June 2007 Archives

Crater Could Solve 1908 Tunguska Meteor Mystery - Yahoo! News

"Expeditions in the 1960s concluded the lake was not an impact crater, but their technologies were limited," Longo said. With the advent of better sonar and computer technologies, he explained, the lake took shape.

Going a step further, Longo's team dove to the bottom and took 6-foot core samples, revealing fresh mud-like sediment on top of "chaotic deposits" beneath. Still, Longo explained the samples are inconclusive of a meteorite impact.

In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces - washingtonpost.com

LONDON When I was 10, I founded an international organization known as the Black Cat Club. My friend Richard was the only other member. My younger brother, Hal, had "provisional status," which meant that he had to try out for full membership every other week. We told him we would consider his application if he jumped off the garage roof -- about eight feet from the ground. He had a moment of doubt as he looked over the edge, but we said it wouldn't hurt if he shouted the words "Fly like an eagle!" When he jumped, his knees came up so fast that he knocked himself out. I think the lesson he learned that day was not to trust his brother, which is a pretty valuable one for a growing lad.

A buffet sure to leave you hungry

Among the most unlikely residents of Christchurch, a New Zealand city of 414,000, is a philosophy professor whose work reaches every corner of the planet, a man Time magazine described as one of the most influential media personalities anywhere. Denis Dutton, born in Los Angeles 63 years ago, sits down at his computer every day and carefully begins explaining the world to itself through Arts & Letters Daily, a great intellectual magazine that could have existed at no previous moment in history.

The Bertrand Russell Society | Russell's Writings

Positive Atheism (since 1995) Join the Struggle Against Anti-Atheist Bigotry!

Atheist n A person to be pitied in that he is unable to believe things for which there is no evidence, and who has thus deprived himself of a convenient means of feeling superior to others.

Science of the Soul -- New York Times

As evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges -- not just in people but in other animals as well.

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes's dictum, "I think, therefore I am," loses its force.

ScienceDaily: Mind & Brain News

ScienceDaily: Chimpanzees show alturistic traits

LONDON, June 24 (UPI) -- Chimpanzees possess the ability for interspecific altruism, researchers in Germany have found.

Altruism -- helping another with no expectation of personal reward -- was once thought to be a uniquely human trait, The Times of London reported. However, in recent experiments, chimpanzees repeatedly helped humans who appeared to be struggling to reach a stick within the animal's enclosure.

The chimps, which were interacting with humans who had not given them food, spontaneously helped the humans by reaching across and helping them get the stick.

The experiments were carried out among 36 chimpanzees at a sanctuary for the animals in Uganda.

Anthropologists cite altruism as a key to developing civilized and complex societies. Although altruism has been observed in many species, this recent experiment is special because it shows ability for one species to be altruistic with another species, the Times said.

A tragic legacy | Salon Books

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness -- who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil -- is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations -- moral, pragmatic, or otherwise -- on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Collection: All 6,288 Smithsonian Images

Internet Smackdown: The Amateur vs. the Professional

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture bemoans the rise of amateurism in all spheres of professional life, specifically as facilitated by the internet's long reach. It bemoans a lot of other serious problems raised by something as insidiously intrusive as the web, but we'll confine the focus here to the question of the amateur vs. the professional.

Many Colleges Reject Women at Higher Rates Than for Men -- US News and World Reports

The reason for these lower admissions rates for female students is simple, if bitterly ironic: From the early grades on up, girls tend to be better students. By the time college admissions come into the picture, many watchers of the "boy gap" agree, it's too late for the lads to catch up on their own. Indeed, beginning in those formative K-12 years, girls watch less television, spend less time playing sports, and are far less likely to find themselves in detention. They are more likely to participate in drama, art, and music classes—extracurriculars that are catnip for admissions officers. Across the board, girls study more, score better, and are less likely to find themselves in special education classes.

You Shall Not Kill Has No Meaning in the Real World of Religion

But back to this killing thing. Why does it not mean what it says to the two major spiritualities, so called, that claim ownership of the rules?

For the most part it seems that killing is ok when it is defensive killing. The problem is that in the eye of the killers, all killing is defensive. Killing seems to be ok when a person or a country feels "threatened." Actually there are no "attackers" on the entire planet earth, only "defenders," as noted by Neil Donald Walsh. Everyone who attacks someone is merely defending something and that makes it ok. Whatever "you shall not kill" was supposed to mean, it has no meaning in practical fact or practice.

