Backrow; Yellowjacket (Henry Pym was also Goliath and Ant-man, but definitely is coolest as YJ), Starman, Dreadstar, Booster Gold, The Atheist (go figure)
Front row: Quasar, Blackhawk, Mastodon, Vivisector (in front of Mastodon - also worth noting that Vivisector is openly gay), Mr Terrific, The Savage Dragon, and the Nazarite (who I believe is from a religious comic).
This link (as well as the header) takes you to a table of the different superheroes and their associated religious affiliation.
The picture above was from a site called 'Omni Brain' and omits;
Agnostics (who are still technically atheists); Green Arrow, Y the Last Man, Slaying Mantis, Amok, Kyle XY
Secular humanist; Reed Richards
Communist Atheists (which is a curious designation as 'Communist' isn't a religion); Red Star, Vanguard, Crimson Dynamo, Doctore Volkh, Mikula, Ursa Major, The Collective Man, Colossus
and 'techno-futurist' Iron Man
But most interesting of all, is (my personal favourite) Wolverine; His designation is 'raised protestant, has practiced Buddhism, sometimes atheist, sceptical seeker' which is something that about covers my perspective too (though my flirtation with Buddhism was for all of 10minutes, and there is nothing 'sometimes' about my atheism).
These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.
Wow, quite the weekend! Saturday saw the FUNHL hold it's first waiver draft of the year, and the unbiased will no doubt note that my team is vastly improved and destined for total victory.
The biased (you haters) will still be forced to note this truth, but will unfortunately suggest that victory will be by much smaller margin.
Can't please em' all.
It was also an interesting week and weekend for the CIA.
Why?
Well for two reasons, first they admitted that they have destroyed the recordings of CIA operatives torturing prisoners. Despite having previously denied these tapes existed, and despite being ordered to produce them, and despite being ordered not to destroy them, they did anyway. Oops! Maybe nobody will care? Actually, I suspect they are counting on it.
Here's a round up of reactions to the revelation;
In a completely unconnected vein, the CIA were part of the release of the National Intelligence Estimate, a document which notes that despite the aggressive drum beating for war by many in the Bush administration ("if you want world war three"...., etc.), the Iranians have in fact suspended their nuclear program. Indeed, they had done so a couple of years back. Oops!
Bush of course denies that anybody actually told him either of these facts, and goes on acting like the US doesn't torture people, as well as pretending that the Iranians need a good bombing right away. Why pretend he cares about the truth now?
So the CIA giveth and the CIA taketh away, and nobody who matters pays any attention at all.
Anyway, with that depressing news out of the way, here is a link-o-rama of some things I've been reading of late - enjoy!
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- Wanna know how life got so complex? Wired magazine tells us the answer might be... Poop!
"Photosynthesizing plankton produced some oxygen, but it was consumed by bacteria and offset by slow-sinking carbon. The arrival of multicellular organisms changed all that: they competed with bacteria for plankton, and their carbon-rich feces dropped quickly to the ocean floor. Bacteria dwindled; oxygen levels rose, especially in sunlit upper waters; and the ecological gates were thrown wide-open to the parade of animals that soon followed."
"While there's a lot of complex discussion in this area, I think it partly comes down to whether you're relaxed about the idea that science might one day be able to explain the essence of human experience. For many people, I think this is an extremely uncomfortable thought. What Keats, talking of Newton's findings, refers to as a fear of 'unweaving the rainbow' - the fear that explaining something might somehow reduce the magic of it - is very real."
He points in the right direction but doesn't put a name to the fear - Cartesian dualism. The concerned are those that worry neuro-science and philosophy will eventually replace the notion we have some invisible soul or mind at the core of our conscious experience. The rest of us aren't so much concerned as cheerleading the neuro-scientists on!
"Polar dinosaurs, as they are known, also had to endure prolonged darkness—up to six months each winter. "The moon would be out more than the sun, and it would be tough making a living," says paleontologist David Weishampel of Johns Hopkins University.
The evidence that dinosaurs braved the cold—and maybe scrunched through snow and slid on ice—challenges what scientists know about how the animals survived. Although Rich wasn't the first to unearth polar dinosaurs, he and a few other paleontologists are filling in the picture of how these animals lived and what their environments were like. Recent research might also shed light on two of the most disputed questions in paleontology: Were dinosaurs warmblooded? And what killed them off?"
