RUMSFELD BOOK AND TV DEAL

I heard recently that there will soon be a Rumsfeld book and TV show called If I Ordered the Torture and Detention of Thousands of Innocent Men, This Is How I Did It. Maybe there’ll be a book by Bush, My Illegal Invasion: As If I Started It or How I Killed Hundreds of Thousands of Innocent Civilians When I Illegally Invaded a Sovereign Nation, If I Did Actually Order the Invasion and Not Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Donald Duck.

WHAT WAS I THINKING? CHENEY'S SECOND THOUGHTS










How long will this drivel go on?










And to think—I once supported this guy!

YOU STAND ON THAT ISLAND. I’LL STAND ON THIS ONE

As I read in my local newspaper (that’s right, newspaper) about LX.TV whose goal is to reach the 25-49 age group with incomes above $100,000 on the Internet on “broadband only” with a culture-based show designed to appeal only to them, I thought, not for the first time, I can imagine a way in which capitalism can literally fragment a culture. This reaching for niche markets has been around a long time. There’s a new cable horror channel coming out. There’s the comedy channel and cooking channels. Etcetera. The more each of us retreats into our niches, the more separated we become as a nation. Is this possible? Or am I just imaging it? Maybe it’s just the gloomy chilly weather outside makes me think this way.

STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GENETIC GENESIS DWARFS

The short passage below is from Technology Review’s description of one of the under 35

Photo is of a bridge in France I believe. It's a long one!

scientists working today to expand the range of human knowledge. The dwarfs upon whose shoulders they stand are the millions of the religious who are incapable of understanding even a tad of what these men and women are talking about. It’s a bit frightening to realize the ignorance and superstition that circles in this American culture around people of rational caliber. It’s even scary to a layman like me who understands just a little more than those who still believe in the validity of books in which fortune telling plays a significant role, books in which fortune tellers called “prophets” are honored. Just that simple awareness is pretty shocking—to know that the average Christian does not fully acknowledge to himself that the prophets he honors are no different in their methods, techniques and results than the average fortune teller down on Sprague Avenue who for a ten-spot will contact “those who are on the other side”. Because Xtian fortune tellers are cloaked in the dubious mantel of their holy books, the average literalist can’t achieve the reality based insight that all a prophet is is a fortune teller. Ask them if they believe in fortune tellers, then ask them if they believe in prophets. I’ll bet they can’t acknowledge the similarity.

I stand open-mouthed at the sight of those who remain in Dark Age darkness after all these years of progress brought about by scientific knowledge, who still kill one another over whose hypothetical superman is the more powerful delusion. They are like cavemen dancing around a bonfire, recognizing only that light, while ignoring the sunlight streaming down from above, sunburning their noggins with rational knowledge. One can only wonder when they’ll see the light!

OPEN QUOTE] Though researchers have finished sequencing the human genome, it is still far from understood. A major objective of biotechnology is to develop the experimental and computational tools necessary for deciphering the signals encoded within the genome and to understand their role in human health and disease.

Much remains unknown. It is still a matter of debate exactly how many genes the genome encodes, or even how a gene should be defined. In addition, scientists are just beginning to understand the array of regulatory sequences that punctuate the genome and dictate when certain genes are turned on and off. The complex code within these elements has yet to be deciphered.

Comparative genomics can shed the powerful light of evolution on these unknowns. Functional regions of the DNA sequence, such as genes and regulatory regions, have been well conserved, remaining largely unchanged across related species through millions of years of evolution; but DNA sequences that do not code for genes or regulatory regions change more rapidly. To help us understand the evolutionary constraints of functional elements in the human genome, the National Human Genome Research Institute has recently expanded its sequencing efforts to include additional mammalian genomes.

In my group, instead of simply searching for highly conserved elements, we search for elements that have changed in particular ways. By comparing various genomes, we have found several evolutionary signatures—common patterns in the way a particular DNA sequence has evolved over time. We are now using these evolutionary signatures to reanalyze the human, yeast, and fly genomes and have already uncovered hundreds of novel genes, novel exons, and unusual gene structures.

We have also used genome-wide conservation patterns to define subtle regulatory motifs that are another type of evolutionary signature. Coupled with rapid string search algorithms, these signatures have led to the discovery of a complete dictionary of known and novel regulatory elements in the human, yeast, and fly, revealing the building blocks of gene regulation.

