101. No exemption from gay rights law

Comment #19823 by Azven on January 30, 2007 at 4:47 am

21 months lands the problem in the lap of the next government. Coincidence?

102. No exemption from gay rights law

Comment #19822 by Azven on January 30, 2007 at 4:45 am

I have to admit that until this debate I had no idea that secular bodies ran adoption agencies. What has religion got to do with placing children with parents? All adoption agencies should be non-secular.

103. Do You Believe in Magic?

Comment #18977 by Azven on January 24, 2007 at 6:15 am

Our minds have a kind of Narrative Causality (a Terry Pratchett term, I think) in that we tend to connect two things into a story even if they are actually unrelated. [My favourite at the moment is seeing someone take out their mobile and dial a number, then someone else's phone (just a few feet away) rings and they answer it].

I can feel my own mind making these 'magic' connections all the time, but a nanoseconds conscious thought eliminates these (and they're easy to ignore).

It may be that the difference between an atheist and theist is that theists keep and use more of their unconscious connections.

104. Activation Of Brain Region Predicts Altruism

Comment #18974 by Azven on January 24, 2007 at 5:41 am

What the UMC seem to have discovered here is a laziness detector. "I" recognize that "you" are doing something. I don't see what this has to do with altruism! Obviously this has something to do with being a social animal, but what? For all we know it's an internal policeman/parent/big brother: "I can see what you're up to".

More likely all they've found is that when asked questions some people visualise situations better. I wonder if questions about who you'd invite to a fantasy dinner party would have evoked the same response?

105. For the Bible told them so

Comment #18633 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 6:01 am

the word "abomination" refers to actions that were deemed "ritually impure." Other abominations include eating pork or shrimp, wearing linen and wool at the same time, and commingling crops. Abominations, Keene explained, are not "intrinsically evil or immoral"

106. Unscientific American: US Almost Last in Understanding Evolution

Comment #18631 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 5:48 am

Also, China?

Some very nice fossils have been found in China of which the Chinese should be suitably proud. If knowlege of these fossils is well known through-out China (I don't know if this is true) then we might expect knowlege and 'belief' in evolution to be high.

107. Unscientific American: US Almost Last in Understanding Evolution

Comment #18629 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 5:45 am

I wonder what the % figure for the Vatican is?

108. The Mystery of Consciousness

Comment #18626 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 5:38 am

PS: Is 'crueler' a word?

109. The Mystery of Consciousness

Comment #18624 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 5:30 am

#18599: DerrickB

This is not in the current or December issue of Nature NeuroScience - must be in the Feb issue.

I tend to be sceptical of "XXX brain region found" or "gene for YYY found" statements from the press. Better to wait for the actual peer-reviewed article.

I did note however, that the study was carried out on only 45 cases and we don't know how many of the 45 showed an effect. Nor do we know what constitutes an 'effect', or how different individual cases were to each other (ie, how different the brain injury was from brain to brain).

110. Zeus devotees worship in Athens

Comment #18620 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 5:10 am

#18608 / #18611: Rob_A & john_eg

I sincerely hope they're doing it just to wind up the Greek Orthodox church. I would!

111. Unscientific American: US Almost Last in Understanding Evolution

Comment #18617 by Azven on January 22, 2007 at 4:51 am

When this page resized for me the last three countries were missing. Click on the graph to go to the web site where the original graph can be seen.

But in summary after Latvia (48% approx') there is
Cyprus (45% approx')
U.S. (40% approx')
Turkey (26% approx')

Obviously there's quite a drop from U.S to Turkey (40% to 25%) and this probably has more to do with general education in Turkey than a particular disbelief in evolution. However, I notice that there's only one Islamic country on the list and that's Turkey so maybe I'm wrong! I don't wish to insult our fellow EC cousin, so I would welcome comments from someone with greater knowledge of this country than me.

Having said that, the U.S. should be thoroughly ashamed that, with their hugh and well respected (and, mostly, free) educational system they should find themselves sandwiched between Cyprus and Turkey.

If I said to an American parent "You'd be better off sending your child to Latvia for an education" they would become quite defensive. I hope many Americans read these statistics.

As for Britain, I am suitably embarassed to find us sixth in the list, but note, optimistically, that 72% seems to be a higher figure than has been reported in some polls.

112. For Human Eyes Only

Comment #17396 by Azven on January 13, 2007 at 8:36 am

A good article, but is any of this really surprising.

It's not for no reason that the simplest bit of human body language is the eybrow flash (raising of the eyebrows, with a slight lift to the head) meaning acknowledgement but with no ill will. Raising eyebrows, thus widening the eye area, and lifting the head creates maximum exposure of the eye whites.

The animal that shows a surprising amount of eyewhite is the dog - especially at the puppy stage. Chimpanzees - even baby chimpanzees - don't have as much eye-white. This tells me two things. 1, Dogs live with humans far more than chimps do and for far longer; 2, eye-whites is not a neotenous feature.