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Altruistic chimpanzees clearly help each other out

Two years ago, a group of Ugandan chimps provided a blow to the idea that humans are the only animals that truly behave selflessly to one another. These chimps showed clear signs of true selflessness, helping both human handlers and other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward. The question of why we help each other, instead of looking out for ourselves, is one of the most compelling in modern biology. Evolutionary and game theory alike predict that selfish behaviour should be the rule with altruism the exception, and animal experiments have largely supported this idea. Nature, 'red in…

Our moral thermostat - why being good can give people license to misbehave

What happens when you remember a good deed, or think of yourself as a stand-up citizen? You might think that your shining self-image would reinforce the value of selflessness and make you more likely to behave morally in the future. But a new study disagrees. Through three psychological experiments, Sonya Sachdeva from Northwestern University found that people who are primed to think well of themselves behave less altruistically than those whose moral identity is threatened. They donate less to charity and they become less likely to make decisions for the good of the environment. Sachdeva…

Violent films and games delay people from helping others

The effect that violent films and games have on our minds, and the implications for their place in society, has been a source of much heated debate. Now, a new study looks set to fan the flames even further. Several studies have found that violent media can desensitise people to real acts of violence, but Brad Bushman from the University of Michigan and Craig Anderson from Iowa State University have produced the first evidence that this can actually change a person's behaviour, affecting their decisions to help others in need. Using professional actors, they found that after 20 minutes of…

Colouring your mind - red improves attention to detail, blue boosts creativity

Having trouble with a word puzzle? Suffering from writer's block? Perhaps you're not looking at the right colour... We encounter many of the colours in our lives under the same circumstances and as a result, we have come to associate certain colours with specific attributes. Red invokes thoughts of action, danger or mistakes because it is a common feature of warning signs and editorial ink. Blue, however, is a more soothing hue, and its presence in both sky and sea have connected it to peace and openness. These associations aren't trivial ones - they can affect the way we think. In a clever…

A tiny bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing

Good news! The gorilla genome sequence was published in Nature last week, and adds to our body of knowledge about primate evolution. Here's the abstract: Gorillas are humans' closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human-chimpanzee and human-chimpanzee-gorilla speciation…

The Humboldt Current: Science, Adventure, and Environmentalism with author Aaron Sachs

Part 1 (below) | 2 | 3 - - - The World's Fair sits down with Aaron Sachs, author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (Viking Press, 2006), Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University, and environmental journalist. The book is, like its subjects, adventurous. Sachs's voice and style are unique and his ambition is inspiring. The Humboldt Current has been widely reviewed and lauded. One of those reviews, illustrating the point, noted that "Sachs has an incredible talent for choosing gripping accounts…

Why National and Cultural Context Matters for Science, and for Science Policy: Part II

Part 1 | 2 | 3 --- "Dendrogram showing 18 tumors from BRCA1 mutation carriers (black branches) and two tumors from BRCA2 mutation carriers (yellow branches)" (source). Part II with Shobita Parthasarathy, author of Building Genetic Medicine, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here. --- WF: You've developed this intriguing approach, looking at technologies as architectures. Can you explain that a bit? SP: I argue that technologies have specific architectures, which include their components and how they are fitted together. What appears to be the same…

Contrasting Views on the Gender Disparity in Science

Daniel Drezner links to two articles with alternative interpretations to the gender gap in science. Both are looking at a female exodus from hard sciences, but explain it in different ways. First, Lisa Belkin in the NYTimes takes the angle of institutionalized discrimination and a macho male culture: Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually…

The Function of a Fearful Expression

Human beings use stereotyped facial expressions to identify the feelings of others. We can tell what another person is feeling in part because of how their face looks. However, this says very little about why the particular changes in facial musculature are associated with particular feelings. Why do the eyebrows go up when we are afraid instead of down? To address this issue, Susskind et al., publishing in Nature Neuroscience, looked at the visual and physiological effects of fearful expressions as opposed to expressions of disgust and neutral expressions. They found that when someone…

Rising or Falling Food-borne Illnesses, And Who is to Blame? (edited)

