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Accidental brain evolution suffers a reversal

Early homind skulls, from A Kansan's Guide to Science (seriously) A couple weeks ago, the Guardian ran an article in which Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore described "how the human got bigger by accident and not through evolution." Though I didn't get to it at the time, I thought that an odd headline, since evolution actually occurs when genetic accidents -- those mutation things -- grant an advantage. Now John Hawks has written a post addressing what he says is a pretty big muckup by Blakemore: Thanks to Jerry Coyne, I encountered an interview in the Guardian with Colin Blakemore…

Cool dips: long distance running; memory and plagiarism; scenery; and swine flu action

Both Mind Hacks and Jonah Lehrer took interesting note -- Jonah's the longer, and a pretty nice summary itself -- of the fascinating NY Times piece on ultramarathoner Diane Van Deren, who began running long distances after brain surgery removed much of her right temporal lobe. This gave her a great advantage: the lack of memory of the run behind her, and thus of any dread of the punishment still to come. Downside: significant memory problems, and she can't read a map. Speaking of memory ... Newsweek has a good piece on unconscious plagiarism -- that is, how genuine lapses in "source memory…

Who Me? Dept: Me & Eating Well v Gourmet & Saveur for James Beard Award

Now this makes my day: I've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award. Beard, foodees know, was a great eminence in fooddom, and won my heart years ago by stressing in one of his cookbooks that (to paraphrase) the quantity of food in a meal can be as important to its enjoyment as the food's quality -- especially if the food is good. His food awards are greatly coveted among chefs, food writers, and others who care about food. So I'm thrilled that, as Eating Well editor Lisa Gosselin kindly informed me today,, my Eating Well story "The Wild Salmon Debate: A Fresh Look at…

Nerd Gift Ideas Part 1: For Any Nerd

As the holidays draw ever nearer, I've been trying desperately to put together a Christmas list for my family and friends. After a lot of internet-searching and idea-hunting, I've stumbled upon some great nerdy gifts, and I figured I might as well share them with you all. After all, if you read this blog you're either a science-nerd or a nerd-lover, so these gift ideas just might come in handy. Here's part one of nerdy gift ideas for the holidays, with gifts for any nerd you love A simple gift for any science nerd is a piece of the lab they can use anywhere, like this classic Beaker Mug. It's…

How Bad Is Acidification Anyhow?

If you've been reading the news, people are reacting strongly to a new study which reported ocean acidification due to CO2 output is occurring at a faster rate than expected. But what is the deal with acidification, anyway? The worst part of a change in ocean pH is that it shifts the balance of carbonate ions. As the pH of the oceans drops, it is harder for animals to fix calcium carbonate. Therefore, with oceans acidifying at an alarming rate, the threat to calcified organisms is also rising faster than previously thought - and 2005 estimates were bad enough. Luckily, some calcifying…

Hey, nobody's perfect- not even Biologists.

Just because we're uber-smart doesn't mean we're foolproof. Sadly, even scientists make mistakes. The most recent case of unfortunate events comes to us from Mallorca, where the captive breeding of the Mallorcan Midwife Toad, on the verge of extinction, has infected them with a fungus that might wipe them out. According to the paper recently published in Current Biology, the Mallorcan Midwife Toad was on the brink of extinction until a captive breeding program sought to boost the amphibian's population. Then, just as the toad populations were growing, the captive-bred toads got infected with…

Devices that $@% with your head

Growing up I used to read Omni magazine and would always see all sorts of devices that supposedly could induce lucid dreams or tapes that had subliminal messages recorded along with Bach to create special brain states where you'd be particularly receptive to messages like - "you will be psychic... you can lift objects with your mind...you will be rich and successful... you will quit smoking crack...etc etc etc" Let me tell you - I'm not psychic or rich! Although...I never did take up smoking crack so maybe the tapes did work! I eventually forgot about these tapes and devices for many years…

What do Senators, Cell Phones and Passengers all have in common?

