“In the eight years I’ve been mayor, there’s never been a problem,” [Mayor Dunaway] said of the oath. “I don’t think there will be any changes at all. If someone does not want to make that statement, I’m not so sure I want them on our police force.”
The mayor has the power to veto such a change, and an unanimous vote by the city council would be necessary to override. Don't hold your breath.
But another councilman, Anthony Coleman, who chairs Marietta's Public Safety Committee and works as a pastor at a church in Mableton, Ga., said he “adamantly” opposes any change to the oath.
“I just see no justification, I don’t care if the person is an atheist,” he said. “We’re a Christian nation.”
There are some at least halfway reasonable people on the council.
Meanwhile, Councilwoman Annette Lewis stopped short of saying the oath should be reworked, but acknowledged “some alternative” should be available to those who object for any reason.
“I don’t want to say the oath should be reworked, but if you have a person who objects to it, it appears there should be some alternative available to those individuals,” she said. “Should you deny someone a job if they refuse to swear in God’s name?”
And just to show you what the climate is like where this is happening, watch Councilman Van Pearlberg, the one who originally floated the idea, backpedal faster than blindfolded clown on a unicycle.
“I’m not looking to delete [so help me God],” Pearlberg told FoxNews.com on Monday.
“I never really objected, I really just asked has this ever been a problem or has this ever come up before. I asked if anyone ever objected to it — that’s what I was concerned with.”
Pearlberg said the phrase should not be removed, but he said there could be problems with the oath if a police recruit is an atheist or not religious.
“I don’t think anybody should be forced to say anything,” he said. “I just don’t know what the alternative would be.”
Don't know. DON'T KNOW! You remove four words and leave it at that, thats what the freakin' alternative would be!
It’s a question that every neuroscientist is asked, if not when they first study the subject as an undergraduate then certainly when they are interviewed for graduate school.And you had better have a good answer, else everyone will think you are a dilettante.My reason is that the brain is probably the only organ where the macro structure, the system level organization, is still not completely known (1); and I want to do my small part to figure it out.
I am curious.
Other than education, this is the single most important pre-requisite to being a good scientist.What really chaps my hide about some people who claim to be scientists is their insistence that they have a good working knowledge on a subject (the what) but display no desire to further develop that field of knowledge (the how).
Such are the creationists.
Ian Taylor at Creation Moments has the following to say about the evolution of the human brain:
[T]he human brain has ten billion times 25,000 neural connections. If you work it out, this means that a miracle would have to take place if we evolved from an ape-like creature on the time scale that evolutionists propose: every generation would have had to have many thousands more neural connections than the last!
So I decided to check out his numbers, just to make sure Ian was on the up and up.
I was curious.
It turns out that the estimate of 250 x 10^12 neural connections (synapses) is pretty accurate, though the estimated range is quite large.Of course this inflates his numbers a bit, as it’s not the number of synapses that need to multiply, but the number of neurons (since the average number of synapses per neuron is fairly stable at about 7 000).Still, there are 100 x 10^9 neurons in the human brain.So just how many neurons have humans tacked on in the past 4 million years or so?
Well, we can’t go back and look at Australopithecus, but we can look at our closest cousins, the chimp and gorilla.While the human has 11 x 10^9 cortical neurons, the chimp sports 6 x 10^9, while the gorilla can only manage 4 x 10^9 (2).Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Australopithecus had about as many neurons as a modern day gorilla (3).Now, it is estimated that the last common ancestor between humans and other apes was about 4-8 million years ago.So, using 4 x 10^6 years, 7 x 10^9 neurons, and a generational span of 30 years, we come up the addition of about 53 000 neurons per generation.Which sounds like a lot, but is approximately a 0.002% increase in the number of cortical neurons with each generation (4).
I’m not even sure such a change would be measurable from generation to generation.
Still, is there a mechanism that could explain the increased number of cortical neurons through the course of evolution?
