Social Sciences
gregladen | July 17, 2012We've been talking about marriage (here, here, and here). We've established that marriage has a history, it has variability, and that it is hard to pin down a narrowly defined set of functions for it. However, I also suggested that when we strip away a lot of variants that have special explanations (even if those variants are MOST of the variants of marriage) there is a thing we can call marriage that has a limited and understandable set of functions, or at least, there is a thing we can understand in a very basic evolutionary and social way. And we'll get to that. But first, I want to take…
oracknows | July 4, 2012It's rather odd that I'll be writing two posts in a row having to do with a chiropractor, given that chiropractic is at best an occasional topic on this blog. Certainly, I don't hesitate to take on chiropractic when the mood strikes me or, more importantly, when I come across some seriously burning stupid coming from a chiropractor, but other topics tend to dominate my blogging. Let's just put it this way. Two posts in a row on a cancer quack or about antivaccinationists would be nothing the least bit unusual here, but two posts in a row about chiropractors is.
As regular readers probably…
gregladen | June 30, 2012Secular Woman is a organization that just formed, and is currently filing for 501(c)(3) status. I just joined it and you should to. Here's the mission statement:
Mission
The mission of Secular Woman is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women.
Vision
Secular Woman envisions a future in which women without supernatural beliefs have the opportunities and resources they need to participate openly and confidently as respected voices of leadership in the secular community and every aspect of American society.
Values
Humanism
We embrace human-centered ethics informed by…
sastyk | June 28, 2012While I recover from a nasty case of food poisoning, I thought in honor of the SCOTUS decision, it would be worth re-running this piece from 2009. For all that this is not the national health care system the US needs, it is, in the end, a small step in the right direction.
A while back, at a talk I gave, a small scale farmer asked me why my family didn’t farm full time. I observed that one of the reasons we don’t is simply that we have young children and we feel that we have a need for benefits. He pointed out that my state, New York, has a program to provide health insurance for the…
drorzel | June 22, 2012In which we review yet another good year of blogging, including the establishment of some ongoing series. And also a useful reality check.
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This great blog re-read project has been useful for a couple of reasons. First, it's reminded me that there have been long stretches of time when I produced a lot of good stuff for the blog. When I initially considered this, I was a little afraid that the whole thing would be depressing, and I wouldn't have anything good to point to. If anything, though, I've had the opposite problem-- cutting things down to a manageable length (assuming these…
tfk | June 21, 2012Last Sunday I was on a panel at the American Society for Microbiology meetings. I'll post a slidecast of the talk in a few days, and get into the topic of the panel in more detail then.
Since I was presenting, I got a free pass to the rest of the conference, which was fascinating. I'm a macrobiologist by training and by avocation; I worked one summer in a fruit fly lab studying Wolbachia infections, and quickly moved on to animals one can see and touch. So I was curious to find out what microbiologists spend their time talking about.
What struck me most was how few of the techniques…
gregladen | June 20, 2012We can't say how long the 'verge' is. Certainly years. But is it years-years or decades-years? Quite possibly sooner than many might have guessed just a few years ago. I like to be cautious about predicting breakthroughs that have not happened yet, but the results reported a few days ago at a major conference seem to have solved or significantly advanced solving some of the key problems in using stem cells to grown eye tissue.
There had been a lot of promising news over the last few years, and one of the most astonishing finds was reported from Japan just a few days ago at the annual…
gregladen | June 10, 2012The term "Dunbar's Number" refers to a particular hypothesis by primatologist Robin Dunbar. It is a very simple idea with rather complex implications, and it is one of those simple ideas that gets more complicated than ideal as we look into it more and more. Eventually, the idea is required by many who contemplate it to do more work than was ever intended, and in this way seems to fail, though it really doesn't. I personally think Dunbar's number is useful if it is properly understood, so I want you to give it a chance, and to help you do that I'd like to use an analogy.
I'm thinking of a…
cmonforton | June 1, 2012by Laredo, golden retriever dog
A weird story appeared on my Facebook page today. It was written by somebody named "AP." The headline read: "Alpha introduces mine search-rescue dog in Va." I like working dogs just as much as the next canine, so I read the article. Says that "Ginny" is a two-year old dutch-shepherd dog who weighs 48 pounds.
Get this, Mr. AP's article says Ginny is:
"...the newest member of coal producer Alpha Natural Resources Inc.'s search-and-rescue team, trained to perform searches in both underground and surface mines. Equipped with an infrared camera and atmospheric…
dr. dolittle | May 31, 2012On a recent visit to The American Physiological Society's website, I found this amazing story on regeneration that I thought you might enjoy:
This summer’s action film, “The Amazing Spider-Man™,” is another match-up between the superhero and his nemesis the Lizard. Moviegoers and comic book fans alike will recall that the villain, AKA Dr. Curt Connors, was a surgeon who, after losing an arm, experimented with cell generation and reptilian DNA and was eventually able to grow back his missing limb. The latest issue of the journal Physiology contains a review article that looks at possible…
jrosenhouse | May 30, 2012A while back P. Z. Myers posted an essay entitled, “You Want Evidence That Religions is Bad for the Species? OPEN YOUR EYES.” Myers was replying to an earlier essay by David Sloan Wilson. Here's an excerpt from Myers:
Whenever I hear that tripe about the beneficial effects of religion on human cultural evolution, it’s useful to note that the world’s dominant faiths all hardcode directly into their core beliefs the idea that women are unclean, inferior, weak, and responsible for the failings of mankind…that even their omnipotent, all-loving god regards women as lesser creatures not fit to…
aardvarchaeology | May 21, 2012Yet another case of that silly and damaging humanities idealism.
