Drugs.

This was sent to me by my friend Shane, who said "i don't know if this is genius or retarded...like if the makers of teletubbies did a daytime soap about three subversive lesbians and something about a lakehouse."

I've watched it twice and, like...it's weird because it reminds me of total garbage, but in actuality I think it may be completely amazing. The thing that impresses me the most about it is that while watching it, it's impossible to form a complete thought. I'm serious. Try.

Also, it gave Roy a flashback. Just a warning.

A Belief in Evolution without a Higher Power leads to Genocide, and other tidbits about the 'Expelled' Movie

"He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called ''From Darwin to Hitler.''"

This is a quote from Ben Stein from a New York Times article about his new movie
EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED

(That is the real fucking title of this movie. Grown adults who want to make a documentary about censorship in the scientific community want the subtitle to be 'No Intelligence Allowed.')



Also, here is the THREE PAGE article in the New York Times investigating how this production company misled scientists like Dawkins to be interviewed for the doc, without their knowing its ideological objectives.

I got in a heated discussion with my friend Mike a few weeks ago when I sent him this quote from Ben Stein. I personally disagree with Stein's comment, but Mike saw some truth in it. I think that the dialogue that it opens up is an interesting one, in that it seems that a lot of people do think that if you believe solely in a scientific explanation of evolution and life, that it will lead you to concepts like social Darwinism. These misunderstandings I feel need to be addressed.

Ben Stein on Bill O'Reilly (that's all you have to say)

...
Derekh: that would be a weird society
Shannon: forget that
Shannon: we've got bigger problems
9:55 PM
Derekh: hahaha
Derekh: like what?
Derekh: global warming?
Shannon:

Shannon: like the two biggest douches on the planet together in one room
Derekh: OH YES
Derekh: WATCHING
Shannon: i think that planet earth is about to melt
Derekh: oh my god
Derekh: lighting striking a puddle
Shannon: I KNOW
Shannon: fuck
Shannon: i will wait for you to finish before i launch
10:00 PM
Derekh: wow
Derekh: ben stein
Derekh: total idiot
Derekh: who knew?
Shannon: holy fucking shit right?
Shannon: omg
Shannon: how are these people claiming the first amendment??
Derekh: these people just don't understand the issue at all
Shannon: HOW DID THAT HAPPEN
Derekh: i know, that's a brilliant tactic
Derekh: actually
Shannon: it boggles the mind
Derekh: total red herring
Shannon: AAAAGH
Shannon: i love how bill oreilly said
Shannon: "they (xtopher hitchens and bill maher, et al) would say you don't have the right to talk about a higher power"
Shannon: and stein like
Shannon: i mean it's a wiffle ball
Shannon: goes into first amendment from there
Shannon: like
Shannon: WTF
Derekh: yeah, really insane
Shannon: would bill maher EVER SAY
Shannon: you don't have the right
Shannon: to do anything?
Shannon: NO
Derekh: of course not
Shannon: he would literally NEVER SAY THAT
Shannon: jesus
Derekh: it's all this assumed passive aggressive bullshit
Derekh: dan dennett even says
Derekh: religion should be taught in schools
Shannon: in religion class
Shannon: lol
Derekh: which of course these guys won't bring that up
Derekh: exactly!
Shannon: hahaha
Derekh: in a religion class
Derekh: but NO
Derekh: a religion class is like too limiting
Shannon: i just think it's amazing that they're framing this as a first amendment issue when it's clearly an educator competence issue
Derekh: for these people
Shannon: people are losign their jobs because they are NOT teachign science
Shannon: in SCIENCE CLASS
Shannon: wtf
Derekh: i can't wait to see this movie
Shannon: it woudl be like firing a teacher who told her kids that like unicorns were real
Derekh: i mean, i just don't know
Shannon: and then saying "ooooh first amendment, she can say wahtever she wants"
Derekh: totally
Derekh: exactly
Shannon: well yes she can but taht doesn't mean i can't fire her fucking ass
Shannon: jesus
Derekh: what doodoo heads
Shannon: god i hope i can pirate this fucking movie off the internet
Shannon: i really don't want to give these fucks my money
Derekh: yeah, me neither
Derekh: you will be able too
Derekh: to
Shannon: lol
Shannon: ok ok ok
Shannon: *breathing*
Derekh: relax

Evil plan alert

Check out this article about how a team of scientists from the University of Florida and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin have discovered that amber resin from trees in swamps may have trapped and preserved a bunch of prehistoric insects and swamp critters.

A direct quote (my italics):

"Studying organisms that were trapped for millions of years in amber may help scientists to recreate prehistoric water ecosystems and learn how these life forms changed over time, [paleo-botanist David Dilcher] said. While no one is claiming that the entombed bugs will be brought back to life through genetic splicing, the discovery may give clues about the evolution of microorganisms, he said."

This assurance is a bit out of place, as nowhere in the article is there any suggestion that anyone would want to bring prehistoric bugs back to life. Is this a poorly-contextualized Jurassic Park reference, or an accidental slip that reveals the secret evil plans of a team of evil evildoers posing as scientists?

