Take a Stand Without Taking Sides

 
On Tuesday night I went to a meeting of Liberals in my riding and heard Michael Ignatieff speak.

It was a small gathering (250) so there was plenty of opportunity to get to know the new Liberal leader. Many of the questions were challenges to his statements about the Gaza conflict. Ignatieff is careful to blame Hamas and defend Israel and this did not sit well with many of the constituents in my riding who are from the Middle East and South Asia.

There has to be a way to stand up for principles without taking sides. Today's column by James Travers in the Toronto Star makes a good case [Don't take sides but do take a stand].

Canada, with its polyglot population and its military fighting fundamentalism in Afghanistan, is more interested in Middle East conflicts than it is able to influence them. At best it can exert pressure on all sides not to reduce future peace prospects by making the immediate situation worse.

What's possible is relatively straightforward. Canada should be as forceful in holding Israel accountable for its actions as Hamas. And when the shooting stops it should invigorate honest-broker efforts to address the inequities and injustices that inevitably spawn violence.

While no panacea for a conflict layered in complexity, it would at least reaffirm values and principles that in the past informed Canadian Middle East policy. Beyond Israel's security, they include its legitimate expectation to live without fear and the countervailing requirement that Palestinians be released from decades of bondage in their own land.

Not taking sides does not mean not taking a stand. Unequivocal support for Israelis and their safety does not require equivocation on Palestinian human rights and political freedom.

Canada can best serve Israelis and Palestinians by finding its voice when it's time to say "enough."

Sounds good to me.

Jennifer Smith of Runesmith's Canadain Content makes the same point in her letter to Ignatieff [Dear Mr. Ignatieff].

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What Is Science?

 
This video does an excellent job of explaining the difference between science and superstition. The world would be a much better place if everyone took the advice shown here.

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Arlo Guthrie: City of New Orleans

 
While poking around on YouTube I stumbled across this performance by Arlo Guthrie of one of the best songs ever. I just had to share it with the one or two other people who might agree with me. The song was written by Steve Goodman in 1970.

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Meat Loaf: Would you let your daughter listen to "Paradise by the dashboard light?"

 
I have a confession to make. I've been fan of Meat Loaf ever since Rocky Horror Picture Show.¹

It was fun watching Meat Loaf on this FOX news clip—thanks to Greg Laden for posting it.


At six minutes and ten seconds into the video the moderator says that he doesn't want his daughter, when she become 14, listening to "Paradise by the dashboard light." Them's fighting words.

Would you let your daughter see this video and listen to the lyrics? If not, what are you afraid of? Do you think that 14 year old girls (and boys) don't know about sex?


Here's one of my favorites ("I Would Do Anything for Love"). I seem to recall that it was my daughter—when she wasn't much older than 14—who first started playing it on our car trips. Incidentally, Ms. Sandwalk isn't a big fan of Meat Loaf. She has a stack of 20 or 30 CDs that we play on our car trips and I don't think there's a single song by Meat Loaf. There are lots of songs by dudes I never heard of, like Tchaikovsky and The Rolling Stones.

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1. I'm also a fan of Susan Sarandon

Nobel Laureates: Sir Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1936.

"for their discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses"

Sir Henry Hallett Dale (1875 - 1968) and Otto Loewi (1873 - 1961) won the Noble Prize in 1936 for discovering the role of chemicals, especially acetycholine, in transmitting nerve impulses.

Today we take it for granted that chemicals are involved at the synapses but in the beginning of the 20th century this wasn't obvious. The impact of this work is apparent from the Presentation Speech.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

It was generally thought that impulses in the nerves act directly on the muscles or glands bringing about a change in their activity. But as early as 1904, Elliott presented a different interpretation. From the medulla of the adrenal glands, which, as embryonic development shows, is related with the sympathetic nervous system, a substance can be produced, i.e. adrenaline, the effect of which is remarkably similar to that produced by increased activity in the sympathetic system. Elliott therefore supposed that the impulses in the sympathetic nerves produced a release of adrenaline in the nerve endings which would then be the real vehicles of the stimulation effect. Ten years later, Dale published a comprehensive investigation of another substance, acetylcholine, for which he found a corresponding conformity with the effect of the parasympathetic stimulation. As, however, at that time acetylcholine had not been met with in the body, there was not sufficient basis for a discussion as to whether it normally transmitted impulses.

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The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

[Photo Credits: Henry Hallett Dale: Jamd; Otto Loewi: ©Copyright Encyclopedia of Austria]

Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy

 
It wouldn't be fair for me to ignore Michael Egnor's devastating put-down demonstrating my ignorance and bigotry [Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy].

I especially like being called a Darwinian fundamentalist.

The "discussion" is all about Mary's Room. Here's the synopsis from the Wikipedia site.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The answer, by the way, is "yes." Mary will learn something when she actually experiences how photons of different wavelengths impinge upon her retina and are interpreted by her brain.

Isn't that profound?

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Falling into a pit

 
Falling into a pit may be a much better analogy for evolution than adaptive peaks and climbing Mt. Improbable. To find out why read Chris Nedin's blog Ediacaran [Climbing Pit Improbable].

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Atheist Buses in Genoa

 
"The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that you do not need him."

I wonder how long it will take until these signs show up on buses in the major cities of North America? Anyone want to takes bets on when we'll see an atheist bus sign in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, or Calgary?

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[Hat Tip: Friendly Atheist]

The taste of MSG

 
Discount Thoughts has posted a wonderful description of how we taste the glutamate in monosodium glutamate [How we taste umami]. The taste is called "umami" and it's distinct from the four standard tastes of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.