In the developing cortex, there are progenitor cells that give rise to cortical columns.When these progenitors undergo asymmetric division they form the columns by climbing up radial glia.Here is a pretty picture:
Each mini-column sports about 100 neurons, so all you need is a few hundred extra columns per generation (about 500-600) to get the sorts of numbers Mr. Taylor is looking for.Now, and this is the kick in the stomach, the number of cortical columns is regulated by the number of progenitor cells, which in contrast is regulated by symmetric division.One cell, one column; two cells, two columns.That means we don’t need the 53 000 new neurons that Mr. Taylor claims, we only need 500-600 new neurons per generation, which will eventually give rise to those 53 000 plus new neurons.
Five to six-hundred neurons.
That is a growth of 0.000015% in the number of neurons per generation.
You can reach that range by having one progenitor cell undergo nine cycles of symmetric division, reaching a total of 512 progenitor cells. This is something that is easily attainable by the alteration of a few regulatory genes.
Not so miraculous I would say.
I love it when creationists declare something to be impossible by fiat when, with a little curiosity and some research, anyone can show that their claims are bunk.
Roth G, Dicke U (2005) Evolution of the brain and intelligence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(5): 250-257.
(1)Other systems (cardiovascular, respiratory, renal) have a well-understood macrostructure, so most of the work there is at the molecular/genetic level.It’s very important stuff; it just doesn’t interest me.
(2)Beyond the fact that this was the only information I could find on short notice, there are two reasons to look at just cortical neurons.First, the development of the cortex is much better understood than the rest of the brain.Second, subcortical structures are phylogenetically old and much more stable in their size/cell density across species.
(3)Though we can’t know the neural numbers for certain, we do know that the cranial capacity of Australopithecus and the gorilla are approximately the same.So you might say this is at least a reasonable assumption.
(4)And note that I am being as generous as possible to Mr. Taylor.I’m assuming the shortest amount of time and the largest number of neurons based on current estimates.Hell, I even assume that there are 30 years between generations which (ignoring the past century or so) is clearly ridiculous. In reality, this likely is an overestimate.
For those who enjoy pairing saccharin, reverential cartoons with nihilistic, morose aphorisms will be interested in the Nietzsche Family Circus, a site that randomly pairs a Family Circus cartoon with a quote by Nietzsche.
There has been a lack of posting for the past several months. I've been concentrating a lot of my academic time (and research time) on studying some specifics of neuroscience, trying to reach a level of competency on a particular subject. You see, up until now I have been begrudgingly allowed to study for a PhD; now I am qualified to study for a PhD.
And I feel so much different compared to yesterday.
You have to wonder what was in the water they were drinking when the folks at Creation Moments decided to talk about water and its amazing properties. It does a lot of things, but it doesn't do magic.
How could an accident have produced the seemingly careful designs we see in the way certain important materials behave? ... Water, which is the basis of our blood, carries dissolved food to the deepest cells in our bodies...
Unless that dissolved food is a lipid, in which case it is not water soluble and needs to be transported by a chylomicron. Not to mention that all those hormones that we need are also not water soluble and need to be transported by globulins within the blood.
... along with oxygen so that our cells can live.
No, that would be hemoglobin that transports oxygen. Otherwise, our blood would not have the oxygen carrying/distribution capacity that it does.
Water dissolves the wastes and behaves in just the right way so that other organs can remove those wastes from our bodies.
Did I mention that hemoglobin also removes the waste product carbon dioxide?
Is it an accident that only water, the very same material basic to the materials of life, also can do all these other unique jobs?
Well, since it can't do the things you claim it does, it is beginning to sound like an accident. And if it was designed like that, it's beginning to sound like neglect.
For example, we all know that when any material is turned from a liquid to a solid, it becomes more dense and therefore heavier.
If it got heavier, ice would sink in our northern lakes when it formed, and they would quickly freeze solid, killing all life in them.
So instead it just kills all the plant life that is floating on top. Take that, you damn dirty flora.
Beyond that, the fact that ice becomes less dense when it enters the solid phase creates a significant cryoprotection problem for animals living in a cold environment. Ice crystals expand cell volume and rupture cells membranes. This is why a whole host of animals have developed circulating levels of glycoproteins to act as a sort of antifreeze for the blood.
The simple point is that water is incapable of doing everything that Ian Taylor has claimed; it needs other molecules to help transport necessary nutrients and waste products. This puts limitations on our physiology. Evolution has found ways around those limitations.