There have been a lot of salmonella outbreaks in food in the news lately, but who is to blame? Last year, Paul Krugman set the responsibility squarely on the Bush administration and ideological libertarians like Milton Friedman who want to limit food safety regulations: Without question, America's food safety system has degenerated over the past six years. We don't know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety regulations except those mandated…

From Enemies to Friends

When you consider a tapeworm or an Ebola virus, it is easy think of them as being evil to their very core. That's a mistake. It's true that at this point in their evolutionary history these species have become well adapted to living inside of other organisms (us), and using our resources to help them reproduce themselves even if we get sick in the process. But one of the big lessons of modern biology is that there are no essences in nature--only the ongoing interplay of natural selection and the conditions in which it works. If the conditions change, organisms may evolve into drastically…

Novelty May Dynamically Rearrange The Prefrontal Hierarchy

Owing to the low signal-to-noise ratio of functional magnetic resonance imaging, it is difficult to get a good estimate of neural activity elicited by task novelty: by the time one has collected enough trials for a good estimate, the task is no longer novel! However, a recent J Neurosci paper from Cole, Bagic, Kass & Schneider circumvents this problem through a clever design. And the design pays off: the results indicate that the widely-hypothesized anterior-to-posterior flow of information through prefrontal cortex may actually be reversed when unpracticed novel tasks need to be…

Hope Smashes Through the Looking Glass in Afghanistan

Take a good look at the chart above. This represents the increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001. The number of soldiers that are presently in country might be a little high on this chart, given that The New York Times estimates 68,000 soldiers currently in Afghanistan. However, this lower estimate is still more than double the number of soldiers that were in Afghanistan at the end of President Bush's term. With the additional 30,000 troops requested this would be three times what it was when Obama first stepped foot in the White House. What hasn't been discussed is…

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Remember, remember the fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot, I know of no reason Why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. On this day, in 1604, Guy Fawkes was arrested in his attempt to overthrow the English monarchy by blowing up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I (who would have been present at the time). Since his arrest Fawkes' crime has been condemned as terrorism motivated by fanatical Catholic outrage against the Protestant regime of James I. However, is the religious angle enough to explain his actions and those of his conspirators? What was at…

The Omega Point loves us

This is going to get deep. I heard recently on BBC World Service that the Malaysian space program, itself a weird offshot of a 900 million dollar defense deal Malaysia recently struck with the Russians, is beginning to take shape. The 854 applicants to the program have been narrowed down to four, two of which will start training for a journey to the Internation Space Station in Russia's Star City this summer. A subject of debate is how these new cosmonauts, three of which are Muslims, will manage the daily rituals of Islam while in orbit. Worship, quite simple on Earth, is a huge…

Even Mutualists Have To Constantly Fight To Stay Friends

As soon as you put more than one species in an ecosystem, you have species interactions. There are many kinds of these relationships, each defined by what each side gets out of the deal. Many of these you've heard of, though you might not have strict definitions for, like Competition or the Antagonism of predator and prey. One of the most fascinating relationships animals can have, though, is what is called Mutualism, where both sides benefit from the interaction. Mutualism is very common: the classic example is the relationship pollinators and their plants. Around 70% of land plants require…

What do noisy oceans mean for fish?

Picture this: It's Monday morning, and you wake up groggy to your alarm because the incessant traffic and blaring of truck horns from the local highway kept you from getting a good nights' sleep. You'd go back to sleep, but your spouse is already up watching TV and that annoying anchor for the 6 AM news is peppily rambling about how great his week abroad in Hawaii was - like an image of him in a speedo is what you need in your head first thing. You hop in the shower, if only to drown out the television, and try and remember what exactly it was that you were supposed to do before work this…

"It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It": Gliese 581 d and the potential for a spacefaring civilization.

Earlier today, a team of researchers lead by noted exoplanet hunter Michel Mayor announced a pair of blockbuster discoveries - the lowest mass planet yet discovered orbiting another star, and a new analysis suggesting that another, previously discovered planet is orbiting that same star within the theoretical "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist. Both of these discoveries are huge, but for different reasons. The small planet, now known as Gliese 581 e, may weigh in at only about 1.9 Earth masses. That makes it the smallest exoplanet yet discovered. Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star…

Armor in Freshwater Sticklebacks: Selection Against, or Just No Selection For?

