Another take on whether we're real

In a post called "Is the 'real me' real?", Frank Wilson ponders the central question of human reality: what is consciousness? It's just a short dip in the pool but I enjoyed reading it. The comments were interesting, too, though god-talk surfaced at the end, like flies drawn to a body. The answer is never god, people. Unless the question is "what doesn't exist yet wastes more human energy than anything else?"

If you'd like an interesting read, try Wilson's post. If nothing else, it will reassure you that there are other thinking people out there. You are not alone; it only seems that way.

By the way, I found this on a blog called When Falls the Coliseum: A Journal of American Culture [or Lack Thereof]. It seems like an interesting site and I've tossed the link into my regular blog-batch folder. Click on the site name to get there.

PS: Art by Carmine. I like this half-collapsed lady.

Unveiling France's bigotry

Mohammed Khan on Al Jazeera English today in an article called "Unveiling French Hypocrisy":

Forcing women to uncover their faces will not create some form of 'moderate Islam' but it does unveil French bigotry.

Indeed. France has acted shamefully in this matter. "You cannot legislate discrimination", as former NYC Health Commissioner Stephen Josephs used to say in reference to AIDS matters. I think that should be a bedrock principle of law: you cannot build a law in order to promulgate a discriminatory policy. Period.

Sign of the times

AP today:

In the unlikely location of a North Carolina jewelry store near the beach, a lavishly jeweled cross and a ring once owned by Pope Paul VI sit under lock and key, awaiting transfer to an even less familiar venue for symbols of Roman Catholic authority: an eBay auction.

 Ugh.

CNN article on evolution and religion

Usually I hate articles written by people who say they believe in both evolution and god. But CNN featured one that wasn't half-bad. "Would Jesus believe in evolution?" is by Frank Giberson and it's not the typical dreck such a title promises. He sticks to the science and says Jesus would have to believe in evolution because it's true. I have to give the guy credit: he gave no quarter to his religious readers, saying this is undoubtedly the case: evolution is real and cannot be denied. You don't hear god folk talk like that very often.

(Mind you, he's also trying to pretend that belief in evolution is compatible with belief in god, which is just foolish. That's always the subtext when science & god types write articles. The truth is that evolution leaves no room for a god. Religion and evolution are like matter and anti-matter: they annihilate each other; they cannot co-exist. But at least he understands the other half of the equation -- that evolution is real and that believing otherwise does not make it go away. There's this, you know, evidence everywhere.)

Moving right along, I was struck by an alarming statistic he cited:

A 2010 Gallup poll indicated that 4 in 10 Americans think that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.”

I've seen the statistic before but each time I bump into it is like driving my car into a wall. I don't understand how people can live in the same world I live in and yet manage to avoid reality. It's shocking how little exercise these people's brains get. Forty percent of the people living in the United States don't seem to think at all, as evidenced by this poll result.

Evolution is not elective. Reality isn't a menu where you pick and choose. It's just there; it's reality. Evolution is the reason you're here and able to read this post. I'm aghast that so many people in our country don't even understand what they are. Because that's literally what this means: they think they're some sort of fairytale creatures.

Wake up, people. Instead of living the life that nature gave you, you walked into a dark closet, shut the door behind you and chose to live in a fantasy. And as you stand there in the dark, you furiously ignore the world that is all around you. Remove those blinders and take your brain out for a test drive. Thinking is fun.

Remember when stuff used to work?

(If you're not in the mood for a rant, skip the first six paragraphs and jump to the science news in the first paragraph that has bold green lettering.)

We used to have an effective system in this country that guaranteed important issues would receive appropriate attention. That system is gone.

In those ancient days, we had legislators who were elected by an informed population and were beholden to the people they served. They cared about the citizens of the United States and often acted in a selfless manner, devoting their considerable energies to improving the quality of life for normal, everyday Americans. When something critical occurred, something with a bearing on our safety or health, for instance, they would bring the issue up in Congress. It might have been a slow process but it did get things done. And sure, there were idiots in Congress then, too. But the sensible people outweighed them. They knew what was important: our country.

Back then, if Congress or the president chose to ignore a pressing problem, the news media would hold their feet to the fire. They were fierce and vocal advocates for the truth, if you can imagine such a thing. I know this must sound absurd to young people who've known only the current, nonsensical, national discourse but the press used to care about publishing the truth. It was their, you know, job.

If our government did something shady, the Fourth Estate understood that its role was to point this out and keep the pressure on until the government changed course. They were the last line of defense for our democracy, keeping the big guy at bay so the little guy could survive. But as I say, that's all gone.

None of these essential tools for democracy is currently operative in our reality-show version of America. We have a disengaged, uninformed population; an irrational, knowledge-free Congress that doesn't understand its job and is blissfully unfamiliar with the Constitution; and there isn't the slightest evidence of an active, ethical press in our country. And all this is occurring as corporate money is flooding our government and warping it beyond recognition. The system that governs our lives no longer works.