Answer...They're all involved in car accidents. Our first story is brought to you by California State Senator Carole Migden who recently voted for a bill banning cell phone use while driving. I'm sure you can guess what happened... yeah exactly... she was chatting on her cell phone and ran into a cute little Honda, sending the driver to the hospital with minor injuries. Ooops. Our final story shows that annoying friend you have might just cause you an accident if they are blabbing away in your front seat while you're driving. This is of course in addition to making you crash when they call…

Dandruff shampoo to calm seizures

Clearly, washing your hair isn't going to have any effect since I highly doubt that your Head and Shoulders is going to sink through your scalp, through bone, through your meninges and then go straight to the source of your seizures. But hey! If you can get your local neurosurgeon to open up your scalp, do some intracranial recordings to find the source of your seizures and then massage the shampoo onto your neurons you might have some luck. Don't forget to wash, rinse and repeat! You should probably condition those newly cleaned cells while you're in there as well. Here's the details:…

Theme of the Day One - Relying on Technology to ill effect.

Sometimes when I'm futzing around the web looking for interesting pieces of news a theme just seems to pop out at me. Today it happens to be the over reliance and distractions of technology. The first story is an old one... The elderly German motorist set out sans a clue of what route(s) he'd be taking to reach his destination, but obviously felt that his trusty navigation unit knew far more about the highways and byways than he did. After blatantly ignoring a prominent "closed for construction" sign, he threw common sense to the wind and put that 4MATIC system to good use by wheeling over…

Why Are We Feeding Good Fish to Pigs?

Each year, we grind up one-third of all ocean-caught fish to feed industrially raised pigs, chickens, and farmed fish. That's 30 million tonnes of fish turned into fishmeal and oil. What a waste. So tomorrow at the Science Bloggers conference in North Carolina, Shifting Baselines will launch and distribute the first 'Eat Like a Pig' seafood wallet cards. Now in production: The 'Eat Like a Pig' seafood wallet card (front/back). While I have written extensively about why consumers alone cannot save our fish, I hope this card can raise awareness (to the inexpensive tune of $20 for 1000 cards…

Gladwell on spotting great teachers

Malcolm Gladwell on how to spot great teachers (and why we should want to): Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year%u2019s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half%u2019s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year%u2019s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a %u201Cbad%u201D school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad…

NPR: Radio Lab: Into the Brain of a Liar

There's been a lot of attention the last couple years to the possibility of brain-based lie detector tests -- most of it premature. That coverage, I see now, has overlooked (as did I!) a 2005 study that showed compulsive liars are wired differently -- in an unexpected way -- than the rest of us. NPR's Radio Lab covered it this morning. You can get both the text and the audio at NPR: Radio Lab: Into the Brain of a Liar. Here's the opening: Morning Edition, March 6, 2008 · We all lie -- once a day or so, according to most studies. But usually we tell little lies, like "your new haircut…

Best Books I Read in 2007

The best things I read this year, in no particular order: "Falling Man: A Novel" (Don DeLillo) "Tree of Smoke: A Novel" (Denis Johnson) This is almost cheating, as I'm still in the midst of reading it. But it'd have to dive a long way in the last few pages to not stay on the list. I'll be brave and leave it in. [Update: I fond this disappointing in the end; the last quarter did not sustain the apparent brilliance of the first half. "The Goshawk (New York Review Books Classics)" (T. H. White). Before he wrote the incomparable <em>The Once and Future King</em>, T.H. White…

A Hush About Bird Flu; Noise About Science Journalism

Amid my guilt at not writing more on avian flu myself, I note well this typically excellent post from Effect Measure, pondering: Why so little word lately of bird flu? Its issues intersect, in a very rough way, with those raised about science journalism by Janet Stemwedel, James Hrynyshyn and Jonah Lehrer. I won't go here into why lousy science journalism happens. But the bird flu issue illustrates another problem in science (and other) journalism, which is the lack of coverage sometimes given to important stories. The publishing industry, particularly the newsier part, generally values…

Cutting to the chase on climate change

My interest in global warming grows apace, both because it stands to impose some very grim effects and because it makes an interesting (if dismaying) study in culture's attitude toward science (see my post on "Climate change as a teset of empiricism and secular democracy") and how vested interests can affect same. Florida at present (left) and what it will look like if seas rise 20 feet. from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth The puzzle at this point is why so many people, including intelligent people with decent scientific literacy, still doubt humans are causing the earth to warm…