Of course my question is, if an all-powerful creator designed life, why didn't said creator design water to have all the mystical properties claimed above? I suppose it does, if you don't look beyond the information you might get in a grammar school biology textbook. Christianity does seem to have an obsession with magical water though: the flood, parting the Red Sea, turning it into wine. This is just in keeping with precedent.
... believers in Darwinism can't open their eyes and see when presented with scientific evidence of design in nature. (Note to Darwinist commenters: This is not a blog concerned with presenting that evidence...
No kidding. Although he is kind enough to direct us to where we can find such a response, and it doesn't come from him.
However, if you'd like additional information on the subject, why don't you read Stephen Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell.After you have read it, then I would be very curious to hear your thoughts about the evidence of intelligent design in DNA.)
Never mind that some of his commenters have read Meyer's new arguments (which are the same as the old arguments), Klinghoffer chooses to remain mum on the subject.
But I digress.
My point is that in today's post, Klinghoffer delineated the difference between god-made laws (chok) and those that laws that were revealed by god but man very well may have come up with on his own (mishpatim). The difference; god's laws are irrational. Sort of:
Sometimes a chok is called a "suprarational" law. That doesn't mean it's irrational. Instead, the rationale behind the law, its significance when considered rationally, can only be perceived from within the system of Torah thought -- the worldview of the Hebrew Bible. From outside, it indeed appears irrational. An alien worldview, like secularism, blinds a person to being able to see the law's sense, the insight and beauty it reflects -- "worldview-induced blindness."
I know that such "statutes" aren't irrational because Jewish tradition has much to say about their meaning.
And, because he is David Klinghoffer, he has to wonder what this has to do with the gays.
The verse doesn't tell us which laws are which, but maybe we can speculate that the laws against incest would fall under the former category [mishpatim or ordinances], and against homosexuality, under the latter [chok or statutes].
I'd like to point out that this is an often used, though little recognized, logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy. By providing a rationale for his argument, Klinghoffer hasn't really answered any criticism against his argument; he has only deflected the issue and presented a red herring. In this case, he claims that there is some special knowledge that we are lacking. However, that special knowledge is not something that is relevant to the topic, which (apparently) is "Should there be moral prohibitions on sexual behavior, in our present day society?". Klinghoffer says yes, because god told him so. And if you don't hear the same thing, you aren't listening hard enough.
If Sadun is elected, he will be the only scientist on the board. He said that even though he may encounter opposition from members of the board, he will find a common ground with his colleagues and will pursue agreement without sacrificing the quality of education for Texas students.
“Despite my taking a fairly hard line, I am a conciliator,” Sadun said. “I have not met a person who knew so much I couldn’t teach them something, and I’ve never met someone who knew so little that they couldn’t teach me something.”
And the best part about it:
The board has allowed politics and philosophy to influence its decisions regarding science textbooks. The theory of evolution was contested by conservative board members who insisted that the theory of intelligent design, or creationism, be taught alongside the theory of evolution.
“Intelligent design is fake science,” Sadun said. “It is a religious belief about the creation of the earth and humanity, dressed up in the language of science.”
The second year of grad school is the worst. Expectations that you will be starting your own research and applying for funding in addition to finishing your coursework(1) really put a crunch on the time a student has. Not to mention that dirty word ... qualification. The quals, the competency test, the BFE. Call it what you will, it's very mention sows in the mind images of medieval torture and carnal abomination. But, of that which we cannot speak, ...
But first a bit of fun. I have discovered that Family Radio broadcasts in my area, which should not be of too much interest to anyone. However, they do have two titillating short segments called Beyond Intelligent Design with Mel Mulder(2) and Creation Moments with Ian Taylor. Both follow the same sort of format:
A) Scientists have discovered some interesting new fact.
B) Scientists aren't completely sure of the mechanism.
C) Therefore, IT MST TOBE THE JEBUS!!!! ELEVENTEE ONEE !!!!
Not exactly the most rigorous example of logical thought, but at least it is concise. Of particular interest to me is that they sometimes cover topics in the neurosciences. Interesting. I feel that I must go through at some point and confirm the high exacting standards they almost assuredly employ.