- Backing away from the microscopes and bunsen burners, my favourite movie reviewer has a take on one of my favourite movies - yup, Criterion Contraption does John Woo's 'The Killer'. Sweet
- One of the places where politics and religion intersect: the GOP nomination process! Chris Hitchens kicks the living piss out of Mitt Romney for his lame imitation of JFK's 'Catholic' speach. Ouch!
Meanwhile, the normally reliable Larry Arnhart (from 'Darwinian Conservative') offers him something of a defense.
First, here's Hitch throwing down the gauntlet;
"Trying to raise himself above this swamp of nonsense—the existence of which is his responsibility, not mine—the governor mainly treated us to evasion and a rather shifty attempt to change the subject and rewrite the historical record."
Here's a sample of Larry's defense;
"Romney's recent speech at Texas A & M University was his attempt to lay out his position on the political role of religion. It is a remarkably reasonable statement on the American tradition of religious liberty. He endorses Abraham Lincoln's declaration in his Lyceum speech that obedience to law and the Constitution is the "political religion" of the nation. Romney goes on to argue that the Constitution's provision for "no religious test" for public office shows that there must be no political imposition of any particular religious beliefs."
Unfortunately, (though not very as I have no horse in the GOP race and whoever the candidate ends up being is the inevitable sacrificial lamb on the alter of Bush's policies and likely double digit loser to the Dems candidate), Romney was quite specific in his speech that it's still an 'us against them' situation;
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom" - Romney
The 'us' being the religious and faithful (can't we all just get along and face the real enemy?) while Romney's 'them' is atheists and secularists. Oops. Unlike Kennedy whose speech was meant to reassure the public that his first duty was to the US constitution and not to Rome, Romney's speech was s sop to the evangelicals of his party and a call to wage a culture war with the atheists.
I'll let Hitch make the fundamental point;
"If an atheist was running against him, would Romney make nothing of the fact? His stupid unease on this point is shown by his demagogic attack on the straw man "religion of secularism," when, actually, his main and most cynical critic is a moon-faced true believer and anti-Darwin pulpit-puncher from Arkansas (Huckabee) who doesn't seem to know the difference between being born again and born yesterday."
Hitch couldn't write a boring sentence if he tried.
So despite not having a horse in the race, I'm now pulling for Romney to get his head handed to him.
- Unless you've been living in a cave or perhaps trapped for a few months under something heavy, you know the greatest movie ever made is being re-released in a new definitive, final directors cut edition. Total Dick-Head has the goods with his review of the newest version of 'Bladerunner'. (spoilers)
I literally shiver with anticipation. Best. Movie. Ever.
- I was speaking with a friend of mine about the unparalleled joy of listening to podcasts when they countered that they simply didn't have the time required to get into them. For them (and anyone else interested) here is Open Culture's list of 60 Second Lectures.
- Here's a sign of the new cyber-times we live in - consider this case of a rape in cyberspace. Why is this interesting? For several reasons;
* The clear and unambiguous reality that something bad really did happen
* The strain with which everybody involved struggled to come to grips with how to think about, adjudicate, and eventually punish the perpetrator.
* The messiness (and occasionally the total idiocy) of anarchy
Thought provoking and highly recommended
- I once recall a debate I had with a Mormon friend at the University of Calgary where he challenged me with;
"You think you are so smart, but only God can create life"
Not only did I prove him wrong by bringing Oliver into the world (with some help from my wife) but in a less trivial way, these guys (from U of C no less!) are part of the new science of designer life.
So yeah, (20 years late) I do think we're pretty smart. Clever monkeys all.
- Let's say you are feeling really good, your on top of the world, your job is going well, maybe you even got laid recently. Nice. So you need to come down a bit, maybe shed a tear, or even have a full blown cry.
Bring a box of hankies, it's sadder then that kiddie classic 'Lassie vs. the cement truck'.
- Ok, so that was a downer, here's something to cheer you up. What could be better than listening to professional hot-air blower (and now Rudy Giuliani foreign policy and speech-writing stooge) David Frum get a beat-down from Israeli treaty negotiator Daniel Levy? Every myth, every half-lie, every historical inaccuracy, every neo-con Republican talking point, is punctured, deflated and handed back to Frum on a silver plate. I wept with joy.
- While we're traipsing the void, here's a review of 'my favourite launch platforms'. That photon thruster makes me hard.
- Moving sideways, here's a guy dedicated to bringing you only the best in Star Wars tattoos
- Speaking of tattoos, here's my new favourite blog, called cheekily enough 'sans everything', and one of it's authors Jeet Heer pontificating on the cultural significance - or lack thereof, in modern body art.
