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Dawkins on Agnosticism

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:19:53 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

It's said that the only rational stance is agnosticism because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural creator. I find that a weak position. It is true that you can't disprove anything but you can put a probability value on it. There's an infinite number of things that you can't disprove: unicorns, werewolves, and teapots in orbit around Mars. But we don't pay any heed to them unless there is some positive reason to think that they do exist.

Tags: dawkins, religion, evolution, agnosticism, atheism, logic, philosophy

"Dark Knight" Sets Box Office Record

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:42:45 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

Director Christopher Nolan's dark sequel to his 2005 "Batman Begins" sold an estimated $155.3 million worth of tickets since opening late Thursday, according to studio figures released on Sunday. That's the biggest opening for a film in motion picture history, beating out the previous record held by "Spider-Man 3," which grossed $151.1 million during its opening weekend in May 2007.

Batman's latest bout with the Joker also helped spur what has become the biggest overall weekend at the box office, with total weekend ticket sales estimated well over $250 million. That figure handily beats the previous record of $218.4 million, set in July 2006, when Walt Disney Co.'s "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" opened. This weekend's performance was also boosted by the strong opening of "Mamma Mia!" from General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures, which sold an estimated $27.6 million in tickets.

Tags: film, movies, film industry, box office, batman, dark knight

Bisexual Species

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:07:34 GMT

clipped by: seaj11
clipper's remarks: Summary: homosexuality is a natural behavior in the animal kingdom and also occurs in captive situations, suggesting bisexuality is natural for birds, mammals, and other animals...and for humans as well

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

various investigators described homosexual behavior in baboons, garter snakes and gentoo penguins, among other species. Back then, scientists generally considered homosexual acts among animals to be abnormal. In some cases, they “treated” the animals by, say, castrating them or giving them lobotomies.

Such behavior seems to ease social tensions

“The more homosexuality, the more peaceful the species,”

homosexual bonding between female parents can boost the survival of offspring when male-female pairings are not possible. In birds called oystercatchers, intense competition for male mates would leave some females single were it not for polygamous trios.

“People view animals as robots who behave as their genes say, but animals have feelings, and they react to those feelings.” He adds that “as long as they feel the urge [for sex], they’ll go for it.”

“The homosexual behavior preserves sexual function,” Phillips says, enabling an animal to maintain its reproductive fitness and interest in sex

Tags: gay, homosexuality, nature, animals, biology, zoology, sex, sexuality

Anthropomorphizing Animals...Then and Now

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:13:01 GMT

clipped by: seaj11
clipper's remarks: The last quote, by George Page in "Inside the Animal Mind," expresses my view. What do you think?

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

ON SEPT. 5, 1379, A TRIO OF French pigs, agitated by the squealing of a piglet, bowled over their keeper’s son, who died shortly thereafter of the injuries. As E. P. Evans recounts in his 1906 monograph, “The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals,” “the three sows, after due process of law, were condemned to death” along with several other pigs who had “hastened to the scene of the murder and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the assault.” (The accomplices were later pardoned.)

Marketers have a new name for the age-old tendency to view animals as furry versions of ourselves: “humanization,” a trend that is fueling the explosive growth of the pet industry and the rise of modern pet pharma.

“Since we cannot get inside the animal’s mind . . . and since the animal cannot report what’s going on — not in a ‘language’ we can readily understand — all we have left are guesses and speculation fatally tainted by anthropomorphism.”

Tags: animals, pets, medicine, drugs, human, psychology

Pill-Popping Pets

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:01:17 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating separation anxiety, a problem that can occur when dogs are left home alone, the medication is also commonly prescribed off-label for patients with Max’s diagnosis: compulsive disorder. He was the canine version of a person who washes his hands 20 times an hour.

Doggy diet pills may be plainly absurd, but scientists in an expanding field known as behavioral pharmacology say that the combination of new drug therapies and progressive training techniques can solve problems that in the past almost always resulted in euthanasia.

If the strict Cartesian view were true — that animals are essentially flesh-and-blood automatons, lacking anything resembling human emotion, memory and consciousness — then why do animals develop mental illnesses that eerily resemble human ones and that respond to the same medications?

