Is this thing on???? Anyone listening......? More to follow...maybe.....

Bible Contradictions

Gotta love a divinely inspired book that has so many contradictions!

High Calorie Diet and Dopamine

This is an example of bad science I think. There is a study printed on CNN going around about high calorie/high fat diets and their effect on rat brains. Basically, lots of human food caused rats to become highly addicted (just like heroine or cocaine) and would continue eating these foods even when electroshock was applied. The basic idea is fine, and interesting but what drives me nuts is the fact that the "addicted" diet is a combination of bacon, sausage, cheesecake and frosting - so why the fuck did they include all of the different types and not separate high fat from high sugar etc... Then they state plainly that all of those are bad for our brains. That is bad science! The whole point of a scientific experiment is to control variables so you can identify individual elements. Maybe the combination of sugar AND fat is the bad part but based on their design we have no idea because they did not investigate the role of just high fat vs high sugar etc AND the combinations. If for example there was no effect by either the high fat or high sugar alone, but a significant effect when combined that would be informative but for all we know it could just be the fat alone (highly unlikely - read Gary Taubes' Good Calories Bad Calories and then talk to me or better yet his NY Times article here) or and more likely it could be just the high sugar since there are numerous studies looking at the effect like this one from Princeton that looked at just the effect of sugar and low and behold it increased dopamine receptors in the rat brain. The problem with the CNN article is it blatantly states high fat which I disagree because they didn't look at that but rather high sugar with fat.

T-Shirt

I know that the recently passed healthcare will need improvement but it is a huge step...and I saw this and loved it. I kinda want one....

Godidit!

I found this here and it is a very good response to people who use the argument from design, or complexity, or god of the gaps etc. to try and explain that which they do not understand - goddit!

Just because you can't understand how is not a good reason to think some supernatural puppetmaster had to do it

Now this goes hand in hand with another cartoon I liked over at Friendly Atheist regarding the Teloelogical Argument (see blow). A friend and I were just chatting about this the other day. Just because you don't understand something, and it seems too complicated so therefore someone must have designed it all is a horrible argument. Arthur C. Clarke once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and the same holds true for nature for many people (i.e., we don't understand every part yet, so therefore godidit) which is absurd. The secondary part which is another topic altogether is the point that EVERY sect of christianity or any religion for that matter, is a minority opinion (i.e., there are thousands of other sects that believe differently and think you are completely wrong), yet all think they are right and have the exact same reasons to support their own conclusions. They all use the same scriptures more or less (interpreted differently for no good reason), some form "personal experiences" or divine revelation etc.... But for some reason they all think believing in something kinda like the same god/christ/whatever is enough to band together under some commonality.... I think a lot of "them" should just read up on group selection and game theory or evolutionary stable strategies etc.,..... but then again many wouldn't take the time or understand it anyway.

Update

OK so I just got back from the Bodega Phylogenetics Workshop by UC Davis. The workshop was at their Bodega Marine Lab, and while quite intense at times, lots of work, inredibly slide-filled at times, overall it was fantastic and I highly recommend applying next year to anyone interested in this area and even if you can't go you can look at their wiki page. Their are lots of tutorials that walk you through data analysis and programming, and even some pictures from the week (I think a few people will be uploading more this week - only one with me in it so far lol).

What if You're Wrong?

This was a real question and answer period after a Richard Dawkins talk (a very common question to atheists by christians) and his answer is good - put to southpark-ish animation and I liked it enough to share - it's only a couple minutes

I want one

The MacGyver Multitool, actually I may have one....

Great Ad

Well, some people complained that I left the hot atheists up on purpose for a month but mostly I was at a conference in San Diego and just got lazy. I saw this ad online today and decided to share:

One of the best ads I think I have seen in a while. This was actually a public service message by Sussex Safer Roads.

Sexiest Female Atheists

I found this over at Common Sense Atheism and had to share (now I like Natalie Portman and Jennifer Love-Hewitt even more!

This is directly from the site:

"Of course, there are probably hundreds of sexy actresses, models, and porn stars who just aren’t known as atheists, but here’s a list of the sexiest female confirmed atheists. (Here, I’m taking ‘atheist’ to mean “doesn’t believe in a personal god”, which would include many agnostics and Buddhists.)

Written by lukeprog in: General Atheism |

How Observant Are You?

FYI This blogs picks on religion

Us science-ey, atheistic types get all sorts of arguments from religious people about why people "believe" something and one of the most common is they just know or they feel it etc, or that things have happened in their life they can't explain, which is really just a matter of the problem our human brain has with coincidences and the tendency to look for patters (which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective). But, what I really want to point out is that people in general, are very bad at observing the natural world and that we often selectively see what we want. This effects people's perspective - in fact many religions actively reject the idea of even trying to see the big picture by commanding that one not subject themselves to doubt or disbelievers etc....

This video isn't directed to religion in any way but it doesn't show how observant we really are (actually how bad we are). This is exactly why we need the scientific method (or maybe this is all just a social construct....oh another time) because trusting in our senses and observations alone fails most of the time. This also brings into question the reliability of eye witnesses as well, but thats another topic.

Hat-tip Unreasonable Faith

(PS and if you are wondering exactly how this relates to religion, it is that most religious people (especially fundamentalists) do not look at the big picture (compare their religion to others and seriously ask why one is better), they do not ask "what am I not seeing" that should be asked (evidence of biblical scholarship for example - who wrote what and when exactly), what evidence is there or not etc...)

