYC's board of health has decided to ban trans fats from each and every restaurant in the city--including McDonald's. Trans fats, which are derived from partially hydrogenated oils and are found in just about every kind of junk food from doughnuts to french fries, have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease.

As Lynne D. Richardson, professor of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine told the NYT:

“...human life is much more important than shelf life,” she said. “I would expect to see fewer people showing up in the emergency room with heart attacks if this policy is enacted.”

...eh, maybe. But is that grounds for such an obnoxious "Big Brother" policy? I mean, if we banned alcohol then fewer people show up in the emergency room, too. Or cars, for that matter. What happened to personal choices?

I understand the smoking-in-restaurants ban; when you blow smoke in someone else's food, or your waitress's face, then you're not just hurting yourself. But if you choose to eat trans fats when you know they'll kill you (and please, everyone must know that by now)--then chow down.

I held a jewel in my fingers

2006-09-26T21:03:00.000-05:00

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep.
The day was warm, and winds were prosy;
I said: "'T will keep."

I woke and chid my honest fingers, --
The gem was gone;
And now an amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.
-Emily Dickinson

Run, little Amish girl, run!

2006-09-24T20:32:00.000-05:00

Mark the day, October 18, 2006: Ginny’s going to meet Richard Dawkins! (err, listen to him give a public lecture.) As I’ve said many times on this blog, I love the man and his clever, lucid writing. If you’re in the market for a good read, pick up his new book, The God Delusion, which is now ranked #9 on amazon.com’s bestseller list.

Fair warning: As a large book, it can be a bit awkward trying to hide the cover jacket from nosy (and potentially pious) seat neighbors on the subway…but then again, the book jacket is orange and metallic silver, so the casual observer might just mistake it for Michael Crichton.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes…for the first, I actually laughed out loud.

On the Amish (after explaining why respecting religious “diversity” is a load of crap):

“The rest of us are happy with our cars and computers, our vaccines and antibiotics. But you quaint little people with your bonnets and breeches, your horse buggies*, your archaic dialect and your earth-closet privies, you enrich our lives. Of course you must be allowed to trap your children with you in your seventeenth-century time warp, otherwise something irretrievable would be lost to us: a part of the wonderful diversity of human culture. A small part of me can see something in this. But the larger part is made to feel very queasy indeed.”

(*I had initially planned to write my thesis on the non-electric, and thus “green” agricultural technologies used by the Pennsylvania Amish. However, after spending a few days at the library reading about their faith and seriously deranged customs, I was creeped out enough out to drop the Plain People.)

On religion’s role in the war in Iraq:

“Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against ‘terror’, as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure ‘evil’. But they are not motivated by evil...They are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith.”

Quiz: What City Fits You Best?

2006-09-21T17:01:00.000-05:00

Just took this city quiz...and after my wonderful few days in Chicago, I think it may be right-on...

American Cities That Best Fit You::

70% Chicago

65% New York City

65% Philadelphia

60% Boston

60% Washington, DC

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

Why a Pale Blue Dot?

2006-09-21T16:16:00.000-05:00

I just spent the last few days in a breathtakingly beautiful Chicago for the Pale Blue Dot III astrobiology conference. I met some brilliant astrobiologists and astrobiology graduate students, who manage to stay motivated and enthusiastic despite NASA’s significant cuts in the field. And they taught me SO much—about the Earth’s climate, the clouds of Venus, the rocks of Mars, the machines that can determine a distant planet’s surface chemistry by looking at just a speck of light, even the odds of getting hit by an asteroid.

But of all the tidbits I didn’t know Saturday and do know now, here’s the one I was most embarrassed not to know (and thought my faithful blog readers would most enjoy):

When viewed from space, the Earth looks like—to quote Sagan—a “pale blue dot,” not because of our vast oceans. No, the astrobiologts patiently explained, the oceans are actually very dark. We look blue for the same reason the sky looks blue when standing on earth: because the oxygen and nitrogen molecules that make up our atmosphere absorb short wavelengths—blue!—and not longer wavelengths like red. It actually gets a lot more complicated, of course, with details about cloud cover, but I'm pretty sure that was the jist.

The photo here shows the Earth and its moon as seen from cameras on Mars.

