Well, we're all ignorant about something, but ...

... this guy appears to make a career out of it.

"Dry toilets are essentially outhouses brought indoors." Michael Fumento

"Yes, parts of the underdeveloped world have severe water shortages but have you been to Arizona lately? Word has it they have some mighty fine flush toilets there." Michael Fumento

"Further, while water is a natural resource it's not something that you can actually use up like ore or fossil fuels. Water always remains water; reusing it is just a matter of cleaning it." Michael Fumento

Link: The Battle over Toilets for All by Michael Fumento, Scripps Howard News Service, January 15, 2004, Copyright 2004 Scripps Howard, Inc.

He writes books too! The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS is one. But what's really impressive: "He co-authored [a] monograph with Michelle Malkin, entitled Rachel's Folly: The End of Chlorine ..."

A little bit of justice in nature ... ?

Hens eject sperm; roosters are clueless

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Today's QUOTES:

... Whatever partisan chuckle you might get from re-invented posturing by conservatives, its main holding power is a distraction from noticing the way in which Democrats have taken a hold of the worst of the Bush agenda --corporate bailouts, abuse of executive powers, failed middle-east policy-- with insider ownership. --Bailouts & Parties by Jerome Armstrong, MyDD ... Conservatives know that teenage pregnancy is bad. So it doesn’t really matter too much if they do it. But libruls don’t know it’s bad. That’s evil. -- Why Bristol Palin is Different, Worry Wart

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Maybe science IS against us ...

Inhalation of Childbirth Hormone Bolsters Trust

Researchers say people are more likely to trust others if they inhale a chemical called oxytocin. In an experiment, volunteers who inhaled oxytocin, a hormone involved in childbirth, were far more likely than to trust someone else with their money than people not exposed to the hormone.

Essence of trust now bottled to help bring out your own inner Elmer Gantry.


(via Liquid Trust”: the Perfect Scent for Liars)

Yep, that's Arizona ...

... with it's really, really idiotic, blind and destructive Republican legislature (not that Arizona Democrats are that far behind):

On the same day the new President proclaims "We will restore science to its rightful place," the Arizona State Senate held a hearing on shutting down Science Foundation Arizona (SFA). [Arizona Geology]

... and more Rick Warren ...

McClatchy has a commentary by Mary Sanchez, The Kansas City Star:

Rick Warren needs to evolve

Rick Warren evolve? He's as evolved as the rest of us. Neither evolution (nor the almighty and usually invisible individual or individuals monitoring or mentoring us from near and far) has seen fit to provide, or even allow for, equality of reason, logic, mental prowess, clarity. We must fight this out amongst ourselves and do the best we can ...

Unchristian spirit ...

Men like Rick Warren have been fighting the good fight against Reason since men like him began walking with the dinosaurs. Just ask him ...

To teach that Jesus' goal was to abolish reason and the acquisition of knowledge is to belittle the hopeful --and Christian-- message that Jesus managed to transmit through time.

Searching the internet is good for my brain...

Or so implies a study that measured neuron activity in seniors.

The Internet search got more neurons popping, in areas involved in reasoning and memory, such as the frontal lobes and hippocampus ...

Scientist stupidities ...

One of the irritations in life is constantly hearing from those who are so sure of their own critical thinking abilities (e.g. PZ Myers) that they don't even recognize their own fact-free preconceptions.

Creepy, crawly ...

Turns out that earthworms, probably my favorite crawly critters, are more complex that scientists assumed.

Don't Judge a Worm by its Color

We keep trying to simplify the world and it continues to bite us in our assumptions.

Stupid is as stupid does ...

Judging sex difference from points of masculine vs feminine 'lights' (The Way S/he Moves, by Rachel Zelkowitz, Science NOW Daily News, 9 September 2008).

Researchers often study these kinds of signals using something called a point-light figure, a collection of dots arranged in a human form. The figure is supposed to convey minimal information, but simple manipulations--broadening the dots on the shoulder region or narrowing dots that represent the waist--can make figures seem more masculine or more feminine.

There seems to be a profusion of 'science' studies making amazingly silly assumptions about behavioral sex differences from remarkably biased testing that seems to satisfy male assumptions about female thoughts, behaviors and motivations.

How does your brain know where you stop and a bicycle begins?

Creepy:

How to Disown a Body Part

You know, this shouldn't really be such a surprise ...

Secretly stressed. Bears show deleterious effects from being captured and handled.

I'm somewhat confused by the 'secretly' stressed claim. As if the bears were attempting to hide the fact that attacking them, sedating them, pulling their teeth etc would have a negative effect on their bodies and their minds.

Evidently these rules only apply to US women ...

Take a look at Olivera "Olja" Finn's life, and you can tick off the actions women are supposed to avoid if they want to advance in science. Get married fresh out of high school. Check. Interrupt your education for your husband's sake. Check. Allow his career to take precedence over yours. Check. Have children before you have a job and give birth at what seem like inopportune times, such as shortly before you start graduate school. Check.

Making inferences without understanding ...

