Look at those currents, man!

March 28, 2012 • 5:44 am

by Matthew Cobb

Most of our planet is covered in ocean, and throughout the history of life, the seas have played a decisive role in shaping biodiversity. In the future, a major effect of increasing CO2 levels will be felt through acidification of the sea (as CO2 dissolves into the water), which will have massive effects on sea life, even if there is a very small change in acidity.

One of the major ways that the oceans affect terrestrial life is through their effects on climate, via the major ocean currents. (I write this from a UK that should be freezing cold because of its latitude, but which is warmed by the Gulf Stream.) This rather trippy video (complete with appropriate chillout music) is from NASA and shows a model of the world’s ocean currents. Watch and wonder – wonder both in awe, and wonder what would happen if any of them stopped, or reversed… (Be patient – the video takes a long time to start, for some reason…)

The Academy of Natural Sciences at 200

March 27, 2012 • 7:52 am

by Greg Mayer

This year is the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the oldest natural history museum in the United States. Although now surpassed in size by some later-founded institutions, it is still one of the most important natural history museums in America, rich in types and other historically important specimens, and home to such luminaries as the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope  in the 19th century and Ted Daeschler today. The Academy is celebrating its bicentennial with special exhibitions and web features, and the publication of a book, A Glorious Enterprise, by R.M. Peck and M.T. Stroud, with photographs by Rosamund Purcell. The New York Times has an article by Cornelia Dean, with a selection of images by Purcell and from the Academy’s archives and library, and further images can be seen at the University of Pennsylvania Press website (publishers of the book).

Two species of musk parrot from Fiji, painted by Titian Peale of the United States Exploring Expedition. Peale was a Philadelphia naturalist whose family had it's own museum, the Peale Museum; some of his collections, however, went to the Academy.

We’ve done museum reviews and discussed the merits of varying approaches to exhibition, notably the ‘interactive’ vs. ‘cabinet’ styles, here at WEIT a number times (see, for example here, here, here, here and here). Natural history museums grew out of the older “cabinets of curiosities”, and the original Academy exhibits were in this style (which is not quite the same as the newer style I’ve taken to calling the ‘cabinet’ style, which is influenced by the older tradition). Although I’ve been to the Academy several times, it has always been for research in the collections (which, at most natural history museums, vastly outnumber the specimens on display, and form the basis of the museum’s scientific mission), and unfortunately, I’ve never gotten to take more than a cursory walk through the exhibits. So, I should go to see the exhibits– and so should you!

For once, British politicians look as stupid as ours

March 27, 2012 • 4:36 am

Misery loves company, so I’m ashamed to say that I’m relieved that America is not alone in its religious stupidity. According to totalpolitics, three Christian MPs have sent a letter to the government agency in charge of overseeing advertising, objecting to the ban on ads promoting faith healing:

Gary Streeter (Con), Gavin Shuker (Lab) and Tim Farron (Lib Dem) say that they want the Advertising Standards Authority to produce “indisputable scientific evidence” to say that prayer does not work – otherwise they will raise the issue in Parliament.

The MPs wrote to dispute the ruling after the outpouring of support and prayer for football star Fabrice Muamba.

Muamba, who played for Bolton, had a cardiac arrest on the pitch in March and was revived after 78 minutes of heart stoppage.  Although he’s not likely to play again, his revival was clearly an act of God.

Last month, a Christian group in Bath were banned from using leaflets that said: “NEED HEALING? GOD CAN HEAL TODAY!… We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness.”

The ASA said the claims were misleading and could discourage people from seeking essential medical treatment.

Here’s the letter sent by the MPs:

Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury
Chairman, Advertising Standards Agency
21st March 2012

We are writing on behalf of the all-party Christians in Parliament group in Westminster and your ruling that the Healing On The Streets ministry in Bath are no longer able to claim, in their advertising, that God can heal people from medical conditions.

We write to express our concern at this decision and to enquire about the basis on which it has been made. It appears to cut across two thousand years of Christian tradition and the very clear teaching in the Bible. Many of us have seen and experienced physical healing ourselves in our own families and churches and wonder why you have decided that this is not possible.

On what scientific research or empirical evidence have you based this decision?

You might be interested to know that I (Gary Streeter) received divine healing myself at a church meeting in 1983 on my right hand, which was in pain for many years. After prayer at that meeting, my hand was immediately free from pain and has been ever since. What does the ASA say about that? I would be the first to accept that prayed for people do not always get healed, but sometimes they do. That is all this sincere group of Christians in Bath are claiming.

It is interesting to note that since the traumatic collapse of the footballer Fabrice Muamba the whole nation appears to be praying for a physical healing for him. I enclose some media extracts. Are they wrong also and will you seek to intervene?

We invite your detailed response to this letter and unless you can persuade us that you have reached your ruling on the basis of indisputable scientific evidence, we intend to raise this matter in Parliament.

Yours sincerely,

Gary Streeter MP (Con)
Chair, Christians in Parliament

Gavin Shuker MP (Labour)
Vice Chair, Christians in Parliament

Tim Farron (Lib-Dem)
Vice Chair, Christians in Parliament

Well, how about the indisputable scientific evidence for the failure of intercessory prayer to heal cardiac incidents (like Muamba had), or the complete inability of God to heal amputees?

The American Cancer Society notes:

One review published in 1998 looked at 172 cases of deaths among children treated by faith healing instead of conventional methods. These researchers estimated that if conventional treatment had been given, the survival rate for most of these children would have been more than 90 percent, with the remainder of the children also having a good chance of survival. A more recent study found that more than 200 children had died of treatable illnesses in the United States over the past thirty years because their parents relied on spiritual healing rather than conventional medical treatment.