There are certain organisms that you hear about a lot in evolutionary biology. In some cases, like Drosophila flies or E. coli bacteria, that's because the organisms are easy to use in experimental studies. Other organisms, like Hawaiian silversword plants or Galapagos finches, come up frequently because they're fantastic examples of evolution happening out in the "real world". And then there are those rare cases where an organism is both a fantastic example of evolution in the field, and a convenient organism to work with in more controlled circumstances. The three-spined stickleback (…

Building Community Through Conversation

Because we can't keep our mouths shut forever, nor can we always stay locked safely within our homes, it is inevitable that we must interact with and speak to other human beings. And because of this, it is (nearly) inevitable that we will, at one time or another, say or do something that someone else interprets as offensive. You know what I mean. You're nattering blithely along, everything's good, we're all happy - except, suddenly, some of us aren't. And you don't understand why. You are a good person. You are not a sexist, you are not a racist, you are not a homophobe. You are an…

Life as a Leak, Part 2

X-Gal Meg Murray hasn't completely leaked out of the pipeline yet. She's taken a lectureship instead of a tenure-track position, and she writes this in a column titled Too Few Choices: Defining success is a tricky thing. Would I consider myself successful if I had moved my family across the country for my career, making my husband miserable and decreasing our standard of living? We now have a high quality of life (income aside) in a location where our kids are happy and where my husband (who provides the bulk of our income) has limitless career opportunities. Is that success? I don't know. I…

Methods of Prohibition

Following up on my entry on Joanna Russ's book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, and its application to women in science and engineering... In discussing "prohibitions", Russ notes" First of all, it's important to realize that the absence of formal prohibitions against committing art [or science] does not preclude the presence of powerful, informal ones. These include poverty and lack of leisure, the latter arising from overwhelming duties to family and home. Even our heroines had to overcome this latter prohibition: Marie Curie's biographer, her daughter Eve, describes her mother's…

A new (mis)take on an old paper

When an anti-evolutionist attempts to publicly "explain" a scientific paper, it usually signals two things: you should read the paper for yourself, and you should not be surprised to find that the creationist "explanation" misrepresents what the paper really says. A new blog post by Paul Nelson is no exception. Nelson, descending from the (relative) intellectual heights of the Discovery Institute to join the crowd at Dembski's Whine Cellar, tells his readers that scientists did not grasp the true point of a 1975 paper because they did not read it all the way through. The paper in question…

The World according to Genesis: Stuff that grows

We're in the third day, and Elohim has made dry land, but no sun or stars or moon. Still, he's keen to see something growing, so he tells the land to produce, by spontaneous generation as it was later known, "seed bearing plants and plants bearing fruit with their proper seed inside". Seed here is crucial - God creates things that reproduce themselves through some innate generative power, but at first they come out of the land. Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram declared that God acted out of a secondary power here - he didn't create these plants directly, but indirectly, by putting a…

The greatest threat: antimodernism

In the thread on the recent debate between Winston and Dennett, I said that I thought the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality was antimodernism, which was not always religious. Here, I'm going to elaborate on that cryptic comment. First of all, some of my commenters think that this doesn't rule out religion being the threat. It may still be the major source of illiberalism, and I cannot deny that, but I think the problem lies not in the instantiation of the antimodernism, but in the psychology that underlies it. For religious ideas would have no issue if they did not…

What is it all about?: The Great Book Project

Those of you who are regular readers know that I have been yammering about my book-in-progress for quite some time now (at least since March, if not before). I am pleased to say, though, that as the weeks and months have rolled by I have attracted some new readers, but some of them have expressed their frustration that they don't know what the hell I'm talking about in the "Book Progress" posts. This post should serve as a temporary conceptual anchor for the "Great Book Project," and I hope that this description will clear things up a bit. Two years ago I took a course at Rutgers about…

The change we need is competent political appointees

I still get a little chill down my spine when the news announcers say "President-elect Obama," but already I am being reminded that we can't just sit back and wait for him to save the world. We still need to do our part, and one of the things we need to do right now is be vigilant to make sure that the most competent people are running the bureaucratic machinery of the country. So I was very pleased when a list-serv to which I belong circulated an email from a major research organization saying that they were being contacted by the Obama transition team and asked for nominations of people…

Will doing crosswords prevent age-related cognitive decline?

