May 2009
Science, Society and The Merchants of Light
The Science Network has an excellent and ongoing series of discussions and interviews available on its site. One of the best recent additions is a discussion on Science's role in society, featuring an all-star panel of Richard Dawkins, Brian Greene, Steven Pinker, AC Grayling, Roger Bingham, and Lawrence Krauss. Watch the entire discussion here.
And You Think Tongue-Piercing Is Painful?
I'm not one to cite an article on this site from Cracked.com, which usually features satire and parody rather than interesting science (though I do occasionally read the site). However, an article from March caught my eye and, after looking up the sources, offers a 'scary' look at some parasitic behavior out in nature.
The article, titled The 7 Most Horrifying Parasites on the Planet (not for the squeamish), is a roundup of a few of the most extreme example of phenotypic behavior and macabre symbiotic relationships.
My favorite (least favorite?) on the list was Cymothoa exigua, whose unique survival skills would even give Darwin and Dawkins nightmares:
Cymothoa exigua is a tiny crustacean that sneaks up on a fish (specifically, a red snapper) and works its way in through the gills. Typical parasite behavior so far.
Then it attaches itself to the base of the fish's tongue, the tongue evidently being the tastiest part of the fish (get it!?). The parasite uses its claws to dig into the tongue and drink the fish's blood--and that's just the beginning.
As cymothoa exigua grows, less and less blood is able to get into the fish's tongue which causes the tongue to slowly atrophy and ultimately fall off--well, not so much "fall off" as pathetically float away, but you know what we mean.
With the tongue dead and gone, the parasite settles in and replaces the lost tongue with its own body. Somehow, cymothoa exigua is able to attach itself to the fish's tongue muscles, allowing the snapper to use it just like a normal tongue, the parasite flapping around as a permanent fixture in the fish's mouth for the rest of its life.
Get Me Those Stones
One of my favorite movies is Fifth Element, a quirky sci-fi with loads of eye candy (Milla Jovovich included) and abstract technologies to explore. One scene that jumped out at me as not-so-far-fetched the first time I watched it was where one of Zorg's agents uses a cockroach to infiltrate and spy on a discussion with the President. The cockroach was controlled by remote-control, and featured a bug-like (no pun) listening device, allowing transmission of the conversation.
Not-so-far-fetched was right, as it turns out, with a story in Discover Magazine (The Pentagon’s Beetle Borgs) about a Pentagon-backed research project conducted at UC-Berkeley.
The first wireless flying-insect cyborg—a remote-controlled beetle—has been developed by engineers at the University of California at Berkeley. The six-legged biomechanical hybrid can rise, hover, and fly on command, guided by a radio receiver that relays signals to electrodes connected to the insect’s optic lobes and flight muscles.
This really feels like a no-brainer to me. Not only are there all sorts of ways to replace humans in risky situations (exploring deep caves or toxic environments), but you could also reduce expenditures for other tecnological-dependent actions (military drones, for example).
Of course, this new technology opens up numerous ethical considerations for which there are really no foreseeable consensus. Not that this crosses any boundaries we haven't long ago chosen to cross, but new combinations of technology and animals always brings the ethical questions to the forefront.
I personally think this is a natural evolution of our ability to effect and direct our environment. Consider the fluke and ant story that Dan Dennett likes to use and you'll recognize that we aren't even the first species to manipulate other species in this manner.
Quote: Douglas Adams on Belief
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Help Get The Skeptologists On The Air
Leading skeptics Phil Plait and Michael Shermer are among the brilliant cast involved in a new project called The Skeptologists. They are trying to get the show picked up by a television network.
We're not willing to just accept stories of the paranormal or supernatural. We want proof. Each week, we'll take on a handful of wild claims -- from the Bermuda Triangle to Bigfoot sightings to haunted houses -- and apply accepted scientific practices and experiments to see if these ideas really hold up. Whether in the field or in the lab, we'll literally put these subjects to the test in the hopes that one day we may find something that can't be explained. Each episode will investigate one or more popular paranormal, supernatural, or other type of phenomena, in favor of evidence-based science.
They've just finished wrapping up a pilot episode shoot and they anticipate pitching the program very soon. You can help get this show on the air.
We will compile the emails and present to the executives along with our all-star cast, entertaining pilot program and solid production background to seal a great TV deal to give the Skeptics of the world a show they can stand behind, and be proud of! Take a moment, and send a brief email to skeptologists@newrule.com. Your email will be collected and will help support the show.
With all of the ufo hunting, fake mediums, and paranormal 'investigators' on television (not to mention the bazillions of hours of religious programming), we desperately need to get skepticism some airtime. Send in your email to help get this show picked up by a network.
Saturday Book Shopping
Got back a bit ago from my normal Saturday routine of used book shopping. Today I hit a thrift store and the library book hut. I ended up with 15 books plus one ordered online that arrived in the mail.
Highlights of todays haul include:
- The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
- Beyond Band of Brothers by Dick Winters
- John Adams by David McCullough
- Broca's Brain by Carl Sagan
I also continued to pick up copies of classic books I'd read long ago and wanted to own, including an abridged copy of Bulfinch's Mythology, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and The Jungle.
Book Review: Have a Nice Doomsday
(out of 5 stars)
Nicholas Guyatt takes a level-headed first-hand survey of several well-known apocalyptic prophecy 'experts' in the USA, and comes away with an interesting story about differing goals with competitive and contradictory interpretations, and puts a human face on these merchants of End Times. The author strings several interviews together with interludes of historical background as he winds his narrative in a familiar and easily-digested manner.