Magnifying these problems, our nation's attention is driven by a stunningly mediocre, misinformed, corporate-directed media. This unprepared crew consistently avoids important matters, never separates truth from fiction, and always prefers to focus on American "culture". This is now the American way.

Because of these tremendous basic failures in American society, an important story will probably be missed: there is potentially disastrous news out of the Arctic. Here is an excerpt from the linked article:

Nanoparticles, which are now present in everything from socks to salad dressing and suntan lotion, may have irreparably damaging effects on soil systems and the environment, Queen's researchers have discovered.

We've been producing nanoparticles by the zillions every day for many years without the slightest idea what they're doing to the environment. Why test before using something, right? It might cut into profits and that would be un-American.

Well, it turns out these nanoparticles have a calamitous effect on the environment. Here's a bit more:

The researchers first examined the indigenous microbe communities living in the uncontaminated soil samples before adding three different kinds of nanoparticles, including silver. The soil samples were then left for six months to see how the addition of the nanoparticles affected the microbe communities. What the researchers found was both remarkable and concerning.

The original analysis of the uncontaminated soil had identified a beneficial microbe that helps fix nitrogen to plants. As plants are unable to fix nitrogen themselves and nitrogen fixation is essential for plant nutrition, the presence of these particular microbes in soil is vital for plant growth. The analysis of the soil sample six months after the addition of the silver nanoparticles showed negligible quantities of the important nitrogen-fixing species remaining and laboratory experiments showed that they were more than a million times [more] susceptible to silver nanoparticles than other species.

Silver nanoparticles are everywhere. We've been downright fond of sticking them in just about everything we made for the last decade. You know the clothing and furniture that's advertised as "resistant" to stains, smells, etc.? Yup: silver nanoparticles. Pretty much anything touted as anti-bacterial or anti-fungal has silver nanoparticles in it. They're in your toothpaste, your sunblock and your make-up. They're everywhere, which means they'll undoubtedly get everywhere in the environment, including the soil. We have poisoned the Earth.

The implications for the biosphere are alarming. I'll be very interested to see how this story is covered by our misshapen media -- if it's covered at all. This is bad, folks. We'll need more studies to get a better handle on the environmental effects but if the initial study is correct, this could be a very big deal.

Jason Rosenhouse outlines Dawkins' talk

I'm a big, big fan of Richard Dawkins. No one is more clear-thinking, in my estimation. At Jason Rosenhouse's blog today is a post about a talk Dawkins just gave at the University of Maryland. Here's an excerpt:

The conversation next addressed the gradualness of evolutionary change. If you imagine lining up all of your ancestors from the present to the dawn of time, you would not find two consecutive ancestors that were of different species. But because of the spans of time involved, the small, negligible variations from one generation to the next get magnified into large changes indeed. He likened this to a child growing up. There is no clear dividing point between babyhood and toddlerhood, just as there is no definitive moment when you suddenly go from being a child to being an adult (in all but the legal sense of course), but with the benefit of hindsight you can see that great changes have taken place.

No one tells it like Dawkins. Reading "The Selfish Gene" changed my life by making me understand evolution. Wattaguy! I'd love to hear him in person one day.

Things are getting spookier

If you're not into physics, perhaps you should skip this post. I don't think it will mean much to you. But if you're a physics fan, check this out. There's an article today reporting that researchers were able to keep large molecules in a state of superposition. Now that's spooky. Here's an excerpt:

The use of specifically synthesized organic molecules consisting of complexes of up to 430 atoms enabled the researchers to demonstrate the quantum wave nature in mass and size regimes that hitherto had been experimentally inaccessible. These particles are comparable in size, mass and complexity to Insulin molecules and exhibit many features of classical objects. Nevertheless, in the current experiment the tailor-made molecules can exist in a superposition of clearly distinguishable positions and therefore -- similar to 'Schroedinger's cat' -- in a state that is excluded in classical physics.

They've never done this with something so large before. Putting large molecules into a state of superposition is big news. For those following along in the peanut gallery, the short version is that when something is in superposition, it's neither here nor there. It is neither particle nor wave, but both -- like Schroedinger's cat that is dead and alive at the same time. The idea that something isn't really there in the sense we're accustomed to is a totally weird feature of the quantum realm.

On the tiniest levels, stuff is sorta there but it's also sorta in many other places. What's shocking is that the reality we see all around us -- which seems hard and real and quite substantial -- is necessarily built from tiny stuff that's only sorta there. I love this. It makes me smile every time I think about it. What could be more fun? I mean, think about it. How could "big reality" be based on a "tiny reality" that includes things that are only sorta there? That is awesome.

The thing about this test is that it moves the dividing line between up here on the classical level, and down there, where things are neither here nor there, but everywhere. The question is: where exactly does it change? Where is the line that separates the tiny stuff that's only sorta there, and the classical stuff we see all around us? By putting larger molecules into a state of superposition, they moved the dividing line. This is big news.

Reality is fascinating. Religious types ought to check it out some time. It's way more interesting than that silly god idea someone once came up with. Way.