I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period

I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period
(The Onion)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those religious nut cases who denies that evolution is real. Of course evolution is real, just not during the “Triassic period.”

This so-called Triassic period saw the formation of scleractinian corals and a slight changeover from warm-blooded therapsids to cold-blooded archosauromorphs. Clearly, such breathtakingly subtle modifications could only have been achieved by an active intelligence.

The secular Triassicists would have you believe that these changes were just the result of millions of years of nature favoring certain genes over others in order to adapt, the same way evolution worked prior to the Triassic. Obviously, that doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, I’ve had niggling doubts about those archosauromorphs myself.

Darwin’s God

Darwin’s God
(New York Times)

A second mental module that primes us for religion is causal reasoning. The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random. “We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” Barrett wrote, “and ‘stuff just happens’ is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.” The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.

Menstrual Mood Swings May Have a Use After All

Menstrual Mood Swings May Have a Use After All
(New Scientist)

Indeed, previous experiments have shown that women report getting more pleasure from cocaine and amphetamine use during the follicular phase compared to the luteal phase, says Dreher. He believes his findings may therefore help treat women with drug abuse problems, or those with mood disorders.

Dreher also speculates that increased feelings of reward during the follicular phase—when a woman is ovulating and therefore most likely to get pregnant—may have an evolutionary benefit. “It is interesting to note that, from an evolutionary perspective, the increased availability, receptivity and desire that may occur during the ovulatory period has been thought to facilitate procreation,” he says.

Really? That goes against everything I know of the phenomenon.

“Hobbit” human “is a new species”

“Hobbit” human “is a new species”
(BBC)

In the new study, Dean Falk, of Florida State University, and her colleagues say the remains are those of a completely separate human species: Homo floresiensis.

They have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The remains at the centre of the Hobbit controversy were discovered at Liang Bua, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, in 2003.

Hooray for Bilbo!

Condoms “too big” for Indian men

Condoms “too big” for Indian men
(BBC)

The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimeter.

The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.

The conclusion of all this scientific endeavor is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimeters shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

So this may just be what the doctor ordered.

Afghans’ growing appetite for porn

Afghans’ growing appetite for porn
(Scotsman)

At least one satellite operator offers foreign channels such as eurotictv, allsex, 247Sex and transex, along with the God Channel and the Church, Miracle and Hope channels. In a country where converting to Christianity from Islam carries the death penalty, the Christian channels are just as offensive to some as the pornography, although not as popular.

“Pornography is a problem,” admits new provincial police chief General Asmatullah Alizai. “According to our Islamic rules and beliefs, people cannot accept this kind of thing. I don’t want people to see this kind of film.”

Dubai Swats Pests Ogling Beach Beauties

Dubai Swats Pests Ogling Beach Beauties
(The New York Times)

Indeed, for the estimated 500,000 foreign workers here, most from the Indian subcontinent, the chance to spot a woman in a bikini may be hard to pass up.

They typically live in a Dickensian world of squalor, working 12-hour shifts six days a week, often denied their wages of about $150 per month for months at a time. Most of them secure work by taking out loans from recruiting agencies at home to get here, forcing most to stay on for years without seeing their families and loved ones. The workmen have become prevalent in Dubai’s public parks and beaches as their numbers have swelled, and because of the lechery-on-the-beach factor, they are especially noticeable at this time of year.

A Dissent: The Case Against Faith

A Dissent: The Case Against Faith
Sam Harris (Newsweek)

It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs. The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality. One of the worst things about religion is that it tends to separate questions of right and wrong from the living reality of human and animal suffering. Consequently, religious people will devote immense energy to so-called moral problems—such as gay marriage—where no real suffering is at issue, and they will happily contribute to the surplus of human misery if it serves their religious beliefs.

Cleric blames women’s attire for attacks

Cleric blames women’s attire for attacks
(Sydney Morning Herald)

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?” the sheik asked.

“The uncovered meat is the problem.”

“If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (islamic headdress), no problem would have occurred.”

Hear, hear!

Marketing and Mind Control

Marketing and Mind Control
(Newsweek)

Psychologists have demonstrated this in the laboratory, time and time again. It’s known as the Ultimatum Game, and its counterintuitive findings are part of a broad new understanding of how the human brain and mind work. As it turns out, we are not very reasonable creatures much of the time, nor are we very aware. Indeed, we are under constant sway of our emotions and intuitions, and most of the time we are not even aware of just how quirky and emotional our everyday decisions are.

You don’t say!