This is the question that I get all the time in family gatherings. Well, maybe not in those words. Usually it is phrased as "How can I not get Alzheimer's? Because that would be a bummer...for me..." People are concerned about the issue of cognitive decline with aging -- both with pathological decline such as Alzheimer's disease and your normal "I can't find my keys" declines. Numerous popular remedies exist that purport to improve your chances of staying with it longer, such as doing crossword puzzles or running ten miles a day for your entire life. In the late 90s, the National…

A Road Trip for Lucy?

The famous skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis nicknamed Lucy is going on a field trip: After 4 years of an on-again, off-again courtship, Ethiopian officials have promised the hand--and partial skeleton--of the famous fossil Lucy to museum officials in Houston, Texas. The 3.1 million-year-old early human ancestor has been engaged to make her first public appearance ever, in Houston next September, as part of an exhibit that will travel to as many as 10 other museums in the next 6 years. But many archaeologists are trying to stop the tour before it starts. Ethiopian officials have high…

Emotion in Political Judgment

It's been obvious to everyone who's written about politics since Aristotle that emotion plays an important role in political rhetoric and political judgment. With an increased focus on emotion in cognitive scientists, there has been a flourish of empirical work attempting to elucidate this role. I thought it might be interesting to say a little about this given the recent resurfacing of the Westen et al. study on motivated reasoning in politics. While the recent posts on the study have (unfortunately) described it in terms of confirmation bias, it would be more accurate to describe the study…

National Infrastructure Protection Plan

On 6 June 2008, the Federal Register in the USA href="http://www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2008-06-06-E8-12671">contained a notice, that the Department of Homeland Security is conducting a review.  They are reviewing the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP). The Federation of American Scientists href="http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/06/dhs_invites_public.html">points out that DHS is soliciting public comment. The NIPP is explained and documented at a DHS href="http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/programs/editorial_0827.shtm">site.  one of the documents (1.3MB PDF) is…

In Which I Succumb To the Fisking Bug

The urge to fisk is an omnipresent danger for all bloggers.  Usually I am strong.  Usually I resist.  But this essay on World Net Daily got my fisking neurons all in a twitter.  It's by David Kupelian, and it's a World Net Daily Exclusive!  (Because no one else would print it.) href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63093"> href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63093">How Hillary will lead America into hell Posted: May 02, 2008 As November's election nears, some otherwise right-thinking conservatives and Christians, unhappy with GOP…

Beware! Presuppositionalists!

I see that Aron Ra is wrestling with a presuppositionalist. Presuppositionalists are incredibly obnoxious debaters, and right now, it's the most common tactic creationists use to defend their nonsense, thanks to Answers in Genesis, which has been pushing it hard. We agree that presuppositional apologetics is the ultimate biblical approach to apologetics. The common accusation that the presuppositionalist uses circular reasoning is actually true. In fact, everyone uses some degree of circular reasoning when defending his ultimate standard (though not everyone realizes this fact). Yet if used…

Some more rankings

For some reason I have this irrational love of statistics. It could be due to the fact that as a microscopist I am very weary of qualitative data ... it's easy to see what you want to see. Quantification is the attempt to provide a more objective assessment of the world. This fascination of statistics could also stem from the fact that as a kid growing up in North America, you are bombarded with numbers. From sports (who scored the most goals for the Canadiens in 1983?), to the Almanac with all of it's lists, to pop culture (I can hear Casey Kasem now "and the top song of the week is..."),…

Why more racial diversity in the science blogosphere would be a good thing

Since Alice and Sciencewoman and DrugMonkey and Razib are discussing it (and because Zuska has discussed it before, including in real life), I wanted to say something about my reaction to the observation that science blogosphere in general, and ScienceBlogs in particular, seems pretty white: I'd noticed that, too! And I'd like it a lot if there were more racial diversity among the science bloggers and the blogging scientists. There would be some clear benefits to achieving more diversity -- but there might also be costs, and looking at who would bear those costs seems pretty important. To…

Am I asking too little of the First Amendment?