Dinosaur 13

Last night, I watched an excellent documentary, Dinosaur 13, so I'm going to recommend it to you all -- it's available on Amazon streaming video and Netlix. It's the story of the fossil T. rex, Sue, and it's enthralling and depressing. The fun part is the beginning, when some commercial fossil hunters discover tyrannosaur bones eroding out of a hillside in South Dakota. I had some mixed feelings -- those bones belong in a museum, not serving for profit! -- but it's clear that this team from the Black Hills Institute were pros, and were also skillful preparators. It's a difficult balance,…

Livin' on the edge

There's a great story in the Rake about the Dakotas—that place just a few miles west of where I'm sitting. This is an odd part of the world, where population is actually contracting and drifting away to leave our rural communities standing rather lonely and empty. Quite obviously, North Dakota has a problem. Even as some of its cities grow and become more cosmopolitan and diverse, namely Fargo and Grand Forks, which huddle against the border of Minnesota, the rest of the state seems to be returning to nature. It's a conundrum across the country, this decline in rural vitality, but the matter…

What does Earth look like without water?

While we often think of features like the Grand Canyon as impressive, majestic landscapes, we forget that only 1/3 of this planet of ours is above sea level. The rest is underwater. And while many of us may know what coral reefs or near-shore habiatats look like, we rarely get to see what the seabed looks like on a grander scale. National Geographic, as it turns out, decided that the hidden landscape of the ocean floor needed to be revealed. Thanks to cutting edge technology and amazing CGI animation, this Sunday, Aug 9th at 9 PM EST, National Geographic Channel is airing its newest…

This Just In: Dragons Slay Man

Two Komodo Dragons have been blamed for killing a man at Loh Sriaya, in eastern Indonesia's Komodo National Park. Police and witnesses say that 31 yr old fisherman Muhamad Anwar was attacked by the duet of immense lizards waiting below minutes after he fell out of a tree on Monday. He was trespassing on forbidden park lands in search of fruit when he was surrounded and eventually killed. He bled profusely from bites to his hands, legs, neck and body. He died soon after transport to a clinic. While there are only a few thousand left in the wild, dragon attacks have increased in recent years,…

Hey Look - I can be funnier!

I wouldn't say that I'm the funniest person I know - unless, of course, people laughing at you counts as being 'funny'. I'm one of those people who occasionally has good moments, but really, I'm funniest when I don't intend to be. Like that one time I was making fun of a friend's over-exposed cleavage by shouting in a WalMart "Look out folks! She's gonna blow!" only to turn around and see the look of pure horror on the extremely pregnant woman behind me who presumed I was talking about her. I find that I often say things that sound bad out of context.* Well maybe I can learn to be properly…

The Friday Fermentable addendum

Just clearing out the MSM that finds its way into Chez Pharmboy and was totally taken by a brief gadget alert on wine stuff written by Rebecca Hall in the Enterprise section of the 2 October issue of Newsweek: Toying With Wine by Rebecca Hall If you can't sate your inner oenophile with stylish wine-glasses, there are plenty of cool new accessories on the market. The Wine Sceptre (who wouldn't want to own a sceptre?) is a metal wand you freeze to keep a prechilled wine bottle at optimal temperature. It's inserted like a stirrer and hollowed out for pouring, and comes with a stopper--in gold,…

I am not worthy

Four years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love. The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen. The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life. In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the necessary biological machinations required to mix haploid DNA…

Cal Thomas: Health Care Reform = Hitler

In his latest column, Cal Thomas takes another swing at explaining the perils of health care. Last week, you might remember, he claimed that health care proponents want to kill off the old because we're evolutionists. This week, we're Hitler: Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after the systems in Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how those health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to what's available in the…

Atheists are, apparently by their mere existence, offensive to many.

Earlier this week, the Des Moines bus system abruptly removed ads from their vehicles that had been purchased by an atheist group. The bus system had received numerous calls and complaints, and apparently some people actually refused to ride busses that had the ad. The Governor of Iowa, when asked, said that he "was disturbed personally" by the ads: Iowa Governor Chet Culver has commented on the controversy: "I was disturbed personally...by the advertisement, I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent. But, we'll see how it unfolds," Culver avoided…

The stimulus and bipartisanship.

