Archive for the 'Science' Category

26SepDisappointed in Discover

Discover magazine and the blogs they host have been some of my favorite things to read for a while. Unfortunately, Melissa Lafsky has written a rather pointed theology post that reflects poorly on the entire magazine.

Religion is a very important part of my family. I’m a buddhist and my wife is very active in the Episcopal church. Our faith is an important part of our life, and it frustrates me when people whom I respect belittle other’s beliefs.

While many fundamentalist atheists often personify every member of an organized religion as a crackpot, most of us are pretty normal. Pat Robertson and othe fundamentalist crazies don’t represent the majority of religous people. Unfortunately for people like Hitchens, these normal people are more difficult to embarass.

I find it difficult to put my thoughts into words on this, but here are a few quotes that represent the real spirit of those of us with faith. Keep in mind, that these are all quotes from prominent religious figures in normal religions and I encourage any fundamentalist atheist to counter any of them instead of targeting nutjobs and extremists.

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.-HH Dalai Lama

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
-Mother Teresa

We must not be attached to a view or a doctrine, even a Buddhist one. . . . The Buddha said that if in a certain moment or place you adopt something as the absolute truth, and you attach to that, thenyou will no longer have any chance to reach the truth. Even when the truth comes and knocks on your door, and asks you to open the door, you won’t recognize it. So you must not be too attached to dogma–to what you believe, and to what you perceive.-Thich Nhat Hanh

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
-Mohandas Gandhi

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
-Buddha

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence. Faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.
-Sherwood Eddy

in Opinion and Science. 5 Comments

03SepHot and Hungry

Based on what’s in the media, it seems that the only environmental problem facing the world is global climate change. It seems that everybody is talking about it, arguing about it and in some cases flat-out denying it. Personally, I think the that concerns are a bit exaggerated. Now I know that most people (all 3 of you) who read this are already preparing some brutal comment, but just keep reading.

I’m not saying that global climate change shouldn’t be ignored, but it’s time for it to move to the back burner for two reasons. First, there’s not much we can do about it at the moment. Most energy technology that people are talking about, other than nuclear, is decades away and developing nations have bigger worries. Additionally, we have bigger more pressing problems.

That’s right. We have bigger fish to fry.

Having no ice caps and horrible weather will suck even more if we have no food to eat. Most of the effects of global warming won’t reach critical levels for nearly 100 years, but in less than half that time our population will approach 10 billion people. Considering there are already millions of people on this rock dying of starvation, it’s only a matter of time before we reach the limit that current agriculture can support.

Both National Geographic and Popular Science ran articles about this very topic this month. Popular Science had a short piece on some interesting ideas for creating hydroponic farms in towers. National Geographic dedicated the entire issue to the state of agriculture, more specifically soil.

Soil erosion seems like a small problem; until you see things like this: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=19.03713,-71.743813&spn=0.15708,0.307617&z=12. The soil in Haiti is so stripped and ruined that the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is easily visible from space.

What makes it worse is that we know how to stop soil erosion, but we let it happen. We can make better use of our farm land, but we pay farmers to not grow food. We can grow genetically engineered foods that reduce spoilage and increase yields, but we give into baseless paranoia.

Improving agriculture and reducing hunger is frustrating a problem to deal with because we have solutions and choose not to implement them for financial and political reasons.

Global warming is an easy issue, because it’s easy to blame corporations and industry. It’s easy to find a bad guy in the climate change debate, but it’s time to drop the politics and start saving lives.

in Agriculture. 1 Comment

23AugVaccinate your kids!

Ok people, I know that Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey are telling you not to vaccinate your kids. I know that they’re famous and Jenny has an autistic son, but that does not make either of them a medical professional. Granted I’m no doctor either, but here’s plenty of data from real doctors about the subject.

I know that autism is scary. I’m a parent and any time Mannix does something slighty weird, I’m half convinced he’s got something. Unfortunately, this fear is misplaced. Vaccinations do not cause autism, but they do save lives. Measles outbreaks are already on the rise and it’s not good.

Measles has killed hundreds of children. Millions of children have died from completely preventable diseases. Please don’t let paranoia from a few celebrities scare your into endangering your children; listen to reason.

in Medicine. 5 Comments

20AugI’ll pass on the electric car

In the ongoing debate about our energy issues, transportation is one the most frequent points of debate. In this month’s issue of WIRED, there was an extensive article about a plan for electric cars. The plan involved an on board computer that planned routes and calculated efficiency, automated charging ports in parking lots and battery switching stations. There also a boatload of articles about getting 500 miles worth of driving from a 5 minute charge.

Unfortunately, both of the plans (and most electric cars in general) pose some problems. Using a battery swapping infrastructure sounds nice, but would have it’s own set of environmental problems. These batteries aren’t exactly eco-friendly to produce or dispose of, so creating a system that makes them more disposable probably isn’t so great. The 5 minute charge is a nice idea, but most of the current technology has yielded less than 50 miles per charge or used the power equivalent of an entire office building. The big benefit of gas is that it provides a full ‘recharge’ in just a few minutes.

Some day we may have the technology to make electric cars useful, but with current and near future technology, I don’t see how it will work.

Instead of focusing on electric cars, plug-in hybrids seem like a better course of action. You get the short range benefit of an electric car, but don’t prevent the occasional road trip. It provides a useful platform to test and refine technology for use in electric cars in the future and unlike bio-diesel, electric and fuel cells, it doesn’t require massive infrastructure changes.

When it comes to living green, it’s always exciting to make giant leaps, but sometimes the baby steps make a lot more sense. Millions of people taking a small step together makes a lot more impact than a few making a big leap.

in Energy. 2 Comments

18AugCreationists make me laugh, and so does evolution

A handful of the people I interact with on a regular basis seem to be convinced that every scientific theory is part of a consipiracy against god. A frequent topic that comes up is creationism, which is probably the most commonly accepted complete falsehood I know of. Many of the proponents of creationism and/or intelligent design point to aspects of humans and animals that couldn’t have evolved. The complex eye, human brain and even the platypus have all been cited as too complex or strange to have evolved. However, I recently heard of a new one that is my new favorite. Laughter.

I can see how laughter could initially seem like a useless feature. How could such a frivilous little feature some how sneak through the process of natural selection? Does the ability to tell a good joke make somebody less likely to be eaten by a tiger? In reality, laughter has a very important role and the pre-cursors to humor are common in primates.

To explain why laughter and humor are an evoluationary advatage, they have to be broken down to their simplest form. In humans, even young infants laugh. The most common example of infant humor is peek-a-boo. A parent or adult unexpectedly appears and re-appears causing the baby to laugh. This element of the unexpected is continued later on. My 3 year old son thinks it’s hillarious to take an object and try to convince us it’s something else.

This basic humor is what makes laughter important. Say a group of chimps is deep in the jungle and startled by an approaching noise. The chimps begin to panic and adreniline starts to pump. Finally a baby chimp bursts out of the bushes and one of the chimps laughs. This laughter at the unexpected baby chimp notfies the rest of the troop that everything is ok. It acts kind of like a big cancel button for the fight or flight response.

To me, it seems like a vauable tool in our survival toolbox and yet another pointless arguement for fundamentalist anti-science.

in Biology. 0 Comments

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