I noticed a short item today at Inside Higher Education about Mike Adams, an associate professor of of criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington , who is suing the university on the grounds that his promotion to full professor was denied due to his conservative Christian views. (Apparently, this legal action has been underway since 2007.) I know very few details of the case, so I'm in no position to opine about whether Adams should or should not have been promoted. But there's one element of the case that seems to be legally interesting: But part of the judge's…

The rise of a new grief vampire

I don't write about psychics that often. Most commonly, when I do, it's about psychics making claims that could be construed as medical claims, such as when America's Quack, Dr. Mehmet Oz brought psychic scammers like John Edward and the "Long Island Medium" Theresa Caputo, even going so far as to imply that psychics can actually talk to the dead and that their act can even be therapeutic for grief. This time around, I'm learning of what is arguably the most despicable use of a psychic yet. It's so bad that Susan Gerbic labeled this particular self-proclaimed psychic a "grief vampire," and so…

The Genesis II Church holds a secret MMS quackery conference in England

Regular readers might have wondered why there was no post yesterday. The answer's simple: A combination of work and having to fly out to Buffalo for the CFI Reason for Change conference, where I'll be on a panel on (of course!) alternative medicine later today. That same combination means that this post will be uncharacteristically brief. I know, I know. When I say "uncharacteristically brief," usually what happens is that I manage to keep things under 2,000 words for a chance, but that's just how I roll. However, as busy as I am at the moment, I just have to take note of a most happy…

"Unprofessional"? Moi? Dr. Egnor attacks over marketing Darwinism

I'm devastated. Truly and totally devastated emotionally and intellectually. Indeed, I don't know how I'll ever be able to recover, how I'll ever be able to live down the shame and go on with my career. What could bring me to this point, you ask? I'll tell you. Everybody's favorite creationist neurosurgeon and dualist Dr.Michael Egnor thinks I'm "unprofessional." Worse, he does it while agreeing with Pat Sullivan's article in which Pat asserts that "Darwinism" has what he calls a "marketing problem," in essence seemingly saying that, because he can't understand "Darwinism" but can understand…

Always look in the refrigerator

I walked into her tent, went immediately to her bed and turned over her pillow. And there, as plain as day, was a stack of hundred dollars bills, a US passport, and a first class plane ticket to New York. "How the hell did you do that?" she asked, astonished, hugging me, crying. "Just doing my job, ma'am," I replied in a drawl, which caused her to raise her hand in a mock gesture to slap me. She was an older (but young of mind and sharp) woman of fame and great means. If I said her name you would surely recognize it, either because you know of her or her somewhat more famous relative…

Summer Reading List

Julia is going overseas for most of the summer, and she is putting together her reading list. I'm sure she'll put together a fine list. But we live in a culture in which we are compelled to suggest to high school students what they might want to read, especially in preparation for college. I've looked at a couple of those lists, and they are dismal. Some seem to be lists of works that are especially long, challenging of language, in many cases unpublishable in the modern market, out of date, and boring. I mean, really, Moby Dick? Watch the movie, dude, the book is a bear. However, the…

The worst crime of the 20th century. Whodunnit?