It’s very bizarre that these politicians cite undocumented anecdotes as a reason to advertise faith healing—anecdotes that fly in the face of much evidence.  If they had their way and faith healing were promulgated as efficacious, lots of people would die or suffer seeking quack, spiritual nostrums. Promoting faith healing is nothing less than incitement to murder.

Their actions are dangerous, and of course these three won’t have their way.  But I’m continually surprised that this kind of stuff surfaces in a UK that is supposed to be largely secular.

For a LOLzy takedown of these hapless MPs, read Martin Robbins’s dissection of the episode in the Guardian’s Lay Scientist. It includes the following:

Before I go any further; it cannot be emphasized enough how hideously arrogant and un-Christian the idea of prayer-healing is. Let’s assume for a moment that we all believe in God, and we all agree that he is generally awesome and has the ability to heal sick people if he so chooses.

The implication of prayer-healing is that special people can demand that God heals someone, and he’ll just do it. That only makes sense if you believe that a) God is a bit absent-minded and doesn’t really notice all the sick people until some clever human points them out to him, or b)God is the fourth emergency service (the AA come fifth in this world-view), and we’re entitled customers who pay with prayer and should damn well get some service.

Either way, the message from faith-healers – and the hapless morons who support them – is clear: “Fuck God’s plan, He’s our bitch.” I’m not a Christian myself, but if I were, I think I’d be pretty frustrated with this sort of selfish, arrogant attitude, and I’d laugh in the face of people who claimed to have some divine right over His powers.

He then takes apart the MP’s letter line by line.

h/t: Diane G.

Kitteh contest: Neko

March 27, 2012 • 3:56 am

Reader Chris sends two photos and a bit of information about her lovely moggie:

I’m Chris and this is my cat Neko (Japanese for cat, pretty clever.. eh?). His pastimes include lying on the vents, lying on the couch, lying on my laptop …. a lot of lying around…. He also likes to torment my dogs, slowly walking by them until they cannot stand it any longer and have to chase him. Neko merrily scampers off to where they can’t get him. I am also convinced that he holds a secret desire to kill me. He likes to wait until I turn all the lights off and then attack my legs. He also likes to grab my feet as I go up the steps and strategically lie down at the top of the steps so I have to step over him…. ahhh, my sweet, sweet kitty.

Do tortoises need glasses?

March 26, 2012 • 5:20 pm

by Greg Mayer

This young tortoise is having a hard time getting a bite of this piece of tomato.

I’m not sure what kind of tortoise it is– it looks like a member of the genus Testudo, which consists of about four species with a bunch of subspecies from southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia (see tortoise references below). [UPDATE: Testudo are fairly common in the pet trade– can anyone identify the little feller? UPDATE II: Readers Christopher McLaughlin and Derek have identified it as Geochelone sulcata, a species from the Sahel-Sudan region just south of the Sahara. ]

The tortoise’s seeming inability to adjust its angle of attack reminds me of the behavior of lizards I have fed by putting food in a clear glass dish. They see the food, and keep butting their head into the side of the dish, not realizing that if they lifted their head up, and then bit down over the side of the bowl, they’d get it.

Cats are familiar with the concept of glass, and know, for example, how to enter a room via the open part of a sliding glass door, and don’t keep walking into the glass.

h/t: Matthew

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M. Le, C.J. Raxworthy, and W.P. McCord. 2006. A molecular phylogeny of tortoises (Testudines: Testudinidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40:517-531. pdf

Rhodin, A.G.J., J.B. Iverson, and H.B. Shaffer. 2010 Turtles of the world, 2010 update. Chelonian Research Monographs 5:85-164. pdf

Evolution vs. wealth

March 26, 2012 • 5:16 am

From Calamities of Nature comes this unprofessionally drawn but most enlightening graph of the relationship between national wealth (gross domestic product) and belief in evolution, with each dot representing a country (dots from similar regions have the same color). Click to enlarge:

The points are not all independent, of course, because geographically contiguous countries have similar religions (ergo similar feelings about evolution) and similar degrees of wealth.  Still, it shows what I’ve mentioned several times before: northern Europe has high national wealth and high belief in evolution; eastern Europe has the opposite, even though many of those countries were once Communist, and the poorer you are, the less likely you are to accept evolution.

The positive relationship suggests that countries that are wealthier, and whose inhabitants are doing better, have less impetus to be religious, and hence less need to reject evolution.

Most striking to Americans is our status as an outlier: our acceptance of evolution is much lower than our GDP would indicate.  This is probably the result of other factors that make American society, while wealthy, more socially dysfunctional: greater income inquality, lack of social support like national health care, and so on (see Greg Paul’s work on the strong negative relationship between societal “success” and religiosity).

I’m not a sociologist, of course, so my take is at best superficial, but more and more data show that religion takes hold when society fails to fulfill certain fundamental needs of its members, making them  less secure and more likely to grab for the supernatural.  While the U.S. is a wealthy country, it is very low on Greg Paul’s “successful society scale,” and we have inordinately high levels of income inequality, also a sign of social insecurity.

I’m not a Marxist, but data support Karl’s famous statement, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”

Chris Hayes presents atheism

March 25, 2012 • 2:34 pm

Here are three “atheism” clips from of Chris Hayes’s show on MSNBC this morning (there’s one on religion and global warming as well).  The guests include Steve Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Susan Jacoby, Jamila Bey, Jamie Kilstein and pastor Mike Aus. In the first video, which I found a tad boring (but of course I’m already on board, and this is still a good debate to have on mainstream television), Pinker makes a good comment at 11:30 about the strongest evidence for atheism.  Jamila Bey is also impressive.  Keep watching after the allotted time, because it goes on.

I haven’t watched anything but the first segment of the first video, as I haz duties. Weigh in on the rest if you’ve watched them.

h/t: Reverend E!