the evolving mind

Damn. There you were with all your beliefs in a row neater than ducklings following their mother. And “Boom!” New information hits you.

My advise: Don’t invest too heavily in any idea. And stay informed. That way you won’t be blind-sided.

If reading 200-proof science is a bit much for you, perhaps you can keep abreast of new developments by letting others sweeten up the hard-core jargon and numbers for you. Read science books and magazines written for the lay person.

And maybe check out the recent edition of the blog carnival, Scientia Pro Publica: #16 Us, Friends and Society.

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Photo thanks to NASA.

Technorati Links: education, science

A ScienceDaily news release about the benefits of eating dark chocolate put me in a temporarily bad mood (maybe five seconds). No, I didn’t eat a candy bar to pull myself out of the transient funk.

Let’s break down the first paragraph. Sentence #1:

The “chocolate cure” for emotional stress is getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research.

Okay, so this is the lead sentence. The enticer. We’ll give it some slack. Had chocolate cure not been in scare quotes, however, I would have jumped all over it. A treatment is not a cure.

Sentence #2:

It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed.

There is something important missing from this second sentence. If that something were provided somewhere else in the article, it wouldn’t be a big deal. That something is how much the levels of stress hormones were reduced. Good science depends on precision; good science writing shares some of that precision. Besides, there are not two possible outcomes for treatments: Worked and Didn’t Work. I believe we’ve got to stop promoting this simplistic notion. We misinform and miseducate when we do.

Sentence #3:

Everyone’s favorite treat also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances.

As a personal aside, chocolate is not my favorite treat. I’d opt for a bite of savory steak or a sip of a salty martini every time. I guess I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.

Speaking of steak, my beef with the third sentence is similar to the second. At least the writer added the qualifier (quantifier?) partially.

Does the how much of a finding really matter?

Consider this analogy: I work at a department store selling “failure insurance.” One day You buy a USB flash drive for $29.95. I talk you into buying the optional “failure insurance” for just fifty cents more. USB drives do fail, so why not buy it?

The next day you buy a top-of-the-line adjustable wrench for 29.95. Again I try to talk you into buying my failure insurance. It’s just fifty cents. Believe it or not, I tell you, wrenches do fail. Would you buy it?

In each of the above cases you would be remiss not to inquire about the actual failure rate.

Do numbers matter; does precision matter?  Only if you want to be better informed.

Technorati Links: health, skepticism

What does the tallest flower blossom “win”? More human attention, probably. Does it likewise gain greater attention from pollinators?

Maybe being relatively lofty means being further removed from a the riff-raff of grasshoppers and fungus and other threats to health and reproductive success.

I don’t know. But I wonder.

Technorati Links: flora, photography

Last week I wrote a post about a newly discovered clue into the evolution of language. That clue had to do with the action of a gene. Today I share yet another clue — or a piece to the puzzle, if you prefer. The title to the news release reads,

Words, Gestures Are Translated By Same Brain Regions

Frankly, the title just about tells it all. But here’s more detail:

In a study published in this week’s Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have shown that the brain regions that have long been recognized as a center in which spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpreting wordless gestures. The findings suggest that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than researchers have thought and, for this reason, could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.

This finding dovetails with a long known curiosity of early language development. Children progress through a number of stages before being able to use fully-functional language. They coo, they babble, and they progress from there. The interesting thing is that even deaf children who later go on to use sign language will first babble. But not with their larynx, tongues and mouth. Instead, they “babble” with their hands.

Cool. When was the last time you “spoke” with your hands? Perhaps you pointed an index finger at someone, palm facing up, then curled that finger back towards you, repeatedly. Come hither. Or maybe you used another finger, pushing it straight up with your fist otherwise balled-up, knuckles facing away from you. You sent a message to another person: this is what I think about you! And if the person saw it, the message was certainly understood.

Although we can “say” so much with gestures, we seem to have specialized in words. Unless, of course, we are deaf. They we can readily specialize in gestures.

Technorati Links: evolution, language

Wow. The above statuette (behind plexiglass) shows Mary with very dark skin. Talk about a deep tan. Oh. And baby Jesus had dark skin, too. Shocking.

How many Bible-Belt worshippers, I wonder, would continue to bow down to Jesus if he were presented as having dark skin and curly hair. Far fewer, I bet.

To me this is evidence that religion is largely a social phenomenon. It’s about real relationships in the real world. Sure, an important component is imagined relationships to entities in a supernatural realm. But these entities and the relationship with them matter in terms of real-world implications: perceptions, beliefs, feelings, behavior.