These evolutionary signatures are universal across kingdoms of life. With complete genomes, we can use them to elucidate common evolutionary principles, interpret our genome, study human variation and evolution, and revolutionize our understanding of human biology. [CLOSE QUOTE]

Manolis Kellis is an assistant professor of computer science at MIT and one of Technology Review’s top 35 scientists under thirty-five years of age. He’s one of those to watch.

NOW FOR A LITTLE NIGHT MU. . . ER. . . PHILOSOPHY

Several years back, I was reading Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. It was the trigger which fired the bullet of my brain down the arc it’s been following for many years now. I was impressed by the idea that our brains are constantly rewriting us through words, constantly revising us as presented to the world outside ourselves like never finished books. Then, people, of course, think that what they are getting is a completely conscious human being:

“Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others—and ourselves—about who we are. And just as spiders don't have to think, consciously and deliberately, about how to spin their webs, and just as beavers, unlike professional human engineers, do not consciously and deliberately plan the structures they build, we (unlike professional human storytellers) do not consciously and deliberately figure out what narratives to tell and how to tell them. Our tales are spun, but for the most part we don't spin them; they spin us. Our human consciousness, and our narrative selfhood, is their product, not their source.

“These strings or streams of narrative issue forth as if from a single source—not just in the obvious physical sense of flowing from just one mouth, or one pencil or pen, but in a more subtle sense: their effect on any audience is to encourage them to (try to) posit a unified agent whose words they are, about whom they are: in short, to posit a center of narrative gravity.” —Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained.

Last year, in a philosophy course I was monitoring at Spokane Community College, we had to read, as our last text, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis, and I came across the ideas below which also claims that not only “I” but “we”, the whole of life, are conceiving or creating ourselves by the narratives we hear ourselves telling. But what I like to take a step further is that we do not consciously create these narratives. We just sort of tell them and hear ourselves tell them and, then, we think that we are what we are telling others that we are. But this idea, if you’ll just let your imagination run with you, is a grand conception—you can see all of us hacking away with words to create this vast beaver dam of imagination against roaring water life, to make a little survival place for us to rest in, until we go to rest with the dinosaurs in the oil pits of modern life. All these voices, yammering away, since consciousness evolved, slowly hammering out the reality we all think we live in. But do we really live in the reality we think we live in? What truly is outside the stuttering of our words, beyond the boundaries of the expanding universe that our frail words try to limit with description?

“Conceiving of the world as a process of creative becoming consisting of a multiplicity consisting of different types of processes in various complex relations, each making its own unique contribution to the becoming of the world, which must be understood at least to some extent as an immanent cause of its own becoming, can allow that humans create themselves through culture, and in particular, through being enacted by, reformulating and then enacting stories about themselves and their place in the world. It can allow for people having intentions formulated in relation to the stories by which they define themselves, and through realizing these intentions, coming to embody within the world, in the relationships between people, in the relationships between individuals and society and in the relationships between humans and nature, the interpretations of the world on which these stories are based. With its rejection of reductionism, it lends itself to being formulated into a dialogical rather than a monological grand narrative, and thereby enables the achievements of all communities, societies and civilizations of the world to be appreciated.

“Once the world is conceived of as a creative process of becoming, the notion that the meaning of anything is given by the end which it helps to realize, the notion which as Nietzsche pointed out is the ultimate source of the nihilism of European civilization, can be abandoned. Each individual process or sub-process within the universe is like a melody singing itself within a symphony. While it must be evaluated in terms of its contribution to the whole symphony (which in the case of the cosmos is never complete), a symphony cannot be evaluated in terms of its final outcome, its end. The whole duration of a symphony matters, and each melody within the symphony, each note within the melody, are significant in themselves as parts of this duration. People understanding the world and themselves in such terms should be able to appreciate processes ranging from atoms, molecules, clusters of galaxies, galaxies, stars, planets, global eco-systems and species, to individual organisms, societies and cultures, as having an intrinsic significance as contributions to the unfinished becoming of the world. They should be able to appreciate the significance of their own lives and each decision and action as contributions to the world as a whole as well as to the cultures, societies and eco-systems of which they are part. But they should also be able to appreciate the intrinsic significance of their own lives as such, and that part of the significance of cultures, societies and eco-systems and the world as a whole is as conditional causes of their own becoming, for having made it possible for them to live an intrinsically significant life.

