Secrets of Our Living Planet - The Emerald Band

I may not be able to blog this week, since I'm going to be spending some quality time with my family, so I'm leaving you dear readers with a fascinating documentary.

We've seen in multiple cases before the intricacies of various animals. What's different about today's documentary is that it showcases the interesting and intricate relationships between various organisms to explain why there is so much biological diversity in the Earth's rain forests, why so many of these organisms are so weird, and why these relationships and processes matter.

Part of the key has to do with the runaway result of an evolutionary arms races of specialization and ingenious manipulation between plants and pests, predators and prey, parasites and hosts. And underneath it all is the process of natural selection, that blind watchmaker that can produce incredible adaptations out of physical, chemical and biological necessity.

See you next week!

Read More

Dare Mighty Things - Curiosity on Mars

I don't know about you, but I'm still ecstatic about the Curiosity success, and things just keep getting better and better...

Some of the obvious important and concrete goals of NASA have to do with scientific research, discovery, application and engineering, but although it cannot be so easily quantified, one could easily argue that whether by design or chance, it is one of the greatest vehicles we have to increase the fecundity of scientific inspiration: NASA's successes inspire new generations of young people to dream big and to work to make those dreams come true, especially in an age when scientific literacy is more needed than ever to solve our technological, social and environmental challenges.

So here is a little bit of inspiration:

And also, thanks to my good friend Harris, I get to share some high-definition footage of Curiosity landing on Mars, captured by Curiosity itself:

And this one is the same thing, but it centers on the heat shield, so it's a lot more stable:

Go create something great :)

Read More

Todd Akin, Republicans and "Legitimate Rape"

As you may be aware, Congressman Todd Akin has been receiving fire from all directions for his stupid, right-wing ideological, scientifically illiterate and insensitive remarks about how women who are victims of "legitimate rape" have natural physiological mechanisms to prevent pregnancies, implying that women who do get pregnant after being raped were not really raped. Everyone's been jumping on the response bandwagon, and so I can do no better than to summarize what's going on.

First we have the folks from Mr. Deity promoting the "mourning-after pill," for those ladies who may have "enjoyed their forced sexual encounter just a little too much":

And while Republicans are acting all offended by Akin's remarks, one should not forget that Akin's real sin is to make public what these heartless jerks really believe and have actually made their official party platform (and I'm talking even prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mike Huckabee, not just fringe conservative outcasts).

Thankfully, the good folks at The Young Turks don't let these conservatives get away with these Republican bullshit public relations spins:

And if the whole idea that female bodies can prevent pregnancy due to forcible copulation does sound familiar to you, that's probably something you learned in this previous episode about sperm, but it wasn't about women... it was about ducks!

Here's a little more on that, plus some actual footage of the weird duck corkscrew penis...

And let's not lose focus about why conservatives are calling out for Akin's withdrawal from the race. It's not about their concern for women's health and reproductive rights, as if... it's about what will happen to the GOP come election time...

I swear... you cannot make this stuff up... If you care about women and their rights at all, make your voice heard in the elections, and vote these jerks out of office...

But of course, some of the best responses to this story come to us courtesy of The Onion.

First, we have the good news headline: Woman relieved to learn her rape was illegitimate.  The victim of a brutal sexual assault last month, Martha Byars confessed that “Being violently coerced into having sex was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, so I take comfort in knowing it wasn’t actually rape. Thank God for that,” she added. “I’m so relieved to know that my child’s father, the man who muffled my screams as he forcefully penetrated me over and over and left me hemorrhaging to death on the street, is not a rapist.” Hallelujah!

Then, in its story "I Misspoke—What I Meant To Say Is 'I Am Dumb As Dog Shit And I Am A Terrible Human Being'," we learn that this may have all been a misunderstanding based on a poor choice of words by Akin. What he really meant to say is "I am a worthless, moronic sack of shit and an utterly irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever. I am an evil, fucked-up man who should never have been elected to the United States Congress, and anyone who would vote for me is probably a pretty big fucking dumbshit, too. I am not a competent or respectable politician; I am, essentially, a subhuman monster of a prick, a prick as profoundly insensitive as he is monumentally unintelligent in every respect; somebody should apply dozens of layers of duct tape to my mouth every morning so that words are not able to exit my large, dumb, misogynist, imbecilic mouth at any point; I make the planet worse; I don’t know jack shit about any of the topics I spoke about in that interview, or about any topics at all, really; I should apologize every day to the women of the world, but doing so would most likely be an exercise in futility given my rock-bottom intellect and my complete and utter lack of human decency; I am, in no uncertain terms, not even worth the time it took you to read this."