No direct link to the article is available to the article, so visit Heer's site, click on 'culture at large' and select 'tattoos'.
If that wasn't awesome enough, check out this elucidation of how comic books evolved from monsters to superheroes. Low culture was never so high-brow.
- This is by far the best video explaining the evils of marijuana I've ever seen. Must see;
- Oh yeah, I guess it's that season again. Bah Humbug.
- Sticking with the bah humbug X-mas theme, here's a Canadian economist pointing out the X-mas market failure.
- I'm going to have to dig further into this (because you can't believe anything you read on Beliefnet without corroboration), but they are making the case that the National Geographic faked conclusions they reached about the Judas Gospel. Stay tuned.
Seriously though, Landru isn't cheesy! He's a ruthless machine presiding over a religious cult that brainwashes billions and erases all feeling and culture. That isn't cheesy, that's Republicanism. Even the comb-over hair screams Republican!
Obese prevaricator Jerry Falwell passed away. Yeah, I'm really busted up about it. So much so, I'm posting the following obits, the first provided by snarky contrarian Christopher Hitchens, and the second a surprisingly touching one from pornographer Larry Flynt (you may remember that Flynt dueled with Falwell all the way to the Supreme Court)
Senator Sam Brownback is not just a candidate for President on the GOP ticket, he's one of the three GOP candidates who publicly disavowed believing in evolution. It seems that some of his supporters go even further and take issue with helio-centrism as an atheist doctrine. Gotta-be-GOP!
"In the end what humanity chooses to believe will be more a matter of economics than of debate, deliberately considered choice, or reproduction. The more national societies that provide financial and physical security to the population, the fewer that will be religiously devout. The more that cannot provide their citizens with these high standards the more that will hope that supernatural forces will alleviate their anxieties. It is probable that there is little that can be done by either side to alter this fundamental pattern."
Another article on the same topic suggests that we may have the cause and effect backwards. It is not secularism that leads to declining birth-rates, it is declining birth-rates that lead to secularism. I have to admit, that I'm not convinced at all by this thesis, but it is intriguing to consider.
God is Dead. Hail Satan. Charlie Brown must die. Deeply subversive, but also rife with vulgarity and IMO a little off the mark. I did laugh out loud though!
On a more depressing note, here are two stories about Creationist museums;
In the first one of these temples to foolishness receives a donation of $1M bucks!
In the second, a similar museum (one truly stunning in it's ineptness) opens in Big Valley Ab!
It's cute, in a completely insane kind of way. Here's my favourite quote lifted from the website:
"The "Evidence From Geneaology" display, donated by Edgar Nurnberg, is one of the more favourite displays of our visitors. These scrolls from the Lambeth Palace in England trace the geneaology of King Henry the 6th back to Adam and Eve."
Awesome! But before you get in your car and race off to see this fantastic display of wingnuttery in the heart of Alberta's bible belt, you'd best heed the following advice:
"Call first to see if you can arrange a tour, and to make sure we are open".
"Knowledge in most scientific disciplines doubles every five years. How fast is it growing in religion?" - Sam Harris in his debate with Andrew Sullivan
The full text of their exchange can be found here. It's a marvelous debate, in part because both participants (especially Harris) demonstrate a respect for the position of the other, while nevertheless fighting with the gloves off.
Well Sullivan finally posted his response to Harris' last atomic blast (referenced by me first here and with the debate found in it's entirety to this point here)
I'll unpack Sullivan's response bit by bit below, and offer my comments at the end. I have tried to redact parts that I felt weren't germane to the debate itself, and if it is felt that I have done so unfairly, I apologize;
"Your fundamental point is the following, it seems to me. I can say that the revelation I have embraced is true, but because it cannot be proven by the robust standards of scientific empiricism, I cannot prove it to be true to your satisfaction." (emphasis mine)
- I think that Sullivan correctly identifies the problem, but from his last sentence, indicates that he doesn't fully implicate the direness of his situation. Or perhaps he does. Harris is pointing out (correctly) that Sullivan's faith claims don't stand up to scientific scrutiny. Sullivan's response is a feeble attempt to relativize the nature of proof. I think he knows he is going under.