“Formulating stories about the lives of people and the history of societies in these terms will enable people to be understood in the context of and as part of nature, as destructive or constructive contributions to the eco-systems which sustain the conditions of their existence. However, such narratives must have a more complex form than the narratives which have dominated European civilization in the past—and must abandon the Oedipal form of narrative which legitimates present suffering as the unavoidable path to some final reunification of the world. Since the world is conceived of as consisting of a multiplicity of processes and sub-processes, each partially autonomous yet inseparable from a multiplicity of other processes which are the conditional causes of its existence, it is impossible to accept a linear narrative in which all but the history of the individual subject is treated as a passive background of the drama. For any individual, whether this be a person, an institution, a movement, a class, a nation, a civilization or humanity as a whole, what is required is a multi-dimensional narrative at least acknowledging thousands of different temporal and spatial orders, both within the becoming of humanity and within the rest of nature. Such a narrative should then highlight the way the becoming of any individual is promoting or stultifying other processes.

“Conceiving of narratives in this way would avoid the tendency noted by poststructuralists of reducing people differentiated from the protagonists of a story to the 'Other'. For instance, it would avoid the tendency of history to focus on the rise of Western civilization and to deny a story to societies subjugated by it, those whom Eric Wolfe described as the 'people without history’, to characterize 'women' and Orientals not in terms of their unique histories, but only in opposition to or as a counterpart to the history made by males of European descent. This does not mean that a history of humanity should not grant a central place to the rise and world domination of Western civilization; but rather than conceiving of this as progress, it should be understood as analogous to the situation in China in the third century BC. The Ch'in, founded on the mechanistic philosophy of Legalism, had by their ruthless aggressiveness ended the period of the warring states by unifying China under an extremely oppressive social order. Western civilization has through its ruthless aggressiveness united the world into one economic system. In ancient China the Ch'in were overthrown and replaced by a much more benign rule inspired by the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism. What is required of a new grand narrative is an account of how we arrived at the present global environmental crisis, and a characterization of the challenge now confronting humanity as the replacement of the oppressive and destructive civilization which has united the world by a new global civilization based on a more adequate world-orientation in which nature, the oppressed, non-Europeans and women throughout the world are accorded due recognition.” —Arran E. Garre, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis, pp. 142-143


Some fun, hunh?

FIRST IN OUTLAST

Look out geriatrics, I’m going to need those walkers and wheelchairs! Just read in the paper that first borns of young mothers outlive their syblings by 1.7 times. Seems that an extensive study of the literature, hints that the eggs of young mothers or the generally better physical health of young mothers may cause their first born to outlive their siblings. Though they don’t know exactly what causes the phenomenon, they have documented it. Since my Mom was 17 when I came along and since I was even the first born of all my cousins, I’ve got this chance to live longer than I may want to. I’ll let you know as the years, fears, wear and tear pile up if this is a good thing or not.

THE FOGGIEST IDEA

Photo is from the trip to Port Angeles this summer, entering the fog in the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Port Angeles and Victoria B.C. Speaking of which—we’ll need passports the next time we take that little hour long daytrip over the water to visit our neighbors. When I was a kid, I think I recall being told how wonderful it was to be in a nation which had such friendly neighbors that we had unguarded borders. Not like those backward people in Europe.

THE END OF FAITH is

to help people ignore their mortality? No—to make one group of people feel superior to other group? No—to create untold suffering and murder between the tribe which is not one’s own? No—to foster irrational belief in what the eyes can’t see nor the ears hear? No—that would make all believers not much different from those mental health patients I used to volunteer to work with when I was a young man. Well, what then, is the end of faith? Here’s a longish article on Sam Harris who wrote the book, The End of Faith.

VIETNAM? WHAT HAPPENED THERE?

So we lost the war in Vietnam. Right? Yet, here we are a few scant decades later, and capitalists from all over the world are heading to Vietnam for an economic summit because Nam has thriven there even though socialists lead that nation and hold it in a tight reign. What's going on here? Isn't this a lot like China, another socialist/capitalist country? Hummmnnn? Gets us to thinking, doesn't it? Why in hell did we ever fight that war and lose 50,000 American lives if democracy has not won out, but capitalism has? Did we fight that war to defeat democracy yet create a capitalistic success? What is going on here? What indeed? What good things might also happen in Iraq if we just lose that police action quickly and get out of the way? Will capitalism win there too, shoving aside democracy in favor of theocracy? Maybe we need to get democracy out of the way here in America too and become a theocracy?