And of course, while Akin may be an utter dumbshit, that in no way reflects GOP views, since Republicans Condemn Akin's Comments as Blemish on Party's Otherwise Spotless Women's Rights Record...

But even after all this, Akin has not withdrawn from the race, and in fact he's just barely behind his opponent, so before you faint in disbelief, you should be aware that Poll Reveals You Live In Country Where Mentally Ill Man Still Has Good Chance Of Being Senator.

Read More

Horrifying Planet - Zebra: Nature's Ultimate Prey

When it comes to the philosophical problem of evil (the question of how an omnipotent and benevolent God would allow unnecessary suffering to exist), religious believers tend to argue that suffering is a necessary consequence of our having free will: sure, our freedom does tend to produce all kinds of nightmares every now and then, but overall, the net benefits of having free will outweigh the bad.

Whatever merit that answer may have (it doesn't), it's a great distraction from what philosophers call "natural" evil: the suffering created by non-human related causes: things like disease, animal suffering, earthquakes, etc., and the suffering and destruction experienced by non-human animals. So how do you explain that?

Well, The Onion thinks that you can do it through Intelligent (but evil) Design :)

I bet zebras hate giraffes and ostriches :)

Read More

Jane Goodall on Chimpanzees and Human Emotions

Jane Goodall's story of scientific discovery is an amazing one, but even more amazing are the stories that she shares with the world, the way she tells these stories, and the optimism with which she confronts pressing global issues such as conservation, poverty, education, deforestation, etc.

If you want a basic introduction to the wonders and mysteries of our closest evolutionary cousins, you could probably not do better than to listen to Jane Goodall recount some fascinating incidents that have shed so much light into our understanding of these adorable creatures.

But she also carries a powerful ethical message about the need for more humane, sustainable practices, and for the moral obligation we have to those around us and to future generations at whose expense we get to lead lavish and profligate lifestyles. And because rhetoric can inspire but not necessarily guide, she also offers some very practical examples of programs, big and small, already in place and from which we could learn how to make the world a better place for everyone.

I could listen to her speak all day long :)

Read More

I Want to Be Sarah Palin?

One of the things I despise about politics is the hypocrisy and the double standards: it's okay for our group to do something, but if those from the other side of the isle do the same thing, then that very same thing is evil; or conversely, it's so wrong for those on the other side to do something, but it's perfectly fine for our group to do the exact same thing, or even the very same thing on steroids...

I don't know whether it's willful manipulation or whether they are so blind by cognitive biases that they actually believe the things they say, but I have to confess that even thoughI never thought I'd see the day when I would want to be Sarah Palin, if being Sarah Palin means I would never again have to listen to Sarah Palin, then I'd want to be Sarah Palin. Jon Stewart explains:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Talk about a dilemma!

Read More

U.S. Teens Lead World in Teen Pregnancy-Test Scores

Say what you will about our alarming rate of science illiteracy, the decay of our political discourse, the brainwashing and mindlessness of our entertainment industry... We may be lagging behind in a lot of different areas, but there are some things at which we Americans are still number 1!  USA!  USA!?  USA??

I bet these girls didn't even study and still got positive scores on their tests!

Read More

Interactive Fully Panoramic Photograph of Mars via Curiosity Rover

This may just be the coolest thing you see this week: a high-def 360-degree panoramic image based on photographs taken by the Curiosity rover in Mars.

And as if that weren't awesome enough, if you view this image through your mobile device, the gyroscope inside it will help give you a more realistic experience, since the picture is configured to show you different angles of Mars (and the rover itself), depending on the direction your phone or tablet is pointed.

And just in case you have problems viewing it, you can always go to the original source.