The figure shows a glutamate molecule (yellow) bound to the umami receptor with inosine monophosphate (IMP) (green). You need both glutamate and IMP in order to get the umami taste.

Theme
A Sense of Smell
I know lots of people who can taste MSG but that's not the problem. There appear to be some other effects of this chemical that are much less pleasant.

The umami flavor is common in meats, cheese, seafood, and lots of other foods that are rich in protein. Vegetarians don't know what they're missing!

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Do you know what this is?

 
If you can't identify the organism in the photograph then read The Beautiful Angel of Death on Catalogue of Organisms.

Life is stranger than most of us realize.

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ScieneOnline '09: Things to do in Durham

 
ScienceOnline '09 is being held in the Research Triangle, North Carolina (USA) this weekend. For those of you who aren't familiar with the region, the "triangle" consist of Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. I've spent a lot of time there over the past 25 years but unfortunately I can't make it this weekend.

Chapel Hill is one of the best places in America for all kinds of reasons. Raleigh is a pretty decent city.

Abel Pharmboy has the unenviable task of promoting Durham. You can read his attempt at: General cool stuff to do in Durham, NC, during ScienceOnline'09.

He did about as good a job as someone from Durham could possibly do.

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2008 Weblog Awards

 
Voting for the best science blog will close tonight. Pharyngula is in the running and so is Bad Astronomy.

The current leader in the voting is a climate change denialist blog called Watt's Up with That?.

Do NOT, repeat DO NOT, rush over and vote for Pharyngula or Bad Astronomy, or any other real science blog. PZ is not asking you to do that. Many science bloggers (including me) want the anti-science blog to win in order to completely discredit the whole notion of online voting for best blog.

It's about time we put an end to this nonsense and letting an anti-science blog win for "Best Science Blog" is an excellent way to send a message.

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Paleobet and Cambrian Fossils

 
PZ has discovered palaeobet¹ so, naturally, I had to post my initials as well.


Some of you may not recognize "laggania." It's Laggania cambria, one of several species related to Anomalocaris. Collectively they are known as Anomalocarids.

Here's a fossil of Laggania cambria from the Burgess Shale (right). It just so happens that I was looking at this very fossil on Saturday during our visit the the Royal Ontario Museum. The Burgess Shale fossils are stuck in a corner of the museum where they can easily be missed by people entering the dinosaur rooms. That's a shame since these are unique fossils and very few museums have such a wonderful collection of Cambrian fossils.

Most of you are probably more familiar with Anomalocaris canadensis, a much more fierce-looking cousin of L. cambria (see below). A comparision of the two species can be found on The Anomalocaris Homepage.

Anomalocaris and Laggania were among the species made famous by Stephen Jay Gould in his excellent book Wonderful Life. Gould pointed out that these species so not fit neatly into any of the existing phyla, although they have some of the characteristics of arthropods and onychophora (velvet worms).

Lumpers will now include them in Arthropoda and splitters assign them to a separate, extinct, phylum called Dinocaridida. What's clear is that there are no modern species that can trace their ancestry directly to the anomalocarids. They represent a body plan that has not survived and this lends support to Gould's idea that there were more fundamentally different kinds of animals in the past that we see today. As he put it on page 208 ...

The Burgess Shale includes a range of disparity in anatomical design never again equaled, and not matched today by all the creatures in the world's oceans. The history of multicellular life has been dominated by decimation of a large initial stock, quickly generated by the Cambrian explosion. The story of the last 500 million years has featured restriction following by proliferation within a few stereotyped designs, not general expansion of range and increase in complexity as our favored iconography, the cone of increasing diversity, implies. Moreover, the new iconography of rapid establishment and later decimation dominates all scales, and seems to have the generality of a fractal pattern.

Scientists have been chipping away at Gould's thesis over the years since the publication of Wonderful Life in 1989. Several problematic species have been reliably assigned to existing phyla and others have been tentatively squeezed into the standard animal phyla. The goal is to discredit the idea that life was more diverse (disparate) during the Cambrian and the conclusion that the evolution of animals is characterized by the extinction of major lines.

I think Gould's main point is still valid and I don't understand why so many people find it troubling. It may have something to do with people's perception of evolution as progress.

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1. Fossil animals for each letter of the alphabet.

[Hat Tip: P (pteraspis) Z (zalambalestis) Myers]

Trouble with Blogger Is Over

 
Blogger has finally fixed the problems with RSS feeds. As I mentioned earlier [Trouble with Blogger] this is a problem that the blogger team seem to have created back on December 19th. It was fixed on January 9th—21 days later.

The most obvious change is in the recent comments in the left sidebar. You can now actually see recent comments instead of comments from June 2007.

I suppose we shouldn't complain, after all Blogger is free and it's pretty good most of the time.

I'm sorry if I missed any of your comments during the outage. I was able to keep up with all comments on recent postings but if you commented on an old posting chances are I missed it.

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Drift vs. Selection

 
Daniel MacArthur of Genetic Future weighs in on the ongoing debate over the important of random genetic drift vs natural selection during human evolution [Genetic differences between human populations: more drift than selection?].

Daniel MacArthur seems to be a smart guy. Here's a teaser ....

I should emphasise that there's little doubt that at least some recent population-specific selection has occurred in humans (the signal around the lactase gene in Europeans is about as unambiguous as it gets) - but perhaps it has not been anywhere near as pervasive as some researchers (e.g. John Hawks) have argued.

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