(1) It doesn't help when the course master schedules your course to run four weeks longer than the length of the semester. (2) Who is, I am convinced based on the lack of prosody in his voice, a robot.
At least indirectly. It's interesting what you find when you google your name. Thank you, Dr. Puglielli, for including me in your lecture. Though, to be honest, this does raise the specter of something that haunts me; uncredited images. I try to credit when possible, but I'm usually in too much of a hurry.
I spent the other day going through my blogroll, adding blogs I frequent and getting rid of the old ones. Unfortunately, I don't think Bohemian Scientist and Angry Lab Rat are coming back. The list now better matches my Google Reader subscription list.
They have changed the name, but it will always be Molson Hockey Night to me. And here is a clip of my very first exposure to Hockey Night and Don Cherry, complete with lamentations about the end of the Campbell's and Wales's conferences. Of course back then, I used to watch the French version.
I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Mothering magazine. While they do have interesting articles, they have a tendency to twist scientific results to support their idealization of parenting. Take for instance Peggy O'Mara's recent editorial in the January/February 2009 issue titled 'The assault on freedom of conscience'.
Sometimes people will characterize the magazine as pro-homebirth or anti-vaccine because of our frequent coverage of these issues. In fact, we are pro-informed consent; we publish both sides of the story so that parents can be aware of all angles before they make a decision.
That's all well and good; but then Ms. O'Mara and shows her misinterpretation of scientific data regarding measles cases and the decline in vaccinations.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 63 of the 131 new cases of measles from January to July 2008 were among those unvaccinated. The majority of the cases (68), however, were among those vaccinated.
Face, meet palm. Okay people, a chi-square test really isn't that hard to understand. If you have two populations that are not evenly distributed, say vaccinated and unvaccinated, you would expect the outcome, say disease manifestation, to be similarly distributed unless there is something fundamentally different between the two populations. So, if you have about 95% of children vaccinated (which most states do based on the Healthy People 2010 guidelines), you would expect 95% of children with disease to have been vaccinated. But that is not what you see. Here, I will put it in table form (with hypothetical numbers).
A majority of patients may have been vaccinated, but it is still significantly less than what it should be. Conclusion: unvaccinated children are more likely to come down with measles. Not complicated. The same sort of stuff they used to find out smoking causes cancer. Understand? Maybe not.
Interestingly, according to the CDC, 89 percent of the 131 new measles cases were "imported from or associated with importations from other countries, particularly countries in Europe, where several outbreaks are ongoing."
Measles is depicted as a life-threatening disease instead of the mild illness that my friends and I all had as children. In the Private Practice episode, the child dies from measles, an occurrence that is so rare that, based on the current incidence levels (42 in 2007), a death from measles would happen once every 119 years. Even if the incidence of measles were to quadruple, we would not see a death for 30 years. The current death rate from measles is 1 in 5,000, yet it is portrayed in the show as though it happens frequently.
This of course ignores a very real problem. The occurrence of measles is now so rare that doctors may be inadequately trained to recognize it, meaning that the disease may reach a more severe stage before it is treated. And what can we thank for such a rare occurrence?
Vaccinations.
If you choose not to vaccinate, you can thank something else.
Postings are lean in part because of academic demands. I just finished a midterm in my course on the physiology of the synapse. It took me four hours, and I was the first to leave.
I was telling my current supervisor about the test and how amazed I was by the tenacity of the other, younger, students. Maybe it's just because I'm lazy, but I feel there is no reason to write a three paragraph answer if one sentence will suffice. Also, there is no point in staring at a question for half an hour if you don't know the answer; accept that you don't know, put down your best guess, and move on. Then my supervisor told me something I wasn't prepared for, something I thought I was not yet of age to have.
I have full-blown leukemia and the chemotherapy I'm taking doesn't seem to be working all that well. And even if it does kick into high gear soon, it's not a cure, only a brief delay of the disease's progression. One way or another, my odds aren't good.
Still, I keep popping pills each morning and night, sitting for many hours each week with an IV in my arm, dealing with all the side-effects of treatment, hoping for a miracle. Some people may call me a hypocrite -- to take advantage of the benefits of animal research.