After reading a lot of different smart people try to explain why President Obama's attempts to reach some sort of bipartisan deal on the stimulus bill is a bad idea, I started to think about writing a post explaining why this really does make sense. Fortunately for me, Al Giordano was writing while I was thinking, which saves me a lot of trouble: Rather, he's setting them up under the glare of the mass media to be seen as the unreasonable party in contrast to what everybody watching him on TV is going to view as reasonable and respectful. In sum, he's using them as props, and turning their…

Summary Judgment in California Creationist Case: Behe Shoots, Scores, We Get Point (Part 3 of 3)

Given that today really is April 1st, let me start by saying that although Behe is a fool, this post isn't a joke. Everything you're about to read is real. This is the third part of my post on the summary judgment decision in the California Creationist Case. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. It would seem that Mike Behe has, once again, managed to shoot an own goal in the courtroom. The last time that he was an expert witness, during the Dover case, the judge quoted extensively from Behe's testimony, but not in a way that he particularly liked. Ultimately, it seems that he scored more…

Changing the Culture of Science in Japan

What happens when you speak up about gender inequity in Japan's science culture? Why, you can expect to be accused of "tarnishing the reputation" of the university, that's what. That's what happened to biophysicist Mitiko Go when she spoke out about an instance of egregious sex discrimination. One Woman Is Not Enough, an editorial just published in Nature, recounts the tale. It's no wonder Go had to be essentially at retirement before she felt she could risk speaking up. Instead of retiring, however, she's now president of a university and a member of the Council for Science and…

Results Almost Certainly Apply To Females As Well!

The New York Times reports today on a study published today in two papers in Science (Science 22 June 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5832, p. 1717) and Intelligence: "Research Finds Firstborns Gain The Higher I.Q." The study could settle more than half a century of scientific debate! Frank J. Sulloway, psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says "I consider these two papers the most important publications to come out in this field in 70 years; it's a dream come true...there was some room for doubt about this effect before, but that room has now been eliminated" !!!!! Get this: The…

Why I Love Mr. T

It's Friday, and I've had two whole days this week without migraine, plus one day with a headache that only lasted an hour. So far today (9:16 a.m. as I write) I do not have a headache and the sun is shining, which, as Zuskateers know, constitutes the makings of a perfect day for Zuska. In the spirit of Scienceblogs Fridays, I offer you this trifle. Tuesday morning I woke up without a headache and the sun was shining. So out I went to enjoy a delightful brunch at one of my favorite Chestnut Hill spots, Roller's Expresso. While reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, I was reminded of a visit…

A Newsflash for Congress: Caving in didn't actually work.

The Democratic Congressional "leadership" apparently thought that they could get the defense bill passed and signed into law if they caved in and gave President Bush everything he asked for. As it turns out, they were wrong. The smirking sub-simian and his Merry Band of Machiavellian Men just announced that they have decided to veto the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008. For those of you who don't remember this bill, it's the annual big money package that funds the military. It's one of the bills that the administration threatened to veto if Congress tried to actually…

Have you been wondering about the Ark Park feasibility study?

The Lexington Herald-Leader has posted a copy of the executive summary. Just in case it goes away, here is a pdf of the 18-page executive summary; it's a strangely fact-free document, relying on surveys and opinion polls to make estimates about economic impact. I'm serious: in the section that justifies the claim that it will bring in 1.2 million visitors a year, the sole source of information given is the results of a nationwide survey in which people were asked whether they'd take a family vacation to see Noah's Ark, and 3 in 5 said they would. I am reminded of surveys that evaluate how…

9-11

We can never forget the pain, the terror, the anguish that a few twisted individuals were able to cause in just a few short hours. We must never forget the strength, the hope, and the love that thousands upon thousands of people demonstrated in response over the days, weeks, and months that followed. September 11th, 2001 was a day that was filled with tragedy, and we should remember that. But we should also remember the unbridled human decency that so many thousands of nameless people expressed through words and deeds in response. I will cite but one tiny story, among so many, to begin the…

Gagging Science - the Pentagon chapter.