Tags: animals, pets, psychology, drugs

E.O. Wilson's Views on Human — and Ant — Social Evolution

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:49:22 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

It concerns a central feature of evolution, one with considerable bearing on human social behaviors. The issue is the level at which evolution operates. Many evolutionary biologists have been persuaded, by works like “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins, that the gene is the only level at which natural selection acts. Dr. Wilson, changing his mind because of new data about the genetics of ant colonies, now believes that natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group.

It is through multilevel or group-level selection — favoring the survival of one group of organisms over another — that evolution has in Dr. Wilson’s view brought into being the many essential genes that benefit the group at the individual’s expense.

Tags: nature, evolution, society, sociology, sociobiology, biology, human

In Face of Disease, Tasmanian Devils Change Breeding Habits

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:41:18 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

In what seems like a desperate bid to survive, Tasmanian devils are showing precocious sexual behaviour in populations that have been ravaged by a fatal devil facial tumour disease.

Tasmanian devils are dasyurid mammals, a family that is famous for its live-fast-and-die-young breeding strategy, in which animals invest in intense early reproduction at the expense of longevity. One of the best known examples is a tiny shrew-like marsupial called an antechinus - the males grow for 10 months, and then have sex for one month, forgoing food, and starving to death. By the time the females give birth there are no males left.

Devil facial tumour disease was first reported in 1996. By last year it had spread to more than half the animal’s range in Tasmania, leading some experts to predict that the disease could make the animal extinct in the wild within 25 years.

a disease that is spread by the transfer of cancerous cells from one animal to another, in this case when the animals bite.

Tags: animals, nature, zoology, mating, disease

Rise in Gas Prices: Info and Resources

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:24:16 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: thinkprogress.org

The rise in the price of oil in recent years involves four components:

— The effects of supply and demand. Exxon Mobil senior vice president Stephen Simon testified the supply-demand equilibrium is at “somewhere around $50-55 a barrel” — about half the current price.

– The weaker dollar. Since 2001, “the dollar has lost 45% of its value” against the euro. In 2003 one gallon of gas in the U.S. cost $1.50 and 1.50 Euro. Today’s $3.60 gallon of gas costs only 2.25 Euro.

– Geopolitical risk. Since 2003, the United States has been committed to a three-trillion-dollar war in Iraq, the heart of the turbulent oil-producing world. Furthermore, the burning of oil is continuing to increase global warming, “one of the greatest national security challenges ever faced.”

– Speculation. “Investors have looked to commodities
not only as a hedge against inflation but as a hedge against the tumbling greenback.

Tags: gas, oil, economy, u.s.

Impact of Gas Prices on Low-Income Families and Independent Truckers

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:18:28 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.americanprogressaction.org

Americans get a reminder of President Bush’s failed energy policies every time they gas up their cars. The average gallon of regular gas cost only $1.44 when Bush took office on January 20, 2001, and diesel cost just $1.53 per gallon. Yet today, gasoline and diesel fuel prices are at all-time highs, with gas prices at $3.60 per gallon and diesel prices at $4.17 per gallon.

After spending nearly 8 percent of their income in 2001 on gasoline, the 9 million American households earning less than $10,000 annually are now spending an average of $1,292—or 13 percent. Those 6.6 million households earning $10,000 to $15,000 spend an average of $1,311—or 9 to 13 percent of their income—on gasoline.

What’s more, 9 percent, or 306,000, American truck drivers are self-employed and independent

The average independent truck driver can expect to spend an estimated $110,000 on fuel in the next year alone—up from an estimated $36,400 in 2001.

Tags: gas, oil, economy, small business, america, u.s.

3 Myths About Offshore Drilling

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:10:42 GMT

clipped by: seaj11
clipper's remarks: "Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed "not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita." This myth has been told again and again by the likes ofGov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Mike Huckabee, George Will, and Bill O'Reilly.

There were, in fact, major onshore and offshore spills due to the hurricanes."