"My response rests on an understanding of truth that is not exhausted by empiricism or materialism. I do not believe, in short, that all truth rests on scientific premises and can be 'proven' by empirical or scientific methods. I believe science is one, important, valuable and respectable mode of thinking about the whole. But there are truth questions it has not answered and cannot answer. "
- This is Sullivan devolving into wishful thinking. He wants to believe there is knowledge outside of empiricism and the scientific method - yet he refuses to offer any example of this revealed knowledge that will stand up as 'knowledge' in any other sense, nor does he present us with anything resembling 'truth' that is independent of science. No, instead, Sullivan insists merely on the possibility of this truth - not because it actually exists, but because for his faith to remain operative it must exist as at least a philosophical possibility. To force Sullivan to put his faith precepts to the test of reason and knowledge would be to annihilate them. If Sullivan were right, and his Catholic belief in transubstantiation were somehow 'revealed truth' it would nevertheless still have to compete for legitimacy with any and every other religious truth espoused by any and every adherent to a religion anywhere. For sure some religions have deeper traditions than others, but in comparing the TRUTH of a religion, they all face the same obstacles of empirical fact vs desired outcome. Standing on revelation will place Catholics no higher above the water line than anyone else.
"It might even include an appreciation of other modes of rational discourse that are not empirical in origin or form. Take, for example, the question of historical truth. You rely in your books on a lot of historical facts to buttress your empirical case. But these facts are not true - and could never be proven true - by the scientific method that is your benchmark. There are no control groups in history. There are no experiments. But there is a form of truth. Discovering that historical truth is the vocation of a historian - and it is a different truth than science, and reached by a different methodology and logic.
- It is not a different truth than science at all. Where history can resort to the scientific method it always does, but when it cannot, it makes the best case it can with the materials available. The standards of proof are not different in historical studies, but the legitimacy we credit to those historical truths is dependent on the amount of empirical support they have. History will not save Sullivan here.
"Similarly, mathematics can achieve a proof that has no interaction with the physical world. It may even be the closest to divine truth that human beings can achieve. But it is still logically separate from empirically verified truth, from historical truth, and even from the realm of human consciousness that includes aesthetic truth, the truths we find in contemplation of art or of nature."
- Now he's scrambling. Math isn't an interaction with the physical world? Tell that to an engineer! Math is logically separate from empirical truth? In what regard? His most desperate move is to invoke 'aesthetic truth', a last desperate hope to find solace in the ineffable. Except that nowadays we know what makes a face beautiful, and don't have to rely on something as unreliable as aesthetics for the answer.
"My point here is to say that once you have conceded the possibility of a truth that is not reducible to empirical proof, you have allowed for the validity of religious faith as a form of legitimate truth-seeking in a different mode."
- Sullivan is now reduced to mouthing post-modernist platitudes about knowledge as a form of 'truth-seeking in a different mode'. As far as I am concerned, this is Sullivan refusing to get up from the canvas. Rather than address seriously Harris' damaging points, Sullivan hides behind po-mo relativity. Lets call this for what it is, a brutal knockout for Harris in the third round.
"I don't think you're far away from this. That's why you've gone on retreats, explored Buddhism, experimented with psyclocybin, as I have. You see: we are closer than you might think. But you differ with me on how this translates into life. You ask legitimately: how can I, convinced of this truth, resist imposing it on others? The answer is: humility and doubt. I may believe these things, but I am aware that others may not; and I respect their own existential decision to believe something else. I respect their decision because I respect my own, and realize it is indescribable to those who have not directly experienced it. That's why I am such a dogged defender of pluralism and secularism - because I believe secularism alone does justice to the profundity of the claims of religion. The attempt to force or even rig laws to encourage others to share my faith defeats the point of my faith - which is that it is both freely chosen and definitionally dealing with matters that cannot be subject to common consensus."
- And here is where Sullivan and I are in complete agreement. The best defense of atheism AND religion is to not use the machinery of government or state to impose it on others. I have no interest in living in a society that is forcibly atheist anymore than I desire to live in a country that compels me to believe in invisible beings. In this regard my political preference and Sullivan's are the same. Leave the state out of these matters, and allow the individual to pursue their own interest. The fact that as humans we choose to pursue beliefs that are factually false, or otherwise at their core incoherent, is a reflection of our human nature. Despite the facts, we humans want to believe certain false things are true, and we are capable of all manner of intellectual contortions and rationalizations to do so. It's human nature for us to make these kinds of passionate mistakes, and the only way for us to manage them is to allow each of us the right to pursue these mistakes with all our passion outside the public sphere and free from governmental interference.