Andrew Kenny in The Spectator writes Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler's holocaust 6 million, Stalin's famine and terror 8 million, and Mao's famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT. ... In 1971 DDT was poised to rid the world of malaria. In 1972…

The fall of Ben Stein

You know, even though I know he's been a Republican talker for a long time, that he worked for the Nixon administration as a speechwriter and lawyer, I've always kind of liked Ben Stein. My wife and I used to like to watch Win Ben Stein's Money, and he was quite amusing as the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's always come across as a pleasant doofus, even though I know that image appears to be carefully calculated one. Now I learn that he's the narrator and a driving force behind a pro-"intelligent design" movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is due to be released…

The Enemies of Reason, part 2: The Irrational Health Service (with a review)

Thanks to Blake, I now have The Enemies of Reason, Part 2: My review of this episode is below the fold. I managed to BitTorrent the episode and watch it on my laptop on my flight back from Chicago last night. If you don't want to be influenced by my opinion before watching, watch the episode first and then see if you agree with my assessment. Part 2 of Richard Dawkins' The Enemies of Reason, The Irrational Health Service, is, as you might imagine, right up my alley. Moreover, it's the stronger of the two parts of this documentary in many ways, although I think it continues the theme of…

Bad Science from Queensland's Land and Resources Tribunal

Queensland's Land and Resources Tribunal has rejected objections to a new coal mine by environmental groups who wanted offsets for the carbon emissions of the mine. Unfortunately, the Tribunal got the science badly wrong, understating the emissions by a factor of 15, making inappropriate comparisons for the emissions, and dismissing the scientific consensus on global warming based on their own erroneous understanding of the science. The Presiding Member, Greg Koppenol writes: Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe AO gave evidence that the proposed mine would contribute to the cumulative impacts of…

Lancet post number 100

Anthony Wells: So, what could have gone wrong? The more excitable fringes of the US blogosphere have come out with some interesting stuff. Let's look at criticisms that don't hold water first. Firstly, the turnout is unbelievably high. The report suggests that over 98% of people contacted agreed to be interviewed. For anyone involved in market research in this country the figure just sounds stupid. Phone polls here tend to get a response rate of something like 1 in 6. However, the truth is that - incredibly - response rates this high are the norm in Iraq. Earlier this year Johnny Heald of ORB…

The Australian's War on Science 67: Chip Le Grand misrepresents a scientific paper

Chip Le Grand, Victorian editor of The Australian, complains that Stuart Rintoul was victimized by Media Watch. Just like Rintoul, Le Grand misrepresents Watson's paper: [Rintoul] brought to national attention research by NSW researcher Phil Watson showing that sea levels around Australia over the past 100 years haven't risen as quickly as scientists would have expected them to as a result of global warming. This isn't true. Watson did not compare the sea level rises with expected sea level rises as a result of global warming. As Kathleen McInnes of the CSIRO told Media Watch: The study by…

Intelligent design activists make hay out of the Larry Darby case

Geez, who could have seen this one coming? Straight from the Discovery Institute's blog regarding atheist and Holocaust denier Larry Darby in reference to his activities against ID in Alabama, Casey Luskin bloviates: An outspoken opponent of the bill has been activist Larry Darby. Mr. Darby's vehement opposition to the Alabama Academic Freedom Bill was on full display at a House Education hearing back on April 29, 2004. According to reports I have received, committee chair, Rep. Yvonne Kennedy (D), did not allow citizens to testify for the bill. But for some reason she let Mr. Darby alone…

Kleck's critique of the public health literature

bob (really Edgar Suter?) writes: From an early DRAFT of Gary Kleck's TARGETING GUNS : FIREARMS AND THEIR CONTROL scheduled to be published this month: The Medical/Public Health Literature on Guns and Violence False Citation of Prior Research One final problem in the medical/public health literature on guns-violence links is so widespread, serious, and misleading that it deserves extended attention: the false citation of previous research as supporting anti-gun/pro-control conclusions, buttressing the author's current findings, when the studies actually did no such thing. There is probably no…

Re-imagining this Chaotic Utopia

So, I’ll be the first to admit it. This blog is dead. I’ve noticed it happening to a number of sites I used to read on a regular basis, as the authors found themselves overwhelmed and occupied with many other things--school, work, life--chaos. Yet, what I’m facing is a little different. This blog was always about chaos. And now, my trouble isn’t being overwhelmed with many things, but the exact opposite. I’ve been struck with focus. It was inevitable that my blog would follow. It has been a strange road. When I first started writing in earnest, developing my ideas and going back to school to…