Unbounded Admiration

2006-09-13T22:19:00.000-05:00

I just got my hands on Richard Dawkins’s new book, The God Delusion. As my students from last year can attest, I’m a Dawkins fanatic, and am deeply engrossed in his new tome. Not sure if Dawkins is just less cautious now in his elder years, but this book certainly has a tone more...hostile than the others. Pretty amusing so far, though.

Anyway, I found one of the book’s early passages—a quote from Einstein—quite surprising. Dawkins reminds us of Einstein’s most quoted remarks about the existence of God (like “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"), and then hits us with this rarely-quoted doozie from Al:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God any I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

...So much for “God doesn’t play dice with the universe,” right?

From the Annals of Human Behavior Trivia

2006-09-12T07:54:00.000-05:00

From Nature News:

“Psychologists have long known that unwritten rules govern our social interactions. Some researchers have found that women stand closer together than men when talking, for example. Men are also less likely to maintain eye contact. And both sexes will reduce eye contact if the person they are talking to gets too close.”

Read the full story, about keeping your “personal space” in virtual reality.

Coma, Schmoma

2006-09-08T21:27:00.000-05:00

Creepy news of the week: doctors hooked up brain scanners to a vegetative woman, talked to her, and found out her brain responded exactly as if she were conscious. And this of course immediately reminded me of a season 6 Sopranos episode where Tony comes out of his coma thanks to the sincere pleadings of Meadow….. “Don’t go daddy, we love you. Don’t goooooooo”

Check out all the gory details about the real news on Culture Dish, the fabulous blog of science writer Rebecca Skloot.

Extrasolar Waterworlds

2006-09-07T19:55:00.000-05:00

I started my new internship at Seed on Tuesday, and got my first Seed clip at 5:27 p.m. today. Habitable worlds, according to a paper that will be released in tomorrow's Science, might just be spinning in solar systems we already knew about, and more exciting--they're probably covered in global oceans.

Read my full story here.

UPDATE: a one-sentence review of my article, from Knight Science Journalism Tracker. hehe

Top 100 Wikipedia Pages...

2006-09-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

Since Wikipedia has so quickly become ingrained in our American culture (with recent feature articles about its creation and evolution in Nature, the New Yorker and the Atlantic), one would think that the list of the 100 most popular Wikipedia pages would reflect those topics that are most important to us. Here's a sampling...

#4: List of Big-Bust Models and Performers
#5: JonBenet Ramsey
#6: List of Sex Positions
#11: Irukandji Jellyfish (what the....?)
#14: World Wrestling Entertainment Roster
#98: Criticism of Family Guy

Time, Un-metered

2006-09-02T23:19:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there was a this, then there was a that, and finally, the end. In today’s Western world, this is how most stories are told. Children’s fables, blockbuster action movies, and even pop songs follow a linear, predictable chronology. And the everyday physical surroundings in our flat, paced, rated, labeled, bounded world are equally predictable. City planners arrange streets in rectangular grids; stoplights turn on, off, on, at timed intervals, to tame the flow of traffic; taxis charge by the mile; buildings are labeled with numbers, and jut from their foundations at 90-degree angles.

James Rouvelle, an artist and technology specialist at the Maryland Institute College of Art, says this metered world affects the way we live, manipulates us, in fact, to behave in a predictable way. “We are wired to scan our environment and adapt to whatever we discover,” he explains, “in other words, we train to the medium.” So we navigate those orderly streets, stop and go when we’re supposed to, wear watches on our wrists. “Our time is monochromic,” he says, “everything is ordered and dictated by a watch.”

And for Rouvelle, this metered sense of time is worrisome. “My concern,” he says, “is that we—Western culture—have, over the past few hundred years, chosen to develop along a trajectory of reductionism, trying to understand things by breaking them down into individuated, component parts whose behaviors are often described as relating to other unique components sequentially, and verified metrically – and often visualized.”

The visual description of time, at least in Western classical art, is often a sequential one. In many of the great Piero Della Francesca's pieces (like The Queen of Sheba's Visit to Jerusalem, above), for instance, the progression of the action is achieved by the viewer looking from left to right. First, then, finally—story told.