Perish the thought!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NEANDERTHAL EXAMPLE SUGGESTS THAT CONSERVATIVES CAN BREED WITH MODERN HUMAN LIBERALS

[OPEN QUOTE] Scientists have found new genetic evidence that they say may answer the longstanding question of whether modern humans and Neanderthals interbred when they co-existed thousands of years ago. The answer is: probably yes, though not often . . . .

Both genetic and fossil studies show that anatomically modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago in Africa and migrated into Europe 40,000 years ago. In about 10,000 years, Europe’s longtime inhabitants, Neanderthals, became extinct. The mainstream interpretation is that modern humans somehow replaced them without interbreeding.

In previous research, Dr. Lahn [Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago] and associates discovered that a gene for brain size called microcephalin underwent a significant change 37,000 years ago. Its modified variant, or allele, appeared to confer a fitness advantage on those who possessed it. It is now present in about 70 percent of the world’s population. [CLOSE QUOTE] —By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD in New York Times, Nov. 9, 2006

On the left: Neander Rovermiasmus On the right: Neander Rubbertongueamus

We also have the example of James Carville and Mary Matalin, Neander and Homo Sapiens at home, but, in this case, I don't know which is the Neanderthal! Whereas, in the previous two cases, we have no doubt. Just kidden, Jimmy! I love you! Give'm hell!

LIMBAUGH IN LIMBO WHERE HE USUALLY IS

The following is an excerpt from a Limbaugh radiocast transcript after “his” defeat:

"Well, folks, I love being me. (I can't be anybody else, so I'm stuck with it.) The way I feel is this: I feel liberated, and I'm going to tell you as plainly as I can why. I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried . . . I'm not trying to tell you that this is about me. I'm just answering questions that I've had from people about how I feel. There have been a bunch of things going on in Congress, some of this legislation coming out of there that I have just cringed at, and it has been difficult coming in here, trying to make the case for it when the people who are supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves—and to have to come in here and try to do their jobs. I'm a radio guy! I understand what this program has become in America and I understand the leadership position it has. I was doing what I thought best, but at this point, people who don't deserve to have their water carried, or have themselves explained as they would like to say things but somehow aren't able to, I'm not under that kind of pressure."

The photo on the right? Now what kind of male fan (and most are male) would put that photo on his wall? The gays continue to get a bad rap, eh?

Is this man a poseur, or what? His photos open up a series of questions.

Does Rush know that conservatives aren’t the posturing actors that these photographs show him to be? Does he think that these photos appeal to his audience? Worse yet—suppose they do? Does he realize what these photos say about his audience? Can he not know what a posturing idiot they make him look to be?

I don’t believe that Rush truly understands how pompous and self-aggrandizing his rant sounds as he builds himself up after the Republican defeat, trying to distance himself from his own work in trying to get Republicans elected. That’s, of course, why he’s a right wing nut job. He’s no conservative. Conservatives are conservative; they aren’t self-aggrandizing nor foppish poseurs like Rush.

Finally, does Rush realize that he feels more liberal himself now, more “liberated”, as he says? Welcome to the rest of us who know what the words liberated, liberal and liberalism stand for. We even know what true conservatism stands for.

INTUITIONS CAN DECEIVE

Here’s another segment from the essay “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer” by Leda Cosmides & John Tooby. You can link to the whole document here:

[OPEN QUOTE] Principle 3. Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden from you. As a result, your conscious experience can mislead you into thinking that our circuitry is simpler than it really is. Most problems that you experience as easy to solve are very difficult to solve—they require very complicated neural circuitry.

You are not, and cannot become, consciously aware of most of your brain's ongoing activities. Think of the brain as the entire federal government, and of your consciousness as the President of the United States. Now think of yourself—the self that you consciously experience as "you"—as the President. If you were President, how would you know what is going on in the world? Members of the Cabinet, like the Secretary of Defense, would come and tell you things—for example, that the Bosnian Serbs are violating their cease-fire agreement. How do members of the Cabinet know things like this? Because thousands of bureaucrats in the State Department, thousands of CIA operatives in Serbia and other parts of the world, thousands of troops stationed overseas, and hundreds of investigative reporters are gathering and evaluating enormous amounts of information from all over the world. But you, as President, do not—and in fact, cannot—know what each of these thousands of individuals were doing when gathering all this information over the last few months—what each of them saw, what each of them read, who each of them talked to, what conversations were clandestinely taped, what offices were bugged. All you, as President, know is the final conclusion that the Secretary of Defense came to based on the information that was passed on to him. And all he knows is what other high level officials passed on to him, and so on. In fact, no single individual knows all of the facts about the situation, because these facts are distributed among thousands of people. Moreover, each of the thousands of individuals involved knows all kinds of details about the situation that they decided were not important enough to pass on to higher levels.