My major beef with this book is due to the subtitle. "Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World" was very inaccurate. Guyatt didn't attempt to survey 'millions' of Americans, just a few. His effort was solid in what he did, but he left the reader with an unsatisfactory answer to the subtitle's query. Worse, he took a shortcut to his answer through nothing short of wishful thinking.
Guyatt tells the reader this story in a curious but concerned mood. He never quite calls out his interviewees as crazy, but he's carefully darting incredulous looks out of the corner of his eye throughout every passage. His message, though not delivered particularly strongly or with much depth, is that there are crazy nuts out there who honestly believe they are living near the End Times, who are nonetheless pleasant to converse with in person.
To be fair, the reader is left with a humane view of these men (with the exception of John Hagee) to whom the author has given a fair deal of opportunity to make known their prophetic opinions through his book. The reader is not often given the courtesy of a reasonable fact check, though it is clear from reading between the lines that the author is aware of his subject's misleading, contradictory, or otherwise questionable 'facts'. Guyatt states in an addendum section that he is anticipating writing a follow-up to this book focused on creationism, so maybe he is trying the Bob Woodward method of playing nice now and scalding them later. More likely, he simply chose a less confrontational narrative than other secular writers would have delivered in order to explain apocalyptic Christianity to people who don't understand it.
We know, thanks to the book, why a handful of the movement's unique middlemen and top dogs are into prophecy and End Times, but Guyatt doesn't attempt to apply this to the rest of the 'millions'. In fact, he equivocates a bit by offering near the end of the book that he doesn't really believe that most apocalyptic Christians (a group he defined broadly as those who bought Left Behind books) are as nutty as the guys he interviewed or talked about (such as Hal Lindsey), and perhaps they could be reasoned with by the secular world. He does a bit of self-bashing by asking liberals and secularist to play a bit nicer with these folks, not to push them harder into the arms of the hardcore apocalyptic crowd.
He never really answers why so many people 'look forward' to the End Times, and worse, he goes another step in the wrong direction by ignoring most of the evidence he presented throughout the book. Most of these guys are hardcore. Some believe they should cheerlead decisions which push the world to the brink, a few offer a more restrained version. There was only one guy that the author appears to have considered reasonable, level-headed, and practical, and yet, to Guyatt, the untold majority of those 'millions' he asked about are more like the exception and less like the rule? Sorry, Nicholas, but that's a pretty strange bit of wishful, non-empircal deduction from an author who should know better, especially after heavily investigating a subject fraught with wishful, non-empirical deduction.
Anyway, that last point is more of an overly-critical assessment of the book (in hopes that Guyatt will be more rigorous with his next subject), and I did enjoy this read. I got a background of many players in the apocalyptic Christian game which I've not read elsewhere, and a few behind-the-scenes opinions of those guys were insightful and troubling. Guyatt clearly put in a lot of time and effort on this book, he's delivered a read worthy of your time, but lower your expectations a bit. Three stars.
Quote: Carl Sagan on the Dreams of Men
"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."
Cosmos
Book Review: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
(out of 5 stars)
Hitchens wastes no time making his point clear with the title on the cover: God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. While he isn't quite thorough enough to completely validate his 'everything' assertion, he nonetheless assaults religious foundations throughout this book and makes a very convincing case that religion has undermined many of the very causes it claims to support.
He jumps right in by offering that 'religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago: either that or it mutated into an admirable but nebulous humanism...." Following that up, he spends several chapters pointing out how religion has led to the massacre of millions and the destruction of physical structures and moral guidance.
Throughout, he argues against religion from words taken in context from the Bible, Koran, and other sacred tomes. Personally, I felt he went easy on religion on a couple of subjects where there was ample ammunition available for overwhelming argument. He seems determined to make this book accessible, however, and brevity is a key to achieving that goal.
Hitchens brilliantly consolidates his counterarguments to creationists and those who would condemn 'atheists' such as Stalin. As he points out, and has been very well presented by many others, including Sam Harris, the problem with Stalin (or any other hard-line state such as communist China or Pol Pot's 'government' in Southeast Asia) was not due to atheism, it was because those leaders replaced the position of deity with the state. Just like religion, Stalin demanded subjagation, mandated overseers of privacy and pleasure, intimidated rivals (and potential rivals) to his order, and enforced his rules with brutality. Pol Pot himself was an avowed atheist who sought to destroy anyone who might challenge his power, including the religious, the non-religious, and specifically the well-educated. As expected, Hitchens reasons, replacing the deity with a state or head of state, and following similar behavior enforcement methods as any major religion will lead one to the same attrocities and evils delivered repeatedly by the ruling religions.
It is very hard to argue with Hitchens under normal conditions, but in this book he is in his element, using his experience as a widely-travelled journalist and social commentator to provide personal anecdotes to color the narrative. He sticks to history and more empirical determinations when making his conclusions, however, which offers the reader, in the latter half of the book, reasons why skepticism and atheism were persecuted and forced to hide until only very recently. He finishes up with a call for a new enlightenment, one where religion is not allowed a seat at the table.
Those that share Hitchens' views will thoroughly enjoy this book and find loads of ammunition for their arguments (though not many new ones to those readers well versed in Dawkins, Harris and biblical criticisms). To the skeptical but unconvinced moderates, there is a lot to approach here, and Hitchens will have presented an excellent discussion in favor of religion's 'poisonous' nature. For the religious reader willing to question his/her own beliefs in order to strengthen them, there are certainly gaps in his argument they will undoubtedly notice (and to be fair, not even a 10,000 page book could completely fill those gaps). To the devout...well, they never opened the book to begin with. The closed-minded and the overly confident will find nothing enjoyable about this book. Four and one-half stars, and highly recommended.
