Social Sciences
jrosenhouse | September 25, 2011Huffington Post has a short article up about the phenomenon of Jews who don't believe in God. Turns out there are a lot of us:
Atheism is entrenched in American Judaism. In researching their book American Grace, authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell found that half of all American Jews doubt God's existence. In other groups, that number is between 10 and 15 percent.
Those figures have some in the Jewish community alarmed. A recent issue of Moment, a magazine of Jewish thought, asked influential Jews if Judaism can survive without God. The answers were split.
Half? Goodness! That's a…
jrosenhouse | September 23, 2011I am not now, nor have I ever been, married. Most of the time I like being single, but I do have my moments of weakness. They're infrequent and don't usually last long, but every once in a while, if I squint a bit and tilt my head just so, I can just see the appeal of marriage. On the other hand, I figure most married people have moments when they wish they were single, so it probably all evens out in the end.
I also do not have children, but it simply never happens that I wish that I did. I am at an age (38) where a majority of my friends have young children, but whenever I see them…
pharyngula | September 21, 2011This is a beautiful illustration of the flaw in applying human sexual conventions to non-human organisms. researchers studying deep-sea squid found that all of the squid, male and female alike, were speckled with sperm packets — the males just flick these things out at any passing squid, on the chance that it's a female. It's silly to call this bisexuality or same-sex mating, though — it's pretty darned common in invertebrates. Many species of sea urchins, for instance, indulge in synchronized ejaculatory orgies: on one or a few days a year, all of the individuals in a colony simultaneously…
pharyngula | September 21, 2011I'm not going to post this email I received, simply because it is insanely long, 15,000 words of random caps and peculiar color changes. Just to give you a taste, this is the subject line:
Subject: SCIENCE, AND THEOLOGY {{ Cogent Word for the 100's of new ears in Science and theology we contacted/called last week around earth }} CHIMERISM, deaths/Wolbachias/satans attack upon Adams Society, ULtra Microbic Life Force/death Force --- How does the Harlot called death ride Adams children and cause death and aging??? Listing below --- {{ A Brief Word on obamas Buffet taxes, and Word that all most…
jrosenhouse | September 12, 2011New York mayor Michael Bloomberg decided not to include any religious clerics among the speakers at the 9/11 memorial service this weekend. Unsurprisingly, this caused some controversy:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has come under attack by some religious and political leaders for not including clergy members as speakers at Sunday's official ceremony at ground zero on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
Richard D. Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in an interview that the planned ceremony…
catdynamics | September 9, 2011A House Divided Can Not Stand...
As the American Astronomical Society tries to rally support for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which was deleted from the budget, with extreme prejudice, by the House Appropriations Committee, other players chime in, and they are not quite as enthusiastic.
Spaceref published a copy of a letter from David Alexander of Rice University, Chair of the AAS Solar Physics Division.
"...However, the cost of the JWST threatens to swamp us all and the AAS should be careful, as a multi-disciplinary organization, to balance the various concerns of each of its…
drorzel | September 4, 2011
Atlas Mugged: The Ayn Rand Six Step | Common Dreams
"Imagine your landlord coming to you one day and saying, "It's everyone for himself. We're not going to supply heat or water or electricity any longer, and we're not going to conduct repairs."
Of course, you and the rest of the tenants wouldn't stand for such a thing . You'd kick him out if you could and move out if you couldn't.
But suppose, over the years, he cuts the part of the portion of your rent that goes to utilities and repair work. Year after year, he'd stop by and announce his cuts with great fanfare, telling you how much money…
jtoney | August 22, 2011On Friday, Aug. 19, National Public Radio's Melissa Block interviewed Syrian activist Alexander Page (a pseudonym used for protection).
I conducted an interview with Alexander Page on July 31, via email. In this brief discussion, I learned quite a bit about his background and his motivation for continuing protests against a government that is pushing back hard against its own citizens.
Dr. Jeffrey H. Toney: What is your background and education?
Alexander Page: My alias name is Alexander Page. I'm 29 years of age. I've studied journalism and lived in Europe most of my life. The reason I…
oracknows | August 18, 2011I don't know if I should thank Peter Lipson or condemn him.
What am I talking about? Yesterday, Peter sent me a brain-meltingly bad study in so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" that shows me just how bad a study can be and be accepted into what I used to consider a reasonably good journal. I say "used to consider," because the fact that this journal accepted a study this ludicrously bad indicates to me that peer review at the journal is so broken that I now wonder about what else I've read at that journal that I should now discount as being so unreliable as to be not worth…
kcollins | August 5, 2011CALORIE COUNTS AREN'T TELLING THE FULL STORY
By Joe Schwarcz, Freelance
July 30, 2011
There are undoubtedly all sorts of terrorists out there hatching intricate plans aimed at destroying the western world. They needn't bother. All they have to do is wait and westerners will eat themselves into oblivion. The average western diet, with the U.S. leading the pack, is atrocious. People are getting fatter and fatter. Obesity-related ailments such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes take a giant toll both in terms of tax dollars and human misery. Something needs to be done.
