Ragnarok!

Good-bye, all my friends—
It’s been good; it’s been fun,
Ah, but everything ends,
And the end has begun.

It’s the last deadline ever
And not to my liking,
But I know I should never
Cross swords with a Viking

Now Fenrir is pacing
And Odin will die
It’s the end we are facing
And no one knows why

We say now, with sorrow,
Goodbye to the gods…
So, see you tomorrow?
I don’t like the odds.

The Mayans had their chance. Harold Camping had his chance(s). One of these days, somebody has to get it right–yup, it’s the end of the world. Today!

“Ragnarok is the ultimate landmark in Viking mythology, when the gods fall and die, so this really is an event that should not be underestimated,” comments Danielle Daglan director of the JORVIK Viking Festival. “In the last couple of years, we’ve had predictions of the Mayan apocalypse, which passed without incident, and numerous other dates where the end of the world has been pencilled in by seers, fortune tellers and visionaries, but the sound of the horn is possibly the best indicator yet that the Viking version of the end of the world really will happen on 22 February [this] year.”

Looks like a fun evening, full of contests, drinking, and beards. These people do the end of the world right.

“Life Begins At Conception” Bill Proposed In NH

In lawmakers’ fevered perception, conception
Is God’s definition of “when life begins”
If mothers-to-be raise their voices, their choices
By God’s perfect standards, are nothing but sins
Since God can’t be named, a reliance on “science”
Is lawmakers’ choice as they justify votes
Though putative “facts” they parade up are made-up
And not what you’d see in biology notes.

But science, they’re not even trying—they’re lying—
They’re claiming biology backs up their view
Designed to exacerbate friction, this fiction
Pits out-and-out liars against me and you
This ploy is a public-relations sensation;
It looks so objective; it seems so precise
They’re betting against their deception’s detection—
If that’s what they’re thinking, they need to think twice

New Hampshire is an interesting case study–conservatives in NH come in two flavors (not mutually incompatible): social conservatives and libertarian (small “l”, usually) conservatives. Social conservatives tend to lean pro-life, and libertarian conservatives tend to lean pro-choice (you will have no problems pointing to counter-examples in both camps). To get the libertarian conservatives on board with a social conservative anti-abortion agenda, you need something more than “god says it’s wrong”. Defining embryos and fetuses as persons would place them under the umbrella of libertarian human rights, so that is one of many possible end-around tactics.

But of course, you can’t draw a defining line due to religious belief–the first amendment prohibits that–so you dress it in science. You say that science supports your definition, and you do your best to say it convincingly enough that nobody asks any actual scientists.

Thing is, it doesn’t matter what the scientists think. When someone acquires rights is not a scientific question. We know this when it comes to driving, drinking, voting, and other actions that personhood alone does not confer rights to. In a world where I can take another adult’s life if they threaten me, and I cannot take their kidney without their permission, even after they die, the rights of a woman to bodily autonomy are paramount. What the proposed legislation attempts to do is to lay the groundwork for treating women as second-class citizens, as bipedal incubators subject to the wishes of the religious right.

When does life begin? Some three and a half billion years ago. Since then, it has not begun, it has continued. That is a scientific view–but not one that particularly advances a pro-life agenda. If you ask biologists (seriously, on this question, who better?) when life begins… you will find they disagree.

Sorry, politicians. You’ll need a different argument if you want to create an incubator class. In a state that equates freedom with life itself (“Live Free Or Die”), you cannot make women slaves to the state, bearing children they did not choose. You want to set “everyone on an equal playing field”? Then women need the same independence from the constraints of pregnancy that men have.

What, that wasn’t what you meant?

A Tasty And Nutritious Sausage, Low Fat and Low Sodium, With Only A *Hint* Of Baby Poop

The latest health craze? Here’s the scoop:
It’s sausage made with baby poop.
Or (as the press release explains)
With cultured pro-biotic strains
So you can populate your gut
With flora from a baby’s butt
The best advice these authors give?
For better health… eat shit and live!

This is actually a pretty cool paper, despite the sensationalist headlines (including my own). In the search for probiotic foods, various different fermented foods like yoghurts and cheeses have been tried, but this study looks at another sort–dry-cured and fermented sausages.