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

As the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has explained, "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."

further exploitation of domestic resources will not have a long-term impact either. After 2030, the EIA found, "any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

There are numerous ways to immediately affect prices, from use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to improved oversight of the oil markets.

Conservatives from Rudy Giuliani to Dick Cheney have repeatedly claimed that the United States needs to start drilling for off-shore oil because China is taking "American oil" off the coast of Cuba, just "60 miles off the coast of Florida."

As Cheney was forced to acknowledge, "no Chinese firm is drilling" off Cuba's coast. Talking Points Memo has recorded the large number of conservatives hyping the false story.

Tags: energy, oil, oil drilling, offshore drilling, bush, politics, u.s.

McCain Comes Out Against Gay Adoptions

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:00:49 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.newsvine.com

Only one state, Florida, outlaws adoptions by gays, which have become commonplace in much of the nation.

"I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," McCain replied.

He was not endorsing any federal legislation," a campaign statement said.

An estimated 65,000 children have been adopted by gays and lesbians, according to advocacy groups.

"His implication is that every adopted child should have a mother and father," Pertman added. "That may be the ideal, but if we stick to it, we would have far fewer homes for kids. Single people — gay and straight — represent a significant number of adoptive parents."

Tags: adoption, gay, gay rights, mccain, politics, conservative, republican

Creationism in Europe

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:33:00 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: newhumanist.org.uk

On 4 October 2007 the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly passed Resolution 1580, which

urged member states to “defend and promote scientific knowledge” and “firmly oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution.”

In Russia a 16-year-old girl launched a court case against the Ministry of Education, backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, challenging the teaching of just one “theory” of biology in school textbooks as a breach of her human rights. In the UK in 2006 the Intelligent Design propagandists Truth in Science sent out a “teaching pack” to every secondary school and sixth-form college in the country.

in October 2006 deputy minister of education Miroslaw Orzechowski

“The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth.”

evolution is the “feeble idea of an aged non-believer” and put this error down to the fact that Darwin was “a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him”

Tags: creationism, intelligent design, evolution, europe, science, education

When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:20:56 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

how much kinship humans feel for which animals, and just which “human rights” each human deserves

We like to think of these as absolutes: that there are distinct lines between humans and animals, and that certain “human” rights are unalienable. But we’re kidding ourselves.

Tags: animals, human, rights, spain

Dopamine shown to induce both desire and dread

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:30:38 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.kurzweilai.net

Dopamine shown to induce both desire and dread

KurzweilAI.net, July 9, 2008

University of Michigan researchers have found that dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with motivation and positive rewards, can also promote negative feeling like fear and dread.

The researchers had previously found that desire and dread functions were anatomically close together in the nucleus accumbens (a tiny section of the brain--one-fifth of an inch long--associated with desire and reward). In their new research, they found that the effect of dopamine depended on where it was concentrated in the nucleus accumbens. Injections to the front of the nucleus accumbens caused rats to eat three times as much food as normal, but injections to the back caused them to display fearful behavior normally shown in response to a predator.

It was previously assumed that fear and desire came from different neurotransmitters, but the new study shows that anatomy alone can determine a single neurotransmitter's role.

Tags: psychology, brain, neurology, drugs, fear, addiction, science

Dimmer Switch for Cancer-Causing Protein

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:23:26 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.kurzweilai.net

Scientists Find Way to Dim Cancer Switch

HealthDay News, July 1, 2008

Stanford University researchers have found a "dimmer switch" that stops a gene from sending protein signals that promote cancer.

When the Myc gene makes too much of the protein Myc, cells lose the ability to kill themselves when they're damaged, and instead keep growing. The researchers found that by turning down the Myc switch, they could shrink tumor cells to normal sizes and restore their ability to die.

Previously, it had been thought that the Myc gene had to be turned off entirely to stop cancer. Since low levels of Myc are needed for normal cell functions, Myc couldn't be a target for cancer treatment. The research now means that Myc and similar cellular signals can be a target for therapy.

Problems with Myc contributed to the cancer-related deaths of as many as 70,000 Americans each year.

Read Original Article>>

Tags: health, medicine, science, cancer, genes