The standard answer is…
aardvarchaeology | August 3, 2011Here's a few thoughts stemming from comments on my recent post regarding the Norwegian terror shootings. The discussion got a little confused as people thought I wanted to discuss psychiatry, when I was really only commenting on the judicial concept of criminal responsibility versus insanity.
Why do modern states have systems of judicial punishment? If you look closer at this issue you'll find that there are several independent motivations that sometimes operate against each other.
1. Violence monopoly and collective revenge. Having been wronged, many people want revenge on the perpetrator.…
drorzel | August 2, 2011I was just tagging this for the Links Dump, but I thought it deserved better. Fred Clark, blogdom's best writer on politics and religion, is putting together a book-like thing from his blog, and has posted the introduction to the section on creationism:
The oldest book in our Bible contains a hymn of praise to the Creator that rambles on for chapter after chapter. It's the longest such hymn in the Bible, skipping about through all the earth and all the universe with the wide-eyed, giddy enthusiasm of a kind in a candy shop, marveling at all the wondrous things that God has made.
But this isn'…
sastyk | August 2, 2011Well, the astrophysicist and I finally managed to write something together. More than a year and a half ago when I moved to Scienceblogs I promised that Eric would be my sometime- collaborator. I promise I did not realize was a total lie. You see, the way we've managed over the years to raise four kids, run a farm and work several jobs is that we trade off responsibilities - when I'm working in front of the computer, he's with the kids or working the farm. When he's at work teaching, I'm home doing the same. Yes, we do have evenings together after the kids go to bed, but what we found is…
jtoney | July 30, 2011
Why is a local employee at Doctors Without Borders in Bahrain being targeted?
Doctors without Borders is highly respected as an organization that protects human rights throughout the world. I learned of this incident from the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights:
I am not familiar with this case but am concerned about due process and the presumption of innocence.
The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) expresses its concern regarding the targeting of a local employee and the office of Doctors Without Borders' " Médecins Sans Frontières"
On the 27th of July 2011,Mr.Hassan…
gregladen | July 27, 2011With Julia spending the summer and most of the fall in The Republic of Georgia, I've been thinking about various political and historical aspects of that country, and one of the things that is claimed to be true is that wine was first invented there.
Recently, someone asked me (always ask the archaeologist esoteric stuff like this) where wine was first invented. And, recently, we scored some Concord Grapes, which are native to North America (presumably thanks to some bird a long time ago) as opposed to most grapes, and which provide the roots for most (nearly all?) wine grape stock. And, a…
jtoney | July 26, 2011
In the United States, if you have been convicted of a crime and are later exonerated, you may be faced with fewer benefits than those guilty of a crime after serving a full prison sentence. According to the Innocence Project:
...the exoneree may lack a source of income, a means of transportation, health coverage and a stable home.
HOWEVER:
If Anders Behring Breivik is convicted of the crimes from the massacre at Oslo - the murder of at least 68 innocent lives - he may face a very different fate. By some standards, he may be rewarded with the following conditions:
Given the numerous…
tfk | July 26, 2011A bit over a year ago, we reported on the removal of evolution from a report by the NSF's governing body, the National Science Board. The NSB is presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed, and sets broad policy for the NSF. Every other year, it publishes a report on Science and Engineering Indicators for the nation, and Chapter 7's discussion of public science literacy is what I always look at first. I was surprised to find evolution absent from the 2010 edition, and sleuthing by NCSE and others resulted in a report in Science magazine, that revealed some disturbing attitudes.
Most…
sciencepunk | July 25, 2011Last May I heaved myself out of bed a little before 5am so I could undertake a mammoth 12 hour round trip to that pantheon of industrial decay, Rotherham. What did the home of Jive Bunny and the Chuckle Brothers have to entice me on such a journey? Why, only Science World 2011, Fisher Scientific's annual trade fair. And their keynote speaker for the day, the Baroness. No, not that Baroness. I'm talking about Professor Susan Greenfield, who has made something of a name for herself with her theories about the effects of the internet on the brain. Namely, that the pervasiveness of digital…
oracknows | July 24, 2011I must admit, I'm surprised that it took so long for this to happen.
Remember back in April? Three months ago, uber-quack (in my opinion) Joe Mercola teamed up with the grand dame of the anti-vaccine movement Barbara Loe Fisher of the misnamed National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) to run a "public service announcement" on the CBS JumboTron in Times Square. Here is the ad:
To recap, yes, I know that the ad itself appears relatively innocuous. Certainly that's what Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher argue, because all it says is "Vaccines: Know the Risks" followed by "Vaccination: Your…
drorzel | July 24, 2011
Katie Baker on the New York Times wedding section - Grantland
"This renewed series will attempt, through a rigorous quantitative method detailed below, to determine the following:
Which couple best exemplifies both the unique spirit and impossible standards of everything the New York Times "Weddings/Celebration" section stands for?
Back in the day I used a scoring-system metric originally devised by Alexis Swerdloff but I felt it needed a more modern update. This new and improved NUPTIALS (Names, Universities, Parents, Tropes, Identifiers, Avocations, Locales, and Special Situations)…