But many contemporary artists and architects are looking to break free of this metered perception of time. Rouvelle encourages this change, as he believes an un-metered temporal perspective can enhance both our aesthetic and social experiences. “There are complementary experiences, non-linear experiences,” he says, “where time, for example, is not moving in a specific direction, yet change is evident. I believe that these non-sequential experiences are equally real, however, and that if I could contemplate them more fully my experience overall would be significantly different.” And artists, he says, have the means to create less metered descriptions of the world, and thus make the world a better place. “I believe that if we could improve our understanding of our experience through better and more accurate models,” he argues, “we would experience greater empathy with others.”

Here are a few examples of recent art and architecture that flaunt a non-linear expression of time, and in this way, force their audiences to experience time un-metered…

The Site of Reversible Destiny

On the other side of the world, in Japan’s Gifu Prefecture, two New York artists created an external environment completely unlike the ordered grid in the Big Apple: The Site of Reversible Destiny. In October 1995, architect Shusaku Arakawa and his creative partner, poet Madeline Gins opened this “experience park” of lushly vegetated mounds, inclined planes and maze-like interiors to offer visitors, as the website states, “opportunities to rethink their physical and spiritual orientation to the world.”

If you look at a map of the park, the names of the featured sites sound like some kind of metaphysical Disneyland: the Gate of Non-Dying, the Exactitude Ridge, the Zone of the Clearest Confusion, the Kinesthetic Pass, and even the Destiny House. Then there’s the Critical Resemblance House, which has a labyrinth of hallways with furniture arranged on the floor, under the floor, and on the ceiling. Outside the buildings, scattered throughout the green outdoor landscape, are 24 species of medicinal herbs “that give it a gradually changing complexion from season to season.”

The park also—like Disney’s rollercoasters—disturbs balance; a warning on their homepage, written in red text, reads: “Because the Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro Park has many steep slopes, we advise that you wear rubber-heeled shoes.” Indeed, since the park opened in 1995, Rouvelle says it has had to set aside funding specifically for medical bills of the dozens of visitors who, just from walking around the disorienting landscape, have fractured or broken bones.

Clearly then, the Site of Reversible Destiny creates an endlessness that we don’t normally experience. Psychologist and art critic Rudolf Arnheim argues that this endlessness, especially when experienced outdoors, grants art and architecture “a high aesthetic value.”

Rouvelle would agree. He says the Site of Reversible Destiny—without flat surfaces, street grids, or 90-degree angles—“forces us to come to terms with physical angles that are becoming less and less common” in Western city life; in other words, it’s exactly the kind of art that can help us break free of a metered sense of time.

Expérience de la Durée, Biennale de Lyon 2005

“Experiencing Duration” was the theme of the 2005 Lyon Biennale, a contemporary art show with venues in Glasgow, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan and Vilnius. The show’s curators, Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans, wrote they hoped the hundreds of paintings, film, video, light, and sound installations would “eschew the current temptation of a return to the traditional categories of painting and sculpture and video. We wanted to stress the fact that art is an experience that engages the spectator.”

Echoing the words of James Rouvelle, Bourriaud and Sans explained on the exhibition’s website why time is such a provocative theme to explore in art: “Addressing time was a way for us to draw up an inventory of the 1990s, when art began to function as a sort of editing bay on which artists could reconstruct everyday reality.” These artists, the curators explained, “tweaked the tempo” of their art—displaying videos and sounds that had been paused, looped, or synchronized in unexpected ways. “Time is more a building material than a mere medium,” Bourriaud and Sans argued. More than a static oil painting or stone monument, they wrote, “art is first and foremost an event.”

RIPLTRANE

Both the Site of Reversible Destiny and the exhibits at the Lyon Biennial use art to manipulate the viewer’s experience of time. But other forms of contemporary art—like interactive sound projects—are themselves manipulated by time. One such dynamic project, designed by Rouvelle and Berlin-based artists Innes Yates and Judith Bieseler, is called Research, Instructions, Programs, and Logic for Trans-Robotic Adaptive Networked Environments, or RIPLTRANE. Launched in March 2004 and still going today, RIPLTRANE allows participants in both New York and Berlin to step or dance on pressure sensors in a tiled floor. Their stepping patterns go through a computer, which then creates accompanying sound and lighting effects and relays the patterns, through the internet, back and forth between both cities. In this way, the art is manipulated by the participants themselves (and the time lag between the transatlantic transmissions). As Rouvelle writes about the project on his website, RIPLTRANE is an experiment of layering a physical environment “with information and events occurring locally and at distant geographic and temporal locations…Our intention is to start something that will take on a life of its own.”