For example most fundamental christians have no idea of the history of their own religion - like the actual date of Dec 25th for christmas itself which is related to a pagan holiday. In fact the details of christmas are a hodge-podge from the gospels since none of them give much detail, none tell what time of year, only one talks about a manger etc.... Not saying that theologists haven't tried to answer some of these - they have (although I think very poorly) but most people don;t even know the issues exist and are not even looking at the big picture.

In Fact, Bert Ehrman talks about the same thing in his book Misquoting Jesus, and Luke over at Common Sense Atheism discusses Ehrman's take on this.

Lets Sing Some X-Mas songs!

I found this over at Pharyngula and thought you might like it to start the season off right. Not overly anti-theistic btw:

A little Holiday Cheer for all you Religious People

Remember what fate..... awaits thee

Global Warming

There is a good blog over at Tuibguy on the problem with all of the global warming deniers (especially after the whole email-gate) and how they screw up the math. This classic Abbott and Costello video is very similar.... and I like Abbott and Costello anyway...

For example, The Island of Doubt has a great little edit to a paragraph Sarah Palin's latest speech on the issue and "corrected" it, which is educational in itself for those of you not up to date. I liked it and figured you wold too so here is the main part from it:

"I will begin with this paragraph:

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed [deleted copies of] records, manipulated adjusted data to "hide the decline" in global select North American temperatures [tree-ring proxy data that conflicted with observational records], and tried to silence [challenge] their [non-expert] critics' by preventing them from publishing [competency and the wisdom of allowing flawed papers to appear] in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, [T]he documents show that there was no a real consensus even within the CRU crowd. [While s]ome scientists hadstrong doubts about the accuracy of estimates reliability of temperatures [proxy data] from centuries ago [the last three decades, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, [the observational data since 1850 only confirms the science behind anthropogenic climate change].

Hmm. On second thought, that took too much work for a single paragraph, and now it says nothing very interesting. In any case, I don't have the time to conduct a similarly rigorous edit of the rest of the essay. Sorry to get your hopes up. Recommend you start over from square one. An introductory course in climatology would be a good idea before tackling this issue again."

So I have to clarify, Palin wrote an article for the Washington Post (why they would publish and op-ed piece by probably the least qualified person to write about scientific issues in general, I have no idea) but several people have critiqued - see this piece in the Washington Post by lan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science.

It's about perspective

Some of you may have seen or head about Kirk Cameron and Banana guy giving out free copies of The Origin of Species with a note about the "problems" with evolution. The onion pretty much sums it up the best (I would love to actually see the media present it as it really is):

DNA Activation!

I gotta thank my friend kim for the link on this one - I almost went into my PhD Comprehensive exams with NO IDEA about the 12 levels of DNA that we have, or DNA Perfection. I mean sure, I am studying all about DNA and evolution, how it works, what the processes are, etc.... BUT I had no idea that:

In actuality, the Human Genome is arranged into 12 dimensionalized mathematical programs, each of which set the blueprint for one double-helix chemical strand. Each double-helix strand blueprint is composed of 12 base-magnetic "female" base codes and 12 base-electrical "male" acceleration codes.

or this:

Due to an unnatural sonic control program in Earth's grids, only 4 Vector Codes have been active in biological earth since 25,500 BC, making the chemical DNA of Earth life appear to be a "Base 4 Genetic Alphabet".

But especially this:

The Earth distortions in history have actually created a planetary DNA distortion that has made every living organism’s DNA on the planet to falsely appear as Base-4, with only 4 chemicals. Humans are supposed to have 12 chemical nucleotide bases. This would allow us to have 144 physical chemical chromosomes as well, whereas now we only have 46.

I would totally screwed up any questions on chromosomes for sure....whew!

for a measly $400 bucks you can get your DNA Perfected too - they take PayPal! Oh but make sure you read the fine print: Not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure dis-ease or illness, nor is it to be interpreted, in any way, as a substitute for professional medical, surgical or psychiatric care or treatment.

Im gonna impress my committee with this!

God's voice

I one asked my ex what the difference was between people who hear voices and those that hear god (and how do you know which is which)? Amazingly, they have done a study and guess what? God sounds just like the person hearing them and ironically god's opinion of various matters was, wait for it - wait for it - the same as the individual's opinion!!! WOW - you would think that if they are all hearing god, that some of them would hear opinions that are different from their own - statistically speaking of course. But nope - as PZ said it - god is a sockpuppet. They got one thing right, god is definitely created in one's own image....oh wait that's assbackwards isnt it....

Exactly

They must be watching me:

This is pretty much how I feel

I little cartoon 4 u -donate your organs!

A little summary of what I am up to for my family and friends: my comprehensive exams officially last thursday so I have 4 weeks to come up with a long essay and prepare to answer a few questions. I also have a couple grants due and a 45 min presentation to give this Thursday at the local Lethbridge Naturalists Society on my research which should be fun. I have also been practicing the ol' geetar and hoping to play at the local open-mic night in the next couple weeks (since JG et al. are still hosting)... we shall see.

I found this the other day at one of my favorite comic sites xkcd.com (thanks for the link deponius) and this one goes out to Bri and Red. For those of you that do not have your organ donation set up yet, please think about it and answer "why the hell not".

After I posted this, I saw that Hemant posted something similar at your Friendly Atheist, and he also pointed out that this is why most atheists don't fear death since we know we can make a difference even after we die" which I agree with. I am an organ donor - are you?

He also says something I completely agree with, as well:

"I think it’s selfish not to do that (or to donate your body to science). It’s not like we need our body after we’re gone."