The photo, by the way, was taken on public property in Sicily. Many towns had religious icons right there in their parks and public spaces. Of course, Sicily is much more religiously homogenous then other areas of the globe, particularly in the older and smaller cities and towns.

An article I read yesterday got me thinking about the U.S. constitution.

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

You can probably guess its source: the Onion. Another funny, spot-on parody.

Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he seems to think are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and principles that brave men have fought and died for solely in his head.

Imagine this argument:

Person 1:

The Constitution says “X.” Therefore, position “X” — my position — is the right one.

Persons 2:

No, the Constitution says “Y.” Therefore, position “Y” — my position — is the right one.

I’d be tempted to step into the above and say,

Screw the Constitution. It’s an imperfect document. Tell me about your values instead, for that is what the issue really is. And while you are at it, convince me why your values should be preserved/embraced by this country.

“Screw the Constitution”? What kind of anarchism is that?! Actually, it’s freethought. As a freethinker I hold no idea or document to be above critical scrutiny. Just as I freely criticize what’s in the Bible, I will freely criticize another document that some people will present as sacred, particularly when they believe it supports their cause.

Of course, I would not scrap the Constitution. I would certainly consider further amending it. Yes, the U.S. Constition is an important and largely esteem-worthy piece of legislation and legislative history.

But it was written hundreds of years ago by men who lived in different times. Their culture was different; their economy was different; their technology was different; the threats to their peace and prosperity were different.

I don’t value the paper ideas are expressed upon. I value the ideas themselves. Or not. As I see it, the Constitution expresses and protects a set of values. These values are largely about a desired or preferred lifestyle. And I don’t mean lifestyle flippantly. Lifestyle means the freedom to engage in some behaviors and the prohibition to engage in others. Lifestyle includes the opportunities we want to preserve and obligations we consider important.

Maybe it’s the scientist in me. But whenever I hear a political disagreement, I really wish people would stop talking in abstracts and get to the nitty-gritty. Okay, you say you love freedom. But the freedom for what?

Technorati Links: politics, skepticism

What was beneath the digital microscope lense when I snapped the above image?

Hints: x60; it may be edible, or not. Answer below the fold.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: microscope, puzzle

Hmm. That’s an interesting finding. Recent research has -

revealed an association between use of wireless telephony and increased content of the protein transthyretin in the blood. [source]

“Wireless telephony” includes cell phones and cordless home phones.

What does the above finding mean? Not much just now. No, it doesn’t mean cell phones cause brain cancer. It simply means that the use of wireless communication devices cause an increase in a type of protein present in cerebral fluids.

It is possible that the discovered brain changes caused by cell phone use are completely benign. There is also a chance they are not. How great is that chance? Good question.

Certainly in the short term — 10 years or less — it doesn’t seem there could be any dramatic effect on the brain and susceptibility to disease. For we have millions of subjects out there voluntarily participating in a naturalistic “experiment.” You may be a subject yourself. The preliminary finding: no extreme risks detected yet.

While I am not alarmed by the finding, I’m certainly not going to poo-poo it. Instead, I’ll place it in a perspective that reflects everything else we know.

Technorati Links: biology, cell phones, health

Isn’t it odd? It seems this universe was perfectly created for us. If I’m hungry, I can simply venture outside and grab a stalk of the dwarf papyrus growing out of our ornamental pond and munch on it. Free lunch! I hardly need clothing, and I could sleep out under the stars with just a thin sheet to keep the dew off me.

Yah, right. The truth: Were I to eat the plant photographed above, I’d get a severe stomach ache. And although neither the heat nor AC is running at this moment — outside it is a fairly friendly 64 degrees out — without electricity-dependent indoor climate-control, there would be many times I’d be more tempted to curse the weather on this planet than to compliment it.

If you find yourself under the spell of the anthropic principle (that the universe seems oddly suited for us — so how could there not be a great reason for our existence) I suggest taking a boat to Antarctica and spending a month camping there. Good luck feeding yourself.

Sure, we human beings have found and created cushy niches for ourselves. But if we take a wider view and bear in mind the niches completely inhospitable to us and the many millions of our kind that have died trying to get well fed and comfortable — it seems to me that evolution better accounts for what exists today.

Wow! What persists, persists! Must have been meant to be!

I doubt it.

Technorati Links: anthropic principle, evolution, photography

How is free speech dangerous? We can be subjected to verbal challenges to our cherished beliefs. Which is a good thing.

I prize free speech. This cartoon is presented in that spirit. Significantly, the topic ventures where speech today is least free. If we are not vigilant, our speech could become less free.

[source]

As evidence of my least-free point, the author of these cartoons apparently writes under a pseudonym.

Technorati Links: free speech, religion