Personally, much of the injunctions to kill "men, women, children and all their cattle" seems to issue forth mostly from the prophets, who seem to me to have symptoms similar to schizophrenia and rank narcissism for the Lord. I have written elsewhere on the topic of asking whether much of what passes for religious belief and devotion on the part of those that want to extend the Old Testament ways of governing to other, might in fact be mental illness disguised under the garb of devote religion. Actually I believe it often is, including some of the most kill oriented leaders, under "God", in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Maybe it's time to declare modern religion to be "Non-Prophet."

Epidemic of Ignorance: The Difficult Struggle Against AIDS in Africa - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

The Difficult Struggle Against AIDS in Africa

By Marco Evers

Millions in Sub-Saharan Africa are infected with the HIV virus which causes AIDS. But efforts to curb the disease continue to fail due to disinformation and bad politics. What can be done?

Main Page - Gutenberg

Paul Halsall/Fordham University: Internet History Sourcebooks Project

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.

Artcyclopedia: The Fine Art Search Engine

MetaGlossary.com

Tate: Learn Online

Watch over 300 hours of video, take a course on modern and contemporary art, test yourself on 60s culture and discover artists from Turner to Hirst.

U.Va. Podcasts & Webcasts

What is empathy, and why do we make such a fuss over it?
6/2/06 - What is empathy, and why do we make such a fuss over it? That's one topic studied by Mitch Green, a U.Va associate professor of philosophy. In this lecture from Reunions Weekend 2006, Green examines some of the leading theories of why empathy is considered a virtue.

RomeReborn1.0

ABC News: Does Death Penalty Achieve Desired Effect?

The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations pointing out flaws in the justice system has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago. What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

Killing Tyrants -- Dissent Magazine

Is it possible to oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of killing tyrants? That is, I think, my own position, but the botched execution of Saddam Hussein, which looked more like savage revenge than impartial justice, made it much harder to hold on to both those views. Still, they seem to me contradictory but not incompatible. I don’t believe that the state should kill people convicted of crimes against other people, even of terrible crimes. Except when it is resisting military attack or helping others who are under attack, the state should not be in the killing business; its first commitment is to the preservation of life. But a tyrant has committed crimes not simply against individuals but against the solidarity of the citizens, against the commonwealth, against the very idea of a political community. And that seems to raise the stakes; a tyrant is not an ordinary criminal.

DON'T KNOW MUCH BIOLOGY --By Jerry Coyne

Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said "no"? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation.

Yet something like this happened a week ago during the Republican presidential debate. When the moderator asked nine candidates to raise their hands if they "didn't believe in evolution," three hands went into the air--those of Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo. Although I am a biologist who has found himself battling creationism frequently throughout his professional life, I was still mortified. Because there is just as much evidence for the fact of evolution as there is for the existence of atoms, anyone raising his hand must have been grossly misinformed.

The New Atheists

These believers, along with those who think of themselves as "spiritual," as well as professed unbelievers, help to explain why according to the Pew study so many Americans--32 percent--want less religious influence on government. Twenty-four percent say that President Bush talks too much about his religious faith and prayer, and 28 percent deny that the United States is a Christian nation. Most dramatically, a whopping 49 percent believe that Christian conservatives have gone too far "in trying to impose their religious values on the country." This, then, is an unreported secret of American life: Considerable numbers of Americans, religious and secular, are becoming fed up with the in-your-face religion that has come to mark our society.

Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty

But why did the Greek men find Helen, and other beautiful women, so intoxicating?

American Chronicle: Those Fanatical Atheists

Well, it goes something like this: If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

Polls: Most believe Bible as God's word- Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

More than three-quarters of Americans believe the Bible is literally the word of God or inspired by the word of God, according to a trio of Gallup surveys, with 19 percent saying the Good Book is a compendium of myth and legend.
The three surveys found that an average 31 percent of the respondents said that "the Bible is absolutely accurate and should be taken literally word for word," according to Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll.
Forty-seven percent said the Bible was "the inspired word of God," and 19 percent said it was a book of ancient fables, history and "moral precepts" recorded by man.
The breakdown of beliefs has not changed much recently: The average number of people who take the Bible literally, in fact, has remained steady since 1991.

Interracial marriage flourishes in U.S. - Race & Ethnicity - MSNBC.com

After 40 years, interracial marriage flourishing
Since landmark 1967 ruling, unions have moved from radical to everyday