An appropriate probiotic, then, has to survive two different environments, then–the fermenting and curing sausage, and the human gut. I suppose there are a couple of ways, broadly speaking, to look for potential bacteria: you could look through all the bacteria that naturally appear in sausages, and see which ones do well in the gut, or start out with bacteria that do well in the gut, and see which ones are potential sausage-fermenters. The latter is what the news-making researcher did, testing 6 strains and finding one that survived a particular type of sausage-making well enough to have active strains in sufficient numbers to inoculate a human gut.

The methodology is straightforward, with (to me) a fascinating glimpse into an unknown world of meat science. It’s a nice, useful finding, but likely wouldn’t have made the news, were it not for the last sentence of the introduction, which everyone (yes, including me) have latched onto.

The aim of the present work was to assess the suitability of three potential probiotic lactobacilli strains (L. casei/paracasei CTC1677, L. casei/paracasei CTC 1678 and L rhamnosus CTC 1679), previously isolated from infants’ faeces and three commercial probiotic strains (Lactobacillus plantarum 299v, L. Rhamnosus GG and L. casei Shirota) as starter cultures during the manufacture of low-acid fermented sausages (fuets) with reduced fat and NA+ content and their effect on the sensory properties of the final product.

“Isolated from infants’ faeces”. (For the record, it was one of the baby-poop strains that made the best sausage, in terms of both flavor and availability of probiotics.)

The WA Today article (second link above) asked a local researcher about the source of the bacteria:

It was important to take the bacteria from infant poo rather than adult poo, Curtin University’s Dr Hani Al-Salami said.
“Babies at that young age, the gut content is quite mild and nice compared with an older person,” he said.
“The reason is, as we grow, we do eat a lot of things and not everything we eat is the best in terms of quality.”

Despite the futility of disagreeing with a Dr. Al-Salami on a matter of sausages, I am gonna have to disagree. And suggest something that could make the right investor an awful lot of money. (I will, of course, require a finder’s fee–but this idea is worth it.) So you see, I am watching the Olympic Games, and I know that I will never have the physique of any of the athletes there… but recent popular news stories (take them with a grain of salt–you know how far afield they can be from the studies they allege to report on) tell us that the difference between the person with six-pack abs and the person with half-keg abs is partially determined by gut flora. Fecal transplants are being explored as a means of reprogramming a body, of jumpstarting the path to health.

So here’s my idea… boutique gut flora. (link from a year ago, in case there is a struggle over who had the idea first.) You can have the gut flora of an Olympian, or an actor, or scientist, or poet (well, hypothetically). The sausage scientists are far more concerned with health and safety, and as such are missing out on profit. “Eat Shit And Live!” It practically sells itself!

We know it can be done–scientists have made cheese from the bacteria harvested from particular individuals (you might not want to click). But frankly, I doubt there is much market for food made from Michael Pollan’s belly button bacteria. But sausage that will give you Michael Phelps’s gut flora?

Ok, I think I just went a step too far. I may never eat again.

(Cuttlecap tip to Kylie!)

“You’ve Got To Have Faith In Something”

You must have heard it somewhere. Probably half a dozen times today alone. I think I just saw it over at Hemant’s–somebody making the argument that science requires a faith of its own, what may be called a “faith in reason”, or faith in one’s perceptual or cognitive abilities, or simply faith that the universe is real and observable.

No, actually.

“You’ve got to have faith”—so the argument went,
“Though you might not have faith in my God
You have faith in your senses, your science, your tools,
That reality’s not some façade”

I need not have faith in my senses at all
My senses have earned my trust
They may fool me at times—they’re not perfect, I know,
But I’ll use them, cos frankly, I must

I need not have faith in the methods of science;
Conditional trust is enough
Today’s explanations can all be replaced
If tomorrow’s explains some more stuff

I need not have faith in the tools that I use
I will use them as long as they work
Since others reliably use them as well,
Their results don’t depend on some quirk

I need not have faith in the cosmos itself
Though I see on your face some confusion
The universe is, whether matter or mind,
Or a rather persistent illusion

If everything changes tomorrow, you see,
And the world works a whole different way
Then maybe I might have some theories to change…
But they’re working just fine for today.

The pragmatic and conditional explanations of science need not be a search for “TRUTH” which one has faith exists (although I certainly do not speak for all, and I know that a good many believe that a truth exists, whether or not we ever may know it). Explanations are not true or false, but rather better or worse–that is, explaining more observation with fewer assumptions, or needing to make shit up. Newtonian physics is not so much wrong as incomplete–it works for quite a lot of uses, but not all.