In this Sullivan is correct, however irrational and illogical I think his beliefs are, I still prefer to live in a society that protects his right to possess them than one that does not.
"And that brings me to the asymmetry of our positions. We both accept that there may well be a higher truth beyond empirical inquiry or proof. I respect your opinions in this matter, and feel informed by them. You regard my opinions as inadmissible in public debate, ludicrous, a form of lying, and irrational. Yes, you are being intolerant. More, actually. The entire point of your book is intolerance. Where I respect your position, you refuse to respect mine."
- Here's the thing, to have an opinion is one thing, to claim the truth of it is quite another. I respect Sullivan's right to believe in whatever fantasy world of virgin births, celibate priests, magic books and telephones to god that he wishes, but he cannot claim that these beliefs are 'true' and expect us to respect that position. His beliefs simply do not merit being called true, and that is why we call them 'beliefs' and not 'knowledge'.
This does not, nor should not exclude his (or anyone elses) political opinions from the public sphere, nor do I think that Sam Harris is arguing that it should, but to live in the reality based community is to agree at the basic of confining ones opinions to what is real.
For example, it is possible to be pro-choice and be Christian, or be pro-life and be secular - policy is not always descriptive or linked to the philosophy that it was arrived at or justified by - and as such, no political opinion, not even an opinion based on a specific religious concern known to be false, can be prima facie discarded, but it will be by empirical means and measures that they are evaluated and judged.
Another way of putting it is this; I don't mind if a policy has religious aims, goals, or effects, but I do mind if it bestows any particular sect a religious privilege, advantage or recognition.
I'm still in the midst of reading the whole thing, but I wanted to get the link up before I forgot to do so.
Sullivan is one of my favourite writers, but his Catholicism (even more than his initial support for the war in Iraq) has always been irksome to me. From what I see here he gets thrashed pretty hard by the atheist Harris.
Oh. So. Good.
Here is Sam's salvo against 'moderate religion';
"But there are several problems with such a defense of moderate religion. First, many moderates assume that religious “extremism” is rare and therefore not all that consequential. Happily, you are not in this camp, but I would venture that you are in a minority among religious moderates. As you and I both know, religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. Forty-four percent of Americans believe that Jesus will return to earth to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. This idea is extreme in almost every sense—extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration—but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare."
Lots of stuff has built up in my files over the last month, and I finally have a chance to blog it all.
As always, let me know what you think....
The Intel Dump:
Is everyone's favourite fascist barbie Ann Coulter going to prison?!?! Probably too good to be true.
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More evidence that porn might be good for you (or just for society as a whole) as it seems that when internet porn arrives in a community, reports of rape go down.
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Science progresses ever further, as transuranic element 118 has been created. But are we nearing the limit for adding new elements to the periodic table?
"At some point, the forces that are holding the nucleus together are not going to let another proton be shoved in there," said Nancy Stoyer, co-author of the study and a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "You put [another proton] in there and it's going to immediately break apart. At some point, we're going to reach the end of the elements. Where that is, we don't know"
(tip of the hat to AJ who alerted me to the discovery)
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Michael Ignatieff gets a well deserved thrashing from Andrew Coyne for his unforgivably naive ressurection of the 'Canada is my country, Quebec is my nation' nonsense. Even more than his abhorrent support for the Iraq war long past the point were any such support was even theoretically sensible, Ignatieff's Quebec talk has me looking longingly at Stephane Dion to upset him for leader of the Liberals. The LAST thing our country needs is for Seperation Zombie to walk to the Earth again. *
Apparently the real weakness of vampires isn't garlic, silver, or guys named Van Helsing. No, it seems thing most lethal to vampires are math geeks. Kill joys with pocket protectors all of them.
"...to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect. It is time to say so."
The rest of his argument is definitely worth reading, if a tad splenetic - fortunately I find spleneticisim in the face of religion to be no vice.
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The Guiding Light will be adding a SUPERHERO to its cast of characters in an effort to attract younger male viewers.
Proof positive we live in the end times.
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Here's something my Dad and I are in total agreement about - Maria Sharapova. Yummy
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My old stomping grounds at the U of C produced the following strategic studies paper on Canada's military. Some excellent stuff (and some infuriating stuff) if you can get through it all. Fellow poli-sci fans can geek away... *
"Economics as taught in our colleges and universities and propounded by our pundits and politicians is a good example of a tyranny of "unexamined opinions and inherited prejudices."
Indeed.
