Deep sea squid, unidentified species
Figure from The Deep(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Claire Nouvian.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
So I’ve been sucked into a live text interview on the Raving Atheists forum — they’ve finished with me and spat my well-chewed carcass out now, so everyone else is welcome to come on over and squabble over the scraps.
Prompted by the skewed gender representation of a recent survey of science blogs, Zuska asks why there are no great women science bloggers. That’s an ironic question, of course: there are great women science bloggers, but there is a strange blindness to their contributions, just as they are neglected in the greater blogosphere, and in science, and in politics, and in everything other than raising babies and making attractive centerpieces for the family dinner table, etc. It’s a curious phenomenon that we have to try consciously to rise above, an effort hampered by the fact that there seem to be a lot of people who want to argue that you aren’t allowed to make a special effort to avoid gender bias — it’s apparently “unfair” to try to overcome a history of unfairness.
My colleague in the philosophy department here at UMM, Tamler Sommers, has a couple of interesting interviews online, one with Frans de Waal and another with Jonathan Haidt. de Waal is good — there’s some cool stuff in there about altruism and politics. Haidt … well, again, I find myself with mixed feelings about his work. The “social intuition” model, where people make emotional judgments and then makes intellectual rationalizations after the fact, sounds reasonable to me. But then, he goes on to make these arguments about “four pillars of morality” — harm, fairness, purity, and duty — that sound like intellectual rationalizations after the fact, too. He justifies some behaviors, such as female genital mutilation, because within a particular culture they may well be supported by a moral pillar like purity or duty, and suggests that people who lack those particular pillars (as many in the West do) cannot then criticize those behaviors.
Researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have found the key to controlling how the brain is wired while studying the bursts of activity that occur after communication between neurons.
First, I will give an overview of neural communication. Neural cells communicate with each other at a synapse, which is the point of contact between the cells at which signals are transmitted. The action potential stimulates the input cell (presynaptic) to release neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters travel across the synaptic cleft and bind to neurotransmitter receptors on the receiving (postsynaptic) cell. However, the action of the neurotransmitter needs to be controlled so that the cell is not continually activated.
That is where this new research, conducted by Sarah Huntwork and J Troy Littleton, comes in. These scientists have identified a molecule, called complexin, which acts as a gatekeeper to help control the release of neurotransmitters. As it turns out, a few cells will continue to release neurotransmitters even after the major electrical stimulus has passed. They call these events “minis”, which are regulated by complexin. However, they have discovered that in the absence of complexin, these minis can occur without regulation, and when they do, it can lead to rewiring of the brain and synaptic growth.
So what does this mean in terms of neurological diseases? The activity of complexin can be controlled, and if properly regulated, may allow synaptic growth to be stimulated and rewiring of the brain to occur.
She’s the newest superhero on scienceblogs!
I read this headline — “Mary Midgley argues that opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it” — and my first thought was that surely some editor had mangled the sense of an interview. No one could be that blatantly nonsensical. And then I read the first paragraph and discover that it was an understatement, and that Midgley is much more extreme.
People are not going to accept scientific fact if they think it is morally pernicious. When people are asked why they are persuaded by intelligent design, they often say that it’s the only alternative to scientific atheism and Darwinism which are pernicious moral doctrines; they see it as the only refuge from this anti-human bloody-mindedness. It’s at the level of attitudes to life that these choices are made. And people will think scientists as a whole believe this. As Professor Winston has said, science becomes discredited by this kind of stuff.
Facebook has done a stupid thing: they’ve started deleting photos and accounts of breastfeeding women. Tara is leading the charge here on scienceblogs — this is a ridiculous and demeaning decision, reflecting a mindless prudery on the part of the facebook administrators. Give them hell.
Alas, Tara succumbs to her own biases and cites my breast as an example of offensive photography. Nay, I say, we must regard every expanse of torso as equally lovely. I think I have a few more shots of the masculine mammary in question; to prove my point, if Facebook can’t come to their senses, I may have to post them to my facebook page. If they had to start deleting every bare-chested college man’s photoset to justify scouring those pictures from their servers and their nightmares, it would serve them right.
Also, I’ve got too many friends anyway. That would clear that problem right up.
You people are sick, sick, sick. Rather than scaring you away, putting that picture on my facebook account means I’ve gotten a flood of friend requests.
This bodes well for my future career in porn when the theocrats shut down the universities.
A few people in this thread were suggesting we needed a creationist bingo card — Skeptico obliged earlier this month.
You need a couple of randomized versions of this, but you’ll still have the problem that people all over the auditorium will be shouting “Bingo!” five minutes into the talk, and by the end, you’ll have to give everyone a prize.
Paul Kurtz is an intelligent and interesting fellow who has done commendable work in advancing the cause of skepticism and freethought. He can be rightly considered one of the heroes of the atheist movement, and he’s one of the reasons that the sobriquet “New Atheist” grates — Kurtz has been writing this stuff for decades.
Now, suddenly, he’s being trumpeted as an advocate of “silencing the New Atheist Noise Machine.” This is weird on so many levels.