Remove Your Watches!

Changing our experience of time—that is, un-metering it—is not an easy task. It may be worth the psychological (and in the case of the Site of Reversible Destiny, physical) effort for an artist who wants to create and appreciate art in new ways. “Artists can definitely contribute to the creation of better models [of time],” Rouvelle says. “The content of our models and their presence in our common spaces is an aspect of our collective development. We must, I think, take the role of objects and their affect seriously as we build our world.”

But even those uninterested in art, Rouvelle continues, should make the attempt. Experiencing un-metered time, he says, will help our interpersonal relationships, help us to better empathize with others. He argues that, “the general public can benefit by having aspects of their lives made more available for their own consideration via aesthetic creations that explore the complementary senses and experiences of non-linearity.”

To Rouvelle, all of human development, in fact, is about the way we choose to perceive and influence time. “If we want to develop along a different trajectory we must take action and do so. We have a responsibility to do so.”

UPDATE: Pluto is NOT a planet!!

2006-08-24T09:43:00.000-05:00

So the big dogs met today, and surprise—Pluto is NOT a planet after all! Aw, poor thing. (Read the full story from the Washington Post)

''Yes, Virginia, Pluto is a planet.''

2006-08-18T09:49:00.000-05:00

Next week in Prague, a group of astronomers are planning to tell the International Astronomical Union--the body that decides, officially, what is or is not a planet--that there are not nine planets, but 12.
(Read the full story.) Here's what a few Johns Hopkins astronomers had to say about the whole affair (p.s.--dontcha just love nerdspeak?)

Richard Conn Henry, physics and astronomy professor:
"I think the notion that Pluto is a planet is absurd. When it was initially discovered,it was thought to be vastly more massive than it turned out to be. Its orbit is radically different from that of all the other planets. Down with Pluto, is what I say!"

Karl Glazebrook, physics and astronomy professor:
"...if I were in charge, I would insist on a diameter of greater than 1,000 kilometers to define a 'planet' in order to remove Ceres from the list. But that would be an arbitrary cut to preserve the order of the main nine and to save the hassle of rewriting textbooks...Definitions and naming really matter little physically, anyway."

William P. Blair, research professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and chief of observatory operations for NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer Satellite:
"This is really not a burning issue for most astronomers. It really is a 'classification' problem more than an issue of science...From what I can tell, they have tried to come up with a consistent definition: an object roughly spherical under its own gravity, orbiting a star, and not orbiting something else. OK, so far. Then they are apparently willing to immediately bend this relatively simple definition and allow Charon to itself be called a planet, with Pluto and Charon being a 'double planet' system. This goes too far and seems inconsistent to me."

Harold A. Weaver Jr., project scientist at Applied Physics Laboratory:
"...we must not forget that any attempts by us to pigeonhole objects in the universe are bound to have shortcomings. The classification schemes that we invent help us to place diverse objects in context, but we must also recognize that nature often doesn't adhere to our attempts to categorize things...In any case, I doubt that the IAU could come up with a resolution that would please everyone."

Andy Cheng, Applied Physics Laboratory:
"...the new definition of planet does not work for me, because 'hydrostatic equilibrium' is an idealization -- it is approximately correct for planets like Earth but is not exact. There is still no criterion for deciding how far from hydrostatic equilibrium an object can be and still qualify as a planet."

The latest in looking for life on the Red Planet

2006-08-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

It's been three months since I finished my thesis on the hunt for life on Mars. Here's a great lil story I picked up on digg about what's next on the horizon...but I'll betcha those sturdy rovers will still be kickin' around up there when the Lander arrives... "The launch of the Mars Phoenix Lander is just a year away. The spacecraft will be aiming for the martian north pole, and if it lands successfully it will dig in snow and ice in one of the few places on Mars where scientists think life could be preserved." read more | digg story