So it is with your conscious experience. The only things you become aware of are a few high level conclusions passed on by thousands and thousands of specialized mechanisms: some that are gathering sensory information from the world, others that are analyzing and evaluating that information, checking for inconsistencies, filling in the blanks, figuring out what it all means.

It is important for any scientist who is studying the human mind to keep this in mind. In figuring out how the mind works, your conscious experience of yourself and the world can suggest some valuable hypotheses. But these same intuitions can seriously mislead you as well. They can fool you into thinking that our neural circuitry is simpler that it really is.

Consider vision. Your conscious experience tells you that seeing is simple: You open your eyes, light hits your retina, and—voila!—you see. It is effortless, automatic, reliable, fast, unconscious and requires no explicit instruction—no one has to go to school to learn how to see. But this apparent simplicity is deceptive. Your retina is a two-dimensional sheet of light sensitive cells covering the inside back of your eyeball. Figuring out what three-dimensional objects exist in the world based only on the light-dependent chemical reactions occurring in this two dimensional array of cells poses enormously complex problems—so complex, in fact, that no computer programmer has yet been able to create a robot that can see the way we do. You see with your brain, not just your eyes, and your brain contains a vast array of dedicated, special purpose circuits—each set specialized for solving a different component of the problem. You need all kinds of circuits just to see your mother walk, for example. You have circuits that are specialized for (1) analyzing the shape of objects; (2) detecting the presence of motion; (3) detecting the direction of motion; (4) judging distance; (5) analyzing color; (6) identifying an object as human; (7) recognizing that the face you see is Mom's face, rather than someone else's. Each individual circuit is shouting its information to higher level circuits, which check the "facts" generated by one circuit against the "facts" generated by the others, resolving contradictions. Then these conclusions are handed over to even higher level circuits, which piece them all together and hand the final report to the President—your consciousness. But all this "president" ever becomes aware of is the sight of Mom walking. Although each circuit is specialized for solving a delimited task, they work together to produce a coordinated functional outcome—in this case, your conscious experience of the visual world. Seeing is effortless, automatic, reliable, and fast precisely because we have all this complicated, dedicated machinery.

In other words, our intuitions can deceive us. Our conscious experience of an activity as "easy" or "natural" can lead us to grossly underestimate the complexity of the circuits that make it possible. Doing what comes "naturally", effortlessly, or automatically is rarely simple from an engineering point of view. To find someone beautiful, to fall in love, to feel jealous—all can seem as simple and automatic and effortless as opening your eyes and seeing. So simple that it seems like there is nothing much to explain. But these activities feel effortless only because there is a vast array of complex neural circuitry supporting and regulating them. [CLOSE QUOTE]

GOODBYE CHILDHOOD, GOODBYE BAD GUY JACK

I remember the film, "Shane", as it came out originally in 1953. I'd have been about 15 'cause I graduated high school in 1955 at age 17, and I was, as I came later to find out, very naive and could easily be caught up by Westerns and machoism of any sort. For such a long time, I was naive. Then the French New Wave foreign films and soon after that, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman complicated my simple consciousness, in addition to the dramas of Jean Genet, Williams, Sartre, Authur Miller and O'Neill, the novels of Camus and Beckett, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Can't forget On The Road and Kerouac. What a wondrous and emotional time my early youth was as I came horrendously alive from my working class background in the 60s and 70s. O, the pain of it, the wonder of it too, the angst and ache of it! There were times I wasn't sure I'd survive those days, even times I didn't think I wanted to survive them. Now I'm alive, 69, and in the tame of my ancient calm, under the moon, stardust and snot, and it turns out, all the damn fuss and nonsense was entirely worth it, wouldn't change one heart pounding ounce of nor taunting ache of it.

SCIENTISTS SAY WHITEHOUSE MUZZLED THEM

This is why we had to have the change we've had in government. America can't go forward in any honest way if the facts are being kept from the American people.

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 1, 11:43 PM ET

[OPEN QUOTE] In February, House Science Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and other congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee scientific openness. They complained that a public affairs officer changed or filtered information on global warming and the Big Bang.