I do not need to have faith that my answers will be right forever–hell, I like the idea of finding out how I am wrong, and learning a better way!

Chronic Pain? Take A Peruvian Green Velvet Tarantula And Call Me In The Morning

A lab in New Haven
Held biotech mavens
Who looked at the functions of nerves
Along came a spider
With venom inside her
So they looked at purpose it serves

See, nature is cunning
And spiders are stunning—
No, really; their bites stun their prey
So maybe a toxin
Some synapse, just locks in
And shuts down the nerve in this way

They’ve explored bites and stings
Of such poisonous things
But they wished they could search even more
The answer’s appearing
Cos, now, toxineering
Yields larger amounts to explore

Now, one such advance
From a kind of tarant-
ula (called the Peruvian Green),
The authors explain
Could relieve chronic pain:
Toxineering pays off, we have seen

But the true coolest thing
(and this makes my heart sing)
Is that, someday, I’m likely to hear
From my neighbor (say, Bob)
When I ask him his job,
He replies “I’m a nerve toxineer”.

Via the NY Times, some really cool science.

Venoms contain many active toxins, not all of them suitable for use in humans. And once a potentially effective toxin is identified, researchers must run further tests to determine which neural pathways it might affect.

But now researchers at Yale University say they have sped up the process by using DNA cloning technology to build large libraries of spider venoms. This makes it easier to test the impact of a broad range of toxins on a particular neural pathway. They refer to the process as toxineering.

Three cool things stand out to me:

Third coolest: Sure, we’ve seen it before, but the whole idea of using naturally occurring venoms as a laboratory for medicine is just plain cool. The paper the Times refers to reviews quite a few examples, only some of which I was familiar with–cone snail toxins, for instance, along with scorpion venom and literally hundreds of different sorts of spider venoms. Evolution did the tinkering to invent the stuff, and all we need to do is discover it before we render it extinct (we are our own worst enemies, sometimes). In this case, a promising treatment for chronic pain and inflammation was found in the venom of Peruvian Green Velvet Tarantula. Yeah, I know–and this is only the third coolest thing.

Second coolest: But you see, naturally occurring venoms are messy–there may be a great many different toxic peptides in one spider’s venom, in varying amounts, and it might be very difficult to see the effects of a low-concentration peptide when it is masked by a much more abundant one. The new research clones individual toxins, such that mixtures of equal molarity can be tested. The specific peptide here was found by systematically exploring a toxin library of around 100 cloned toxic peptides. The procedure can be scaled, too–it doesn’t depend on farming a whole bunch of spiders. So, yeah, there are people who can casually drop into conversation the fact that they happen to have a library of spider toxins that they can mix to order. I expect this from Bond villains, or from Sherlock Holmes, but not in real life. Very cool. But only second coolest.

Coolest: They call the process “Toxineering”. Which, to me, juxtaposes thoughts of SPECTRE and the Mickey Mouse Club. “Toxineer roll call!” I picture lab headgear with, instead of Mousketeer ears, oversized tarantula eyes. Annette Funicello with extra legs. Theme parks located in hollowed out volcanoes. Souvenir lab coats.

But I am easily amused.

Natural Experiment On Gun Availability

If you give the people weapons, is this good or is it bad?
I suppose it all depends upon their aims
Up to now, there’ve been no data, so the arguments we’ve had
All rely on someone’s a priori claims

“But of course we’d be much safer if most everyone was armed!—
Cos the criminals would know they could be shot!”
“No!—more guns would mean more shootings, and more children being harmed!”
But it’s arguments, not evidence, we’ve got.

Now a natural experiment (Missouri” is its name)
Has an answer—and for some, it’s no surprise;
Cos a jump in shooting homicides has policy to blame—
Ease of access means that murder rates will rise.

Via the BBC today, a report (from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, like yesterday’s post) on a natural experiment on the effects of gun control legislation. Missouri, in 2007, repealed their requirement for licensing and vetting by local law enforcement before purchasing a handgun. So… was this good or bad? My gun-loving friends would predict an immediate drop in crime, now that handguns are easier to purchase, and potential victims are more likely to be armed. The data?