I can understand the conflict Ms. Chaitowitz must have and could find less dire analogies in my own life. So I wouldn't extend the word hypocrite to include her. Although I disagree with her assessment of the utility of animal research, I know that arguing that battle is not something anyone could win. However, I do take issue with one statement Ms. Chaitowitz makes:
Despite what the research community claims, federal regulations are extremely weak and poorly enforced, and some species -- mice, for example -- are completely excluded from any protection. Many investigations have shown just how bad conditions are.
Bullshit.
While there is kernel of truth to this (mice, rats, and birds for scientific use are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act) to say that mice are excluded from protection is bogus.
I work at an institution that, like nearly all scientific institutions, receives federal funds. Any research protocol I want to run has to go through my Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). If I do research without approval, I get punished. If I don't ease pain and suffering of my animals, I get punished. If I deviate from my protocol without prior approval, I get punished. Every procedure I want to do is pored over by scientists, veterinarians, and lay people from the community, often resulting in several weeks or months of delay. All to make sure that I am treating my animals humanely.
As part of our oversight, the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare does periodic, unannounced, inspections of our facilities. If our protocols are not being followed, if our animals are not being treated humanely, if we do not keep conditions sanitary, we lose our funding. Not a slap on the wrist, not 'hey, try to do better next time'. No, NIH has a right and duty to take away funds, effectively shutting down that research lab.
Additionally, many facilities strive for AAALAC accreditation. It shows that your institution holds their research animals in high regard. It also means submitting to multiple inspections per year, higher levels of cleanliness, and additional training for the animal care staff. Accreditation isn't an easy thing to maintain; you can only do it by treating your animals with the utmost care.
So please forgive my small tirade against Ms. Chaitowitz, but I cannot allow such half-truths to stand unchallenged.
What concerns me is that intelligent design as suggested in the Bible goes beyond merely explaining human origins and the complexity of eyeballs. To be both thorough and consistent, advocates should demand that science classes include additional biblical truths presented in Genesis.
I particularly like this:
We must also stop insisting that various trees are indigenous to diverse parts of the earth. Genesis 2:9 reveals that every type of tree in the world today sprang in the Garden of Eden, later revealed to lie near the Euphrates River, presumably in the vicinity of today's Iraq.
The subject of botany should be amended to teach that fact, and also to include two trees that are not even mentioned in today's botanical texts: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, consumption of whose fruit endows awareness of right from wrong, and the tree of life, consumption of whose fruit assures eternal life.
Assuming our national leaders were capable of distinguishing good from evil, perhaps the real reason for invading Iraq was to seek eternal life.* When discovered, the tree of life will be recognized by the cherubim - beautiful winged humanoids - who guard it, and by a flaming sword nearby which turns in every direction (Gen 3:22-24).
* Yes, I realize that is the Tree of Knowledge in the picture. All the ones of the Tree of Life seemed to be lacking flaming swords.
"I'm not comfortable with home brewing," [Senate Majority Assistant Whip Gregory] Bell said to the Deseret News. "It seems fraught with mischief to me. Maybe I don't understand it."
Says Sadie Fields from the Georgia Christian Alliance:
"You can buy alcohol or wine or beer in Georgia six days a week, so, you know, why this extra day?"
Certainly, if your concern is the deleterious effects of over drinking, wouldn't it make much more sense to ban Friday or Saturday sales, the days where people are more likely to buy large amounts of alcohol for weekend consumption? The question isn't why allow seven days of liquor sales, but why ban sales on this one day?
Tucker Carlson, of all people, came to the defense of the New York Times by saying "it's a paper that cares about accuracy" at CPAC yesterday. And he got booed for it. Let me say that again:
He stated that checking the facts is important to journalism. And he got booed for it.
I had forgotten that I did this interview a long time ago. Actually, well over a year ago. I don't know why it took so long to get put up. Anyway, you can read about and rate my blog. Enjoy.
Tantalus Prime (the misanthropic, younger brother of Optimus) is currently slogging his way through graduate school, where he studies neuroscience. In his spare time he muddles his way through fatherhood in an increasingly eschatological world.