The officer, George Deutsch, a political appointee, had resigned after being accused of trying to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and insisting that a Web designer insert the word "theory" with any mention of the Big Bang.

A report last month in the scientific journal Nature claimed administrators at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked the release of a report that linked hurricane strength and frequency to global warming. Hansen had said in February that NOAA has tried to prevent researchers working on global climate change from speaking freely about their work.

NOAA has denied the allegations, saying its work is not politically motivated. [CLOSE QUOTE]

GODLESS’S ANN COULTER

(Haggard, skinny and pinch-faced—look at the frown lines between the eyes, the heavy partying bags under the eyes? Way too young for that. Cover either of her eyes, and stare into the single eye glaring back at you. Lot of anger in that face. Wonder what lies in her past, what happened to her to make her so unattractive to herself and, thus, to others. You can see why conservative men find that look attractive. Her face reminds me of the faces of dominatrices.) (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Twice in the last couple of months, I’ve come across people reading Ann Coulter’s book, Godless. One I can guarantee is several dogs short of a sled team. The other seemed an entirely harmless religious bumbler who was buying a used book from the store where I sell used books to help support the library.

Still, something about the title bothered me. What was it? Why did it get under my skin! Then I realized what it was. Coulter is using that title as a curse, as if there is something wrong, in America, with not believing as she believes. Someone ought to explain to her that, in America, every citizen has the right to believe or unbelieve as he or she pleases. Coulter’s viscious attacks on people who don’t believe as she does prove that she doesn’t understand a basic American premise about freedom of belief in this country. If, according to American law, all people are guaranteed freedom of conscience, then those whose beliefs are different from hers are not unlawful believers, open to contempt, but perfectly legitimate, law-abiding honorable citizens. So what’s wrong with being godless in America? Eh?

Coulter is probably one of those who put their Bible above the Constitution and their religion above their country. So, if moderate American religionists wonder why we of a different belief keep defending ourselves against Xtians like Ann, all they have to do is understand what a danger people like Ann Coulter are to basic American protections and to us. For if they put the Bible above the Constitution and their religion above their citizenship, then, you can see, that they have no respect for the Bill of Rights which they believe is subordinate to their personal belief system as expressed in their book of fairytales. They would, if given half a chance, dispense with Constitutional protections that prevent one religion’s dominating all other religions.

JUST A LITTLE EXTRA ENTRY TODAY. . . THE DAY AFTER YOU KNOW WHAT.

WAHOOOOO!

NO MORE SCIENCE, NO MORE BOOKS, NO MORE TEACHER'S DIRTY LOOKS

Okay, it's time for a break. These photos don't come from one trip or any one time during this past year, but I've got lots more science and politics and book talk lined up. This is break time. Besides, today's election day. The TV's off. I'm afraid to look! Better some nice photos, eh? Of course this post will appear tomorrow. (I'm so glad that Blogger got it's act together to work in harmony with my Firefox browser or vice versa.)

Blue city, rainy day. Approaching Seattle on Bainbridge Ferry.

My youngest son's place outside Paulsbo. He's only renting. Darn it!

View from Hurricane Ridge on earlier summer trip to Port Angeles.
You Know? I really love it out here in the Pacific Northwest!

My spouse, Mertie, lovely, giving talk on Buddhism, her thing.
Pay no attention to the shadow behind the curtain!

I don't do pet pictures!
But this is Chi Chi, our chihuahua! Stop me before I shoot!
I can't believe I'm so domesticated and loving it!

The End

JUDGES WHO BRIBE BRIBE BUSHIES

I don't have a lot to say today. So I'll just pass on some more wonderful stories from Bushleague America, about corruption other than the sexual stuff which gets all the headlines.

A four-month investigation reveals that dozens of federal judges gave contributions to President Bush and top Republicans who helped place them on the bench. A Salon/CIR exclusive.

ELEPHANT SEES HERSELF FOR WHO SHE TRULY IS

Found this in our local paper, the Spokesman. One interesting thing about this phenomena is that consciousness seems not to be in the sole possession of the human species and appears to have evolved more than once in the annals of natural selection. What does this mean for those fools who are poaching elephants in Africa? Are they truly murderers? What does that say for us meat eaters in general? Look—I’m an eater of meat, so I’m not preaching down to anyone, but maybe some lines need to be drawn. Not that I’m against my becoming a vegetarian. I’m getting a little tired of the taste of meat myself, but, at my age, to think of trying to start up a whole new way of cooking, seems almost out of sight.