Reporting soon in the Journal of Urban Health, the researchers will say that the repeal resulted in an immediate spike in gun violence and murders.

The study links the abandonment of the background check to an additional 60 or so murders occurring per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.

“Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates in Missouri,” said Prof Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

“That upward trajectory did not happen with homicides that did not involve guns; it did not occur to any neighbouring state; the national trend was doing the opposite – it was trending downward; and it was not specific to one or two localities – it was, for the most part, state-wide,” he told BBC News.

So… stopping a bad guy with a gun might involve making it harder for that bad guy to get the gun in the first place. According to the data. Which might explain why the NRA worked so hard to keep the data from being compiled and analyzed.

These arguments, these questions–they do have answers. There are data that could be examined. We need not simply argue from first principles.

And my friends who believe that the most important freedoms of all are those protected by the second amendment can start framing their arguments in terms of how many lives this freedom is worth. Freedom isn’t free, after all. We can *expect* a cost in human lives–like in war, some things are worth a cost in blood and lives.

So… 60 extra murders per year in just one state. Freedom isn’t free. But hey, these deaths buy you the ability to buy a handgun without a background check! So you can feel safer! Mind you, the actual data show that this feeling is an illusion, but you have a right to this illusion!

Templeton Funded Research Finds Science & Religion Compatible (or, that evangelicals have their own definition of “science”)

Evangelicals will tell us, they are unafraid of science;
They assume it proves the bible to be true.
There’s a scientific method into which they put reliance
But it looks a little strange, to me and you.

They’ll evaluate hypotheses experimentally
Then, conclusions will be carefully inspected:
Do results remain consistent with the bible? And we see,
If they’re not, then the conclusions are rejected.

Perfect science, thus, can never be at odds with Christian thought,
Clearly, science and religion coexist!
Any finding not agreeing with the bible, as it ought,
Is a finding simply stricken from the list!

When you’re truly doing science, then you do the work of God
He’s the author of the evidence you read
It’s a different sort of science, so at first it might seem odd,
But a Bible/Science mix is what you need!

The latest headline out of this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Chicago is that there isn’t really a any contradiction between Science and Religion… at least, when you (as the Elaine Howard Eklund did, supported by a Templeton grant) poll people to see what they think is the case.

It sounds all friendly and promising… until you look a bit deeper into the results, and realize that a good many people are using a very loose definition of “science”. For instance (as reported by phys.org),

* Nearly 60 percent of evangelical Protestants and 38 percent of all surveyed believe “scientists should be open to considering miracles in their theories or explanations.”
* 27 percent of Americans feel that science and religion are in conflict.
* Of those who feel science and religion are in conflict, 52 percent sided with religion.
* 48 percent of evangelicals believe that science and religion can work in collaboration.
* 22 percent of scientists think most religious people are hostile to science.
* Nearly 20 percent of the general population think religious people are hostile to science.
* Nearly 22 percent of the general population think scientists are hostile to religion.
* Nearly 36 percent of scientists have no doubt about God’s existence.

I regularly read, in comment threads, claims that “actual science disproves evolution”, that there is a conspiracy by atheist scientists, who simply ignore the copious evidence of God’s existence. Science, I am told, has proven an afterlife, and ghosts, and dowsing, and ESP, and free energy, and more. So I am not in the least surprised that a poll of evangelicals shows that most of them have no problem with science as they understand it.

I also once read, in an actual print journal, an explanation of the scientific method that was remarkably like what you might find in science textbooks… but with one further step. After you crunch your numbers and draw conclusions, you “compare your answers to biblical truth.” I shit you not. So, yeah, when you do science this way (the right way!), it is impossible to find disagreement with biblical principles.

I have seen it argued that, were it not for God keeping everything following His laws, we would see pure chaos, so the fact that we can do science proves that God is there, doing His thing. But since God is always there, the laws are constant–that is, since God is constantly and consistently intervening, it looks like He is not intervening at all. And since you can trust God to keep the clockwork going, it is perfectly fine to do science without explicitly invoking (nor denying) His influence.

But that view, in which everything is a miracle, has no place for miracles as explanations for specific phenomena. That first bullet point quoted above would include the possibility that God could intervene at any point. “Then a miracle occurs!” would be a standard model, not the (arguably) most famous science cartoon ever. How exactly would that work? How would incorporating miracles into scientific explanation work? It can’t, that’s how. Can people believe that it does? Certainly, so long as they redefine either god, or science, or both.