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One of my favourite awards is the 'Ignoble' handed out for 'improbable research' - Here are the winners for 2006. My favourite is this one;
William Saletan (the science writer at Slate) has this excellent analysis of how the pro-life movement might come to embrace contraception as a means of reducing abortions.
"In short, the good news is that we no longer have to fight about abortion. The bad news is that we're now fighting about contraception. The old question was abortion as birth control. The new question is abortion or birth control. To lower the abortion rate, we need more contraception. And that means confronting politicians who stand in the way."
For an uglier side of Saletan, you might check this article out where he hyperventilates about the successful first penis transplant. * A 13% teen pregnancy rate at an Ohio high-school prompts the school to rethink it's abstinence only policy. Better late then never.
* Anthropologists have found another skeleton of the infamous 'Lucy'. No word on whether this one is to be named 'Charlie', but we can assume he's been waiting a very long time to kick the damn ball.
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This site is fantastic - my own results are below:
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For those of you (like me) who simply can't get enough Battlestar Galactica, I give you this excellent blog.
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In England, the Archbishop of York has sided with the Muslim extremists against the evil of secularism. It seems that any invisible super being, even that of someone trying to kill you so he can bag his 72 virgins, is still better than none at all for some people.
Madness.
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Pinhead Tom Nichols asks the question that has clearly been troubling him for some time.
"I don’t know quite how to ask this question, but I suspect that a lot of Americans are about to, so I’ll put it as directly as I can: Are Canadians stupid?"
The answer is (of course) 'no', but the people writing for the National Review haven't been known for their blazing intellects since the days William Buckley used to edit the rag himself. What is genuinely hysterical about this is not the article itself (which is basically just a whine that Canadians didn't leap into the cesspool of Iraq the moment Bush said 'Jump'), but the fact that Buckley himself has come out as critical of the Bush administration, it's war and how it is being waged. Perhaps Mr Nichols should, you know, read what the guy who owns the magazine thinks...just a thought.
It's sad really. The NR used to be a place of quality writing from conservatives and libertarians. Now, it's been reduced to a partisan rag devoid of talent.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no sycophant of Buckley's - he is an evil toad, but at least he was a compelling and intelligent evil toad.
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This makes me glad - it seems the Chinese are seeing a boom in home-grown science fiction!
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Kasi Jackson has an interesting article in The Scientist about - female mad scientists in B movies, and their relation to nature.
"I explore the way that such films deal with our inclination to view science as masculine and nature as feminine. When men are doing the science, this isn't a contradiction; in these films, masculine, rational science dominates and controls irrational, feminine nature. Sometimes, the pattern is obvious, such as when a wild-haired, wild-eyed Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) from Young Frankenstein (1974) shouts that he will use science to "penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself."
But what happens when the mad scientist is a woman?"
To find out, you'll have to read the article. For me, I was less impressed with the article itself (which was pretty good) then that someone actually GOT PAID to write about it.
I. Am. Jealous.
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As someone who stands between 6'2" and 6'3" in my stocking feet, I am always interested in finding out why being tall matters.
Turns out, it matters more than I thought. Suck it up shorties.
"I feel helpless," she says. "Part of my body, my DNA, is stuck inside a person who's going to hell."
Yup, a wingnut wants to get the organ they donated back - seems the recipient wasn't Christian enough for her liking.
"Smith suffers nightmares of her former organ filtering "strange Asian teas, pig blood and witch doctor brews in Africa," she says. She wonders if the Lord really wanted her to donate the kidney, or if she acted on a "triple-espresso high" she had that morning. She is also concerned that when her body is resurrected, it might be incomplete."
I will have to check my bible, but I believe the Lord fully supports organ donations made under triple espresso highs.
Worth noting that I located this link on William Gibson's blog (that is the WG of 'Neuromancer', not my mad-scientist Dr. buddy with the same name).
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Dark matter, once a topic of speculation for why the universe is missing so much of the mass that it appears to have, seems to have found some evidence for its existence. They have pictures!
To get the picture they had to watch a galaxy as it shred itself to pieces. Some jobs are just way more fun than mine.
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One of the more interesting advances in neuropsychology has to do with identifying the different modules that make up our unconcsious mental processing. Here's an article on the 'intentional module'.
Whew! Ok, I admit there was lots more (including an especially big thing I was doing on the ME for my Mom), but I'm tired, hungry and in a Saskatchewan hotel room - so it's time for me to change at least one of those circumstances (I'm going to go eat).