Read More

The "Theory" of Revolution :)

Every now and then a cartoon comes along that, through the use of a hilarious reductio ad absurdum, so clearly and succinctly demolishes creationism as a viable alternative hypothesis to explain the complexity and diversity of life, exposes its inherent irrationality, and makes clear its ulterior motivation and the double standards on which it is popularly accepted, that I just have to share with everyone here.

In this case, it comes from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Read More

Einstein Mask Optical Illusion

In our everyday experience, it seems as though perception is simply a matter of information hitting your sense organs and going straight to our brain. In reality, however, perception turns out to be an incredibly sophisticated and complex concatenation of various brain modules actively trying to interpret and synthesize the disparate information sent by the different senses. The reason perception may seem to be a passive phenomenon is that it's effortless, but that doesn't mean that there's not a hell of a lot of stuff going on in the brain. It just means that our brains have evolved to do all this amazing work without making us consciously aware of what it's doing.

But how do we know that perception is an active process of interpretation, synthesis and recognition? Well, a great place to start would be the lessons we get from the study of optical illusions, such as the following spooky Einstein illusion because even if you understand why you experience the illusion, you can't not experience it. Feel your brain fooling you:

For a great introduction to perception and optical illusions, check out Beau Lotto's TEDTalk.

Read More

Doctor-Patient Relationship Getting Serious

Human knowledge starts with experience, but it doesn't end there. We use the data of our experience to come up with theories and explanations for those experiences, so that we can make sense of them and so that we can compare, contrast and contextualize them in terms of all the other things we know.

In philosophy, we sometimes like to talk about the idea of an "inference to the best explanation," and as The Onion shows in the hilarious piece below, some people miss out on the "best" part :)

Read More

Quit Your Technology Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities

As a student of philosophy, and as someone who has chosen to dedicate his life to the pursuit and sharing of wisdom, you might call me biased, but I really believe that the world would be a better place (intellectually, morally, politically, culturally, scientifically, aesthetically, etc.) if we had more philosophy in our lives.

And I'm not alone in this position. If you remember Damon Horowitz (from one of the best TEDTalks of all time), he's the philosopher-in-residence at Google, doing some groundbreaking work with them in a way that most technologists wouldn't be able to. And he manages to do this, he claims, because the humanities have taught him profound valuable lessons about cognition, language, humanity, meaning, and all the aspects relevant to the human condition that go far beyond what mainstream courses in computer programming and artificial intelligence could ever possibly imagine.

So, in the following presentation delivered at Stanford University, Horowitz makes a very compelling case for the importance of pursuing a higher level of education in the humanities

And if you're a little more practically-minded, there's still every reason to pursue a higher education degree in philosophy, even if you end up doing something else. Philosophy will give you the kind of training that will make you stand out from the crowd and create something great and valuable.

Read More

Jon Stewart on the Curiosity Mars Touch-Down

Yes, here I go again with more stuff on the landing of Curiosity on Mars, but you'd have to be made of stone not to be awed and excited by the incredible accomplishment this landing represented. When Jon Stewart saw the Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror we featured a couple of months ago, he was on the edge of his seat.

But have you wondered why the folks at NASA worked so hard to get this done? Maybe this is what they have to do to get laid :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Read More

Update on Curiosity Awesomeness

Here I was, getting all depressed about the fact that while we know Curiosity landed successfully and according to plan, no one got to experience the epic descent, but as it turns out, NASA was way ahead of the game and made perfect plans for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to snap some awesome pictures, like the one below:

I don't know the exact details, but the math that must have been required to triangulate and synchronize all these times, places, angles and directions are worthy of an Olympic gold medal.

Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps, maybe it's time to get humbled by brain power...

Read More

Curiosity Has Landed!

Across the vastness of interplanetary space, the nice folks at NASA have hit it out of the ballpark with what looks like a perfect landing on Mars.

I don't know if I can convey the significance of this event, but consider just how momentous an accomplishment this is: Curiosity landed safely at a distance our human brains can't apprehend, and yet this all happened because of the science that human brains can comprehend.

And the thing that's bitter-sweet for me is that such an incredible feat took place in a land where no one got to experience it... it's like the universe missed out on something amazing.

But before I get all existential, let me share some of the tweets Curiosity posted during the last stages of its amazing landing:

Read More