Eklund has not found that science and religion are compatible. Rather, she has found that people’s definitions of “science” can be modified as needed to fit.

TV Snake-Handler Dies (Spoiler: Not Old Age)

There once was a pastor
Who handled some snakes
For goodness’ sakes—
He handled snakes!
(He knew the stakes)

There once was a serpent
With venomous bite
Oh, what a plight!
A venomous bite!
(And deadly, quite)

The pastor, he handled;
The serpent, he bit
With a venomous spit
He bit and bit
(And wouldn’t quit)

The pastor’s behavior
Had faith as its source
With no remorse,
His faith was his source
(He died, of course)

Via Doubtful News, we hear the utterly predictable news of the death of a snake-handling pentecostal preacher, from (naturally) snakebite.

In an era of sophisticated theology, yes, snake-handlers still exist. Though, frankly, not a lot of them, despite how often the same group makes the news. Usually, for dying by snake bite.

I wonder, sometimes, what it would be like to be from a family where you pretty much all eventually died from completely preventable, proudly public, dangerous behavior. Do the extended relatives admit their connection? Are they proud? Ashamed? Anyway, my condolences to the family–may this be the last one to die in this manner.

“Sports Chaplains” Hunting Big Olympic Game

I’ve come all the way to Sochi
With an overarching goal-
I’m not here to win a medal—
No, I’m here to save your soul:

Have you ever heard the story
Of the savior on the cross?
Who redeemed us all from sinning
Through his sacrifice and loss?

I can see it in your eyes—you’re
Too polite to walk away;
So you’re gonna hear a story
I can talk about all day

You have shown your dedication
You’re the best at what you do
Every moment here is precious
Let me waste a bunch for you

You are here for competition
On your skis, or skates, or board
But myself, I’m on safari—
Hunting athletes for the lord!

I’ve got lots of pins for trading;
By the waterhole I lurk—
Yes, I’m here among the heathens
Doing missionary work

And I hope I bag a trophy—
Grab some big, athletic name—
Or it’s just a paid vacation
Hunting Big Olympic Game

Via NPR this morning:

There are probably fewer American fans in Sochi than at previous Winter Games, partly because of concerns about security, and partly because of the time and expense it takes to get to the Russian resort town on the Black Sea.

But Americans are represented there, with gusto, by a group of evangelical Christians who call themselves the International Sports Chaplains. Members of the group have been going to the Olympic Games since 1988.

On a recent sunny day at the Olympic Park, with bands playing and fans strolling around the venues, the chaplains move through the crowd in teams of three or four.

Reminds me of the cult recruiters I’ve seen on campuses; similar tactics, and many of the athletes are roughly college age. Sometimes they advertise their purpose, but often it is a bait-and-switch tactic:

When people see the pins, they want to trade, Gardner says. He says trading pins is a good opportunity, because he’ll say, “Hey, I’ve got a pin I’ll give to you, it’s got a story. Can I share with you that story?” Through the pins, they share the Gospel.

Gregory tells the story to a young volunteer near the entrance to the park. “See this dark area on the pin?” she asks. “That represents those choices that we make that are probably not the best choice. I want to tell you that red represents that God loves us and that he sent his son Jesus to die for us. And when we accept his love and his forgiveness in our life, he makes us clean and white, just like snow.”

Next Olympics, I want to be an atheist chaplain. My only duty would be to intercept christian chaplains on the hunt. Throw myself between the athletes and the hunters.

A Heart-Felt Love Ode To Antonin Scalia

It must be depressing, to be a Scalia,
To see your words twisted in so many ways
To see your dissent—Windsor’s warning—adorning
The arguments cited in favor of gays!
Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky—how lucky
The activists were, that you wrote your dissent!
Your snarking in Windsor turned, now, to a how-to;
They probably know that it’s not what you meant!

I guess, in a way, we’re all grateful you’re hateful,
And focus your efforts on showing your wit;
Your sarcasm-laced “neener-neener” demeanor
Proved useful—well, after we translate a bit.
You couldn’t resist, so, self-smitten, you’ve written
A road map to marriage as federal right
So, much as you think we abuse it, we’ll use it,
And thank you, Scalia, for shining your light.

Context here, here, here, here, and here.