Last month the Daily Beast listed archaeology among the thirteen most useless major subjects at US colleges, as measured by employment opportunities and earnings potential. Bradley T. Lepper, curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, objects. He argues that archaeological knowledge is valuable to the long-term sustainability of a civilisation, and so the subject should be more highly valued. Whether true or not, this is beside the point. Daily Beast didn't list subjects that they think should by rights be poorly…
lborkowski | May 17, 2012by Dick Clapp
Judge Louis H. Pollak, who died on May 8, has been revered for his role as a civil rights lawyer, a volunteer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, dean of two law schools, and respected jurist. As my colleague Sheldon Krimsky, PhD of Tufts University observed,
Pollak was one of those practical idealists who understood the role of law for public purpose. In his place we find new libertarian jurists who see the law for private purpose.
In addition to these well-deserved accolades, I wanted to add a personal recollection of him that took place in the course of our work on the Project…
gregladen | May 13, 2012
Image from Reddit posted by user Lunam with the text "What my super religious mother got me for Christmass..."
When a young girl put a picture of herself, holding a book she had just gotten as a present, on the social networking site reddit, she was immediately subjected to intense verbal sexual assault by reddit readers who aptly demonstrated how awful it can be when boys and young men are left to say and do what they want without the social control of anyone knowing who they are. When Skepchick founder Rebecca Watson casually tossed out some relationship advice for clueless young men…
kbonham | May 12, 2012No technology is inherently good or evil, it's the use of that technology that determines its value. A blade can be used in surgery to save a life, or as a weapon to take one. The ballistics that enable missiles to destroy enemies also enables the launch of communication satellites and exploration of other worlds. For quite a while, I've been reading +Jeff Jarvis' commentary on these issues in the realm of the internet. His principal argument is that regulation that aims to block technology in order to keep people safe will also block the innovation and potential benefits of that technology…
sastyk | May 11, 2012I get a lot of books for review, and for the most part, they are wonderful surprises. Because I receive and read so many books, I rarely sit around saying "Hey, where's my review copy of...X?" Generally I've got a giant pile of books that I need to get to anyway, so I'm much more likely to say "Oh, I didn't realize X was out." So let us first note that I was so anxious for my review copy of Sandor Katz's _The Art of Fermentation_ that I actually sent emails to beg for a copy - only to find that UPS had stuffed this book and another in a really weird place and it had been waiting for me…
lborkowski | May 10, 2012
by Kim Krisberg
Norma Flores Lopez knows what it's like to be a young farmworker. She grew up in south Texas, migrating north with her family every year to places like Michigan and Iowa to pick produce. At 8 years old, she was accompanying her parents into the fields, and by age 12 she was officially on the books as a farm employee.
She knows first-hand what better safety regulations would mean for children and young people working in agriculture -- the country's most dangerous industry according to the National Safety Council. And only a few weeks ago, better working conditions did seem…
denialism | May 5, 2012In a brilliant parody of the HSUS shelter ads, humane watch has put sad looking lawyers in cages to emphasize that donations to HSUS do not fund shelters.
HSUS is like PETA but with deodorant and suits. Hah! I love it. HSUS is PETA.
It's upsetting that this fake charity has co-opted the reputation of our local humane societies, used ads depicting suffering animals in cages, then taken in millions of dollars from well meaning people to lobby for animal rights causes. Every time I see their ads I get furious. Less than 1% of their take goes to shelters. HSUS is not a humane society at…
gregladen | May 4, 2012Here in Minnesota, and in surrounding states, there is some real tension between Native and Immigrant communities. The poorest, most drug-ridden, down trodden and repressed communities here are often Native, and conveniently these communities tend to be (but not always are) located far away from urban areas or other places with a lot of white eyes. Health in Native communities is of major concern to the usual institutions and people that are concerned with such things.
Indians make White people nervous. White people are either worried that the Indian has kooties, or are criminals or…
tfk | April 28, 2012Not to dredge up old fights, but a topic we discussed on the blog back in 2009 has cropped up in a couple of recent essays. The issue is whether there is a form of truth that literature can convey, perhaps even a level of literary truth which cannot be conveyed through other means. The topic came up originally in the context of ways we might interpret religious texts, but it applies more generally.
So, in this week's New York Times book review section, we have an exchange between the editors and reviewer Mohsin Hamid in which Hamid explains:
Iâm a political animal. How the pack hunts,…