Revere, at Effect Measure, comments on a story that just appeared in Inside Higher Education. The article detals a completely outrageous attempt at dealing with unfavorable information: What set off the Pentagon was Bilmes' estimate for the current number of injured of 50,500. William Winkenwender Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, called the Los Angeles Times, Bilmes, and David T. Ellwood -- dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government -- to complain that the real figure is less than half that -- just over 22,000. Let's set aside the question of fact involved…

Students and what they learn before college

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with the ongoing series of posts I've been using to get readers and commenters to help me improve my teaching skills. If you're new here, welcome, and if you scroll back over the last month or so you'll see most of those posts. Last week, I was somewhat upset that 20-25% of my students were unable to correctly answer a quiz question when I had basically given them the answer five minutes before the quiz. This week, I gave another quiz on a different topic. There were, again, some distressing results - but this time it's…

Teaching Angst Part 3 - Sometimes the Students Are To Blame

My two recent posts on teaching seem to have stirred up more discussion than I first expected. Opinions are still mixed between those who favor an approach that relies more heavily on actively teaching material and those who favor pushing the students to learn for themselves. I'm still not certain which approach is better, but with today's quiz results, I have discovered one thing for certain: sometimes lots of students getting a question wrong just means that lots of students weren't paying attention. Prior to giving the students a quiz on genetics, I reviewed some of the key concepts that…

Things that go bump in the night

It would seem that we had a little bit of an earthquake last night. The quake is listed as having a magnitude of 3.7 by the USGS, and was felt on the islands of Oahu and Molokai. My first person account of the experience is below the fold. I didn't notice a damn thing. My daughter did, though, and so did my next door neighbors. My daughter came downstairs right after the quake, and told me that something had just pushed up under her bed. Naturally, being the calm, kind, considerate father that I am, I told her to stop fooling around and get back to bed - and got even firmer about the whole…

Plan B - Why 18?

For those of us who have been wondering why the FDA concluded that Plan B can safely be used by 17-year-olds, but should only be sold to those 18 and over, there is finally an answer: the FDA is afraid that pharmacists and pharmacy cashiers cannot correctly subtract. If you go to the FDA's latest website on Plan B, you will find links to pdf files for two memos, one by Center for Drug Evaluation and Research director Steven Galson, and one written by Acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. The Galson memo is largely silent on the 18-year-old age restriction, saying only: Regarding the…

Darwin's turtle dies

Yahoo news is reporting that Harriet, the world's oldest tortoise, has died aged 176 Harriet was collected by Darwin on the Beagle voyage in 1830, when she was about 2 inches. She found her way to Brisbane, where I currently live, and was allowed to roam the Brisbane botanical gardens, but ignorant and nasty folk would put their cigarettes out on her carapace, which is covered in skin and nerve endings, so she was taken into a zoo and found her way to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, about 100kms north of Brisbane, where she was a favourite attraction. I got to touch her there, whice set off a…

On microbial species

Reposted from the old blog. OK, this is one of a series of posts in which I will play with ideas that might will become a paper. The problem is this: usually we define a species as a group of related organisms that share genes (or a gene pool, which amounts to the same thing). Sometimes we include also ecological considerations (either in the form of natural selection, or in terms of sharing a niche). But many microbial species either do not share genes to reproduce, or they can but do not need to. So, the question is sometimes raised whether microbes (of this kind) form species at all…

The iron rod of religion

Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated, probably by Islamist extremists. While no saint, she clearly stood for democratisation in Pakistan, and all hell is likely to break out there now. Today, I saw The Golden Compass, after reading the book a couple of days ago. It, too, portrayed religious absolutism (and I can well understand that the Catholic Church might object, although it was clearly not the Church of our "parallel" universe being depicted). Again, women were not permitted power, despite the role played by the ironically named Mrs Coulter. The only freedom of thought permitted was in…