[OPEN QUOTE] Research shows pachyderm can recognize reflection


This image from the National Academy of Sciences shows Happy, a 34-year-old female Asian elephant, at the Bronx Zoo, New York. (Associated Press )

Andrew Bridges
Associated Press
October 31, 2006

WASHINGTON – If you're Happy and you know it, pat your head.

That, in a peanut shell, is how a 34-year-old female Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo showed researchers that pachyderms can recognize themselves in a mirror – complex behavior observed in only a few other species.

The test results suggest elephants – or at least Happy – are self-aware. The ability to distinguish oneself from others had been shown only in humans, chimpanzees and, to a limited extent, dolphins.

That self-recognition may underlie the social complexity seen in elephants, and could be linked to the empathy and altruism that the big-brained animals have been known to display, said researcher Diana Reiss, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the Bronx Zoo.

In a 2005 experiment, Happy faced her reflection in an 8-by-8-foot mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an "X" painted above her eye. The elephant could not have seen the mark except in her reflection. Furthermore, Happy ignored a similar mark, made on the opposite side of her head in paint of an identical smell and texture that was invisible unless seen under black light.

"It seems to verify for us she definitely recognized herself in the mirror," said Joshua Plotnik, one of the researchers behind the study. Details appear this week on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Still, two other zoo elephants, Maxine and Patty, failed to touch either the visible or invisible "X" marks on their heads in two runs of the experiment. But all three adult female elephants at the zoo behaved while in front of the jumbo mirror in ways that suggested they recognized themselves, said Plotnik, a graduate student at Emory University in Atlanta.

Maxine, for instance, used the tip of her trunk to probe the inside of her mouth while facing the mirror. She also used her trunk to slowly pull one ear toward the mirror, as if she were using the reflection to investigate herself. The researchers reported not seeing that type of behavior at any other time.

"Doing things in front of the mirror: that spoke volumes to me that they were definitely recognizing themselves," said Janine Brown, a research physiologist and elephant expert at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington. She was not connected with the study but expressed interest in conducting follow-up research.

Gordon Gallup, the psychologist who devised the mark test in 1970 for use on chimps, called the results "very strong and very compelling." But he said additional studies on both elephants and dolphins were needed.

"They really need to be replicated in order to be able to say with any assurance that dolphins and elephants indeed as species are capable of recognizing themselves. Replication is the cornerstone of science," said Gallup, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany, who provided advice to the researchers.

The three Bronx Zoo elephants did not display any social behavior in front of the mirror, suggesting that each recognized the reflected image as itself and not another elephant. Many other animals mistake their mirror reflections for other creatures.

That divergent species such as elephants and dolphins should share the ability to recognize themselves as distinct from others suggests the characteristic evolved independently, according to the study.

Elephants and mammoths, now extinct, split from the last common ancestor they shared with mastodons, also extinct, about 24 million years ago. In a separate study also appearing this week on the scientific journal's Web site, researchers report finding fossil evidence of an older species that links modern elephants to even older ancestors.

The likely "missing link" is a 27-million-year-old jaw fossil, found in Eritrea. [CLOSE QUOTE]


“Where I come from when a Catholic marries a Lutheran it is considered the first step on the road to Minneapolis.” —Garrison Keillor

WINTER IS VERY NEAR

Now I’m busy reviewing the textbook which I haven’t looked at for nine months so I can get back to the algebra course I stopped taking after the winter quarter. I’ve got a month or so to review about seven chapters, do the tests and sample problems, do some of the exercises at the end of each chapter. Lot’s of work to do because math, unused, tends to dry up and blow away.

Photo: Side yard summer.

Lately, I’ve been reading biography, history and a few novels, watching movies and TV, specially Law and Order: SVU. I could feel all the gears shift (the unused synapses firing) when I opened the old algebra text up and began trying to read and digest lines of very logical writing in which almost every word has but one, and only one, meaning. No slopping around in metaphor land when one is doing math.

Photo: Side yard now, on left. Photo on right backyard.

Yeah? Winter, so . . .

TIME FOR A NEW HAT

ALAN WATTS

I didn’t know it till now, but Alan Watts, the speaker and writer for Buddhism and enlightenment, back in the day, as they say, died of cirrhosis of the liver because of a lifetime of alcohol abuse. Now that stopped me in my tracks. Sorry to hear that, even though he’s old news in these days of the now news.