Subliminal Nude Pictures Focus Attention

Subliminal Nude Pictures Focus Attention
(Scientific American)

Nothing focuses the mind’s eye like an erotic picture, according to the results of a new study. Even when such pictures were actively canceled out, subliminal images of female nudes helped heterosexual men find the orientation of a briefly shown abstract shape. Such nudity-driven focusing worked almost as well for women, as long as the image accorded with their sexual preference.

In other news, liminal nude pictures are very distracting.

From today’s Bizarro

Just to break the textual monotony on the page.

Viking landers may have missed Martian life

Viking landers may have missed Martian life
(New Scientist Space)

The results from Vikings’ onboard experiments are confusing because some tests suggested the presence of organisms capable of digesting organic molecules. But heating the soil with a gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS) to release these organic molecules found nothing, causing most scientists to rule out life. Instead they put the soil reactivity down to the presence of peroxides or other reactive substances.

Now, a paper by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the University of Mexico and others demonstrates that the GCMS instrument was incapable of detecting organic compounds even in Mars-like soils from various locations on Earth. This includes Chile’s Atacama Desert, where other tests prove that living microbes are indeed present.

How Borat hoaxed America

How Borat hoaxed America
(BBC)

The British comedian has perfected his act as the apparently naive reporter whose enthusiastic offensiveness either leaves his interviewees in shock or persuades them to reveal a little too much of their own prejudices.

And the result is set to be one of the year’s most popular films.

Jagshemash! I’m an unabashed Borat fan.

Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kids hang on to dad’s every word

Kids hang on to dad’s every word
(New Scientist)

Children whose father’s vocabulary was more varied when they were 2 years old had more advanced language skills at age 3. Surprisingly, the dads spoke less and asked fewer questions than the mothers, suggesting it was not how much they spoke but what they said and how they said it that resonated with their children.

Uh-oh!

Indian Web Sites Go With the Flow

Indian Web Sites Go With the Flow
(CNN)

Firms in India are now turning to the ancient philosophies of vaastu shastra and Chinese feng shui, used for centuries to bring balance and harmony between man and the environment, in a bid to boost their businesses through “balanced” Web pages.

Believers in vaastu shastra say the Indian science, which seeks to create harmony between nature’s five elements—earth, fire, water, air and space—man and objects, can be directly applied to the Web, just as it is to home design.

Welcome to Web −2.0.

I’ll Have What She’s Having

I’ll Have What She’s Having
(Sydney Morning Herald)

Rather, her fortuitous discovery—that the high doses of fish oil she took in preparation for pregnancy and the Kegel exercises she practiced afterwards to restore lost vaginal muscle strength led her to easily achieve vaginal orgasm—was simply an unexpected boon.

“I noticed that something was different,” Lindberg says over the phone from her Boston home.

That’s an understatement. When the computer programmer had fine-tuned her recipe (see breakout), she claimed a whopping personal best of 52 vaginal orgasms in one session.

“It gives a certain confidence to a woman,” she says. “Now when I walk around, I get noticed.”

Guess I’d walk funny too, after a few dozen.

Company Sells “Islamic Jeans” Made For Praying Muslims

Company Sells “Islamic Jeans” Made For Praying Muslims
(Local 6)

The Italian company, based in the city of Udine, has been marketing the trousers as “the jeans of choice for Islam,” according to the Al Quds Web site.

Al Quds Jeans, manufactured in Pakistan, are baggy and have a high waist to allow freedom of movement during the repeated kneeling for Islamic worship.

Be sure to color-coordinate with these.

Chicken and Egg Question Answered

Chicken and Egg Question Answered
(Guardian)

It is a question that has vexed philosophers since the Greeks. But it seems we may now have the answer to the beguilingly simple question: “Which came first?” It’s the egg.

This reassuring conclusion was the work of an expert panel including a philosopher, geneticist and chicken farmer.

Huh? This was such a conundrum? Even Cecil answered this 22 years ago.

Feared Saudi Religious Police Reined In

Feared Saudi Religious Police Reined In
(Yahoo News)

The Interior Ministry said it is taking measures to restrict the powers of the agency that runs the religious police, a force resented by many Saudis for interfering in their personal lives.

[…]

The morality squad has long enjoyed wide and unchallenged powers. Its members roam public places, such as malls, markets and universities, looking for such infractions as unrelated men and women mingling in public, men skipping the five daily prayers and women with strands of hair showing from under their veil.

They’ve scolded salesmen for dressing elegantly, waiters for serving food with a smile and young women for carrying pictures of heartthrobs, such as actor Leonardo di Caprio.