What do colourless green ideas do? They sleep, furiously

This little piece by netfriend Richard Harter, who apparently predates coal, serves to demonstrate that philosophers really aren't clever enough at thinking up counterexamples... The sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", was presented by Chomsky, as a great example of a series of words strung together randomly. Not only is it grammatical according to the lexical classification, and non-sense on a semantic level. Or so goes the claim. But is the claim correct? A green idea is, according to well established usage of the word "green" is one that is an idea that is new and untried…

Soft drinks more acidic than battery acid

Parents, don't let your kids drink soft drinks (except root beer): Root beer may be 'safest' soft drink for teeth Exposing teeth to soft drinks, even for a short period of time, causes dental erosion—and prolonged exposure can lead to significant enamel loss. Root beer products, however, are non-carbonated and do not contain the acids that harm teeth, according to a study in the March/April 2007 issue of General Dentistry, the AGD's clinical, peer-reviewed journal. That might be something to consider during the next visit to the grocery store. Consumers often consider soft drinks to be…

Nice change of pace: a question for you about science and about children's books.

So, today is the last day of the Children's book workshop, and it's been a nice change of pace for sure. The instructor, Susan Juby, was excellent and the content generally helpful and did I say, nice change of pace? I also picked up a few great quotes about children in general, and in children's lit specifically. Two of my favourites have been: "We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions the further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always…

Science book #4: About just looking gorgeous - "The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin" by Peter Sis

Peter Sis is probably best known for his Madlenka series, which I believe, have even been made into a few Sesame Street shorts. But in my view, his prowess in producing these intricate and pretty pictures are well used in two of his books that focus specifically on the life and times of two prominent scientists. One of these, The Tree of Life is an illustrated children's biography of Charles Darwin and is just such a beautiful thing to behold that some colleagues of mine appreciate it more as a keepsake wth coffee table status (usually not a rank that is easy to come by for scientific tomes…

Meta-analysis finds that common COPD drug increases deaths

That's not good: A new analysis that compares two common inhalers for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) finds that one reduces respiratory-related hospitalizations and respiratory deaths, but the other -- which is prescribed in the majority of cases -- increases respiratory deaths. The Cornell and Stanford universities' statistical analysis of 22 trials with 15,276 participants found that common bronchodilators known as anticholinergics (generically named tiotropium and ipratropium) reduced severe respiratory events by 33 percent and respiratory-related…

Software as an assistant to physicians

Neurodudes has an excellent article on software intended to reduce medical errors. Just from my limited personal experience, I would say that such software would be useful if people understand that it is limited in scope. There are three general reasons I think that software is useful in medicine: Standardization. There are many diseases for which there are clear standards of care. For example, chest pain has a very straightforward heuristic that we follow in diagnosing a patient, and for each possible diagnosis there is a clear set of treatments. In areas for which there is not a lot…

Thoughts on the "Shuttle gap"

The two space shuttle disasters were due to political and military interference in the design of the shuttle. On the one hand, the various senators wanted parts of the shuttle manufactured in places like, of all states, Utah, necessitating the solid fuel segment design that failed catastrophically with Challenger, and put the fuel tank for the shuttle engines above the shuttle itself, causing the Columbia disaster. On the other the USAF wanted the Shuttle to be big enough to deploy spy satellites. The end result was a hybrid design that was unsafe and inefficient. So of course NASA and the…

Religion and imagination

In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents not visible or present, he claims. The paper is also a good historical review of theories of religion, and makes the point that "religion" is not well defined as a topic of investigation of explanation. Like many others, Bloch infers that religion is a byproduct of things that were evolutionarily adaptive, such as cognitive skills. His…

Blogger Challenge: Donate and win!

Seed has upped the ante in the Donors Choose Blogger's challenge. Now if you donate to any of the challenges, you can have the chance to win any of an astonishing array of prizes! They're not only matching your gift up to a total of $15,000, they're also personally rewarding you for contributing. Here are some of the prizes you can win: 1 fresh, new iPod nano 21 "Seed Hearts Threadless" tee shirts (design here) 21 ScienceBlogs mugs 21 subscriptions to Seed magazine 9 copies of "The Best American Science Writing 2007" So what are you waiting for? While last week's two graphs post did cause…