Quantum Physics Gets "Spooky"

Of course, if they don't infer, and test their inferences, they will never understand.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

"Disorder and diffusion crop up all the time and are mainly a nuisance," Pendry says. “But by understanding them, we can maybe use them to our advantage." ... So we discuss light through opaque objects. Politics should be as easy

... there is no place left for the kind of action that Thoreau advocated. His way – and that of Gandhi and King, who took so much from him – envisions a state opponent which one could hope to shame into honorable action by the superior moral force of principled civil disobedience. But the very hallmark of the present regime is its shamelessness, its utter lack of any sense of honor or principle, its bestial addiction to raw power.

A promise from Georgie-boy Bush, eight years ago: “So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.” -- One can see how important God and the Bible is to Georgie-boy as he began breaking his oath immediately, probably from second #1.

The great Digby of Hullabaloo has in instant answer to that riddle, the same answer as to why America has no single-payer health care, no trains, no daycare, slums of violent hell in every major city, and brutal working conditions: racism.

... the idea that the Rule of Law is only for common people, but not for our political leaders and Washington elite, is pervasive among the political and pundit class, in both parties. ...

Re: Caribbean Coral: "The take-home message seems to be that the most glaring problems--like bombing--might not be as serious in the long term as the quiet or silent problems, like runoff and development," says David Niebuhr, a marine biologist ...

Survey Finds Citations Growing Narrower as Journals Move Online "...Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon." --Interesting that what turns out to be a boon in access to information for the public may do further harm to 'journalistic' endeavors.

On senior moments, older rats, whippersnappers and science writing ...

Perhaps my senior moments are comprised more of déjà vu than forgetfulness. ScienceNow has an article titled 'To Sleep, Perchance to Forget' that informs us that

[w]hile we snooze, scientists think, our brains are busy forming new memories by replaying the events of the day. But aging may rob us of this process and set us up for having "senior moments." A new study has found that older rats seem to replay previous events less and, as a result, have more trouble remembering than younger animals.

How our brains form memories is not entirely understood, but sleep may be vital. The hippocampus region of our brain seems to rerun experiences we had while awake, a process that scientists believe helps cement memories. A team led by neuroscientist Carol Barnes at the University of Arizona, Tucson, noticed that older rats--just like older people--sometimes have trouble remembering. Could those memory problems be due to a decline in the brain's replay during sleep?

OK? What exactly in this article is new?

The findings suggest that at least some of the short-term memory loss experienced by elderly people could be due to a decline in automatic replay during sleep, says Michael Hasselmo, a neuroscientist at Boston University. The results could pave the way for treatments to improve memory, Hasselmo says, by targeting brain chemicals that play a role in replay.

So, is this a case of acquiring more information to 'suggest' that what we already 'suspect' about aging and memory loss is valid?

The study is interesting but the presentation is atrocious. Turning over the writing of science to wannabe novalists has been a monstrous mistake. Example:

Further experiments showed that the whippersnappers had a sharper memory; they were faster and more accurate than the older animals in remembering where a hidden platform was located while swimming in a tank of water.

Older rats and whippersnappers, oh my.

For this I'm more than happy to renounce my special ability, for a girl, in math ...

Overall, the researchers found "no gender difference" in scores among children in grades two through 11. Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.

Unrelated to the boy-girl-who's-the-stupidest issue:

The study's most disturbing finding, the authors say, is that neither boys nor girls get many tough math questions on state tests now required to measure a school district's progress under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law. Using a four-level rating scale, with level one being easiest, the authors said that they found no challenging level-three or -four questions on most state tests. The authors worry that means that teachers may start dropping harder math from their curriculums, because "more teachers are gearing their instruction to the test."

Is it my imagination that we always seems so surprised that animals could be quite similar to us in many ways?

Again, from McClatchy:

• Another new fact: Birds, like people, have accents

  Humans aren't the only creatures whose regional drawls and twangs give them away. The same thing goes for songbirds. A scientist at Duke University has found that birds, just like humans, learn their songs from one another and "talk" like the birds they grow up with.

Whether one believes in evolution or that God created the world in six of our current calendar days and then rested on the seventh day, it's difficult to have all that much respect or admiration for an animal, or a creation, that fouls its own nest so thoroughly. That's us, not the birds I'm referring to!

The dumbing of America ... omega-6 vs omega-3 fatty acids

The team, ..., also found that omega-6 fatty acids interfere with cognition

Not to mention that 'violence, major depression, suicide, and bipolar disorder' are associate with low omega-3, high omega-6 diet.

Just thank your corporate food designers and marketers.

An improved chance of survival ...

... is the reason behind some of the common faces humans (and some animals) make.

Emotional faces weren't just for looks. The team found that a fearful visage improves peripheral vision, speeds up eye movement, and boosts air flow, potentially allowing a person to more quickly sense and respond to danger. Squinty, scrunched-up disgusted faces had the opposite effect, limiting vision and decreasing air flow, ostensibly to keep out substances that might be harmful to the eyes or lungs.