We're just going to try to find some bugs is all. Nobody's saying we're going to create a super race of face-eating zombie insects. We're just, you know, studying evolution...definitely NOT for the purpose of genetically splicing these bugs into a new and terrifying species that will take over the world. Muahahaha. I mean, ahem.

Aren't we amazing

About five years ago I caught one of my coworkers gazing out the window and when I asked him what he was staring at he pointed at an airplane flying overhead and said "don't you think that it's amazing that man designed his own wings and learned to fly?" (I'm serious, that's actually what he said. He was kind of a nerd.)

"No," I said.

I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I just don't think it's all that amazing. Or rather, it's not the kind of thing that amazes me.

I think that we as a human race tend to have a very expansive view of what is incredible or amazing. We glorify technology and fantasize about building space ships and colonies on other planets and like a robot police force made out of nanomachines...it's weird but I don't really get excited about that. I remember when I was a kid I liked Star Wars as much as the next person but the thing that really would enrapture me was hearing about how in the deep deep ocean there were organisms that we haven't even found yet, there are a ton of ancient life forms right under our noses and we don't even know that they exist or what they could possibly be like. I guess I tend to have a more concentrated view--to me the coolest thing is not how far you can go or what you can build but how deeply you can see into something that's always been there, something that we might not even find to be particularly interesting.

So all of that is just a long-winded way of explaining why this video gave me a total Science Erection.

This is a super-awesome animation of what goes on inside a cell. Like, one of the billion trillion or whatever cells that you have in your body right now. I mean I know we all learned about this stuff in school but this video is just nuts--it's like there's a whole fucking universe in there, and it's cooler than any universe I've ever seen in any science fiction film. I've posted the music video version because it's kind of cool and beautiful, but if you'd rather watch the full-length educational version (watch out, it'll make you feel stupid) then you can watch it here.



Created by XVIVO science animation studio (how cool would that job be)

How do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like?

Like a lot of people, I am pretty obsessed with consciousness. Ever since I was like 20 years old and I used to get high and stay up all night drawing (completely inaccurate) schematics of how the human brain must process information and emotion, it's been very easy for me to accidentally slip into this fantasy world of trying to "figure it out," with no formal training or expertise whatsoever.

So in the Pinker + Goldstein interview I posted, Steven Pinker reminded me of David Chalmers' work. Pinker said:

"I'm also sympathetic to Chalmers' view. It might not be the actual stuff of the brain that makes us conscious so much as it is the information processing. I don't think Chalmers' view would give much support to a traditional religious view about the existence of a soul. He says that consciousness resides in information. So a computer could be conscious and a thermostat could have a teensy bit of consciousness as well. Still, the information content requires some kind of physical medium to support the distinctions that make up the information. And the Cartesian idea that there are two kinds of stuff in the universe -- mind and matter -- doesn't find a comfortable home in current views of consciousness, even those of Chalmers."

Which is as good a synopsis of Chalmers' work as I think you'll ever get.

Anyway, I was thinking about that all night and for most of yesterday. I was thinking about how yes, obviously there is no one material place in the brain where consciousness "lives" (a concept illustrated beautifully in Dan Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, which I never finished reading but still recommend), but it is rather an emergent phenomenon. I was thinking about how consciousness is really the interaction of the mind and the body, because as we know from Candace Pert's work (which I'm not sure is mainstream yet, but is definitely groundbreaking and should be fucking paid attention to), "emotions" are not all in your head. They take place in your body at the molecular level, as neurotransmitters and hormones (like seratonin and testosterone) are not acting simply in the brain but being dispatched to all parts of the body (which is why when you feel that happy love feeling, your heart gets warm--happy juice is binding to receptors on the cells in your heart).

It's interesting to think of drives and desires from this perspective. Think of your body as a machine. So you've got the evolution juices--oxytocin, seratonin, dopamine, adrenaline, testosterone, endorphins, all the other ones...the ones that are designed to keep you alive and breeding. And then you've got a body that's designed to receive those juices to achieve particular states, and then a brain that's designed to document information about what situations lead to what states, and strategize about which states are desirable and which states are to be avoided. So when you consider Chalmers' "information" to include the concept of drives and desire that your body/mind feels, as well as memories and conceptualizations that your brain tissue is storing, then that's a pretty explosive theory of consciousness. It makes you think well no wonder people feel like they have a soul--there is information pouring out of every cell in your body and organizing itself into a coherent strategy for existence--and part of that strategy btw is that your brain tells you a narrative about the whole thing.



Obviously none of this makes any sense here as I'm babbling about it, but it made sense in my head. I have terrible habit of reading just tiny bits of people's work and then sloppily ripping off their theories (I like to entertain the illusion that I can figure all this stuff out for myself). ANYWAY, after thinking about this stuff for the better part of a day I went on TED and, for some relief, decided to watch a talk on robots. Well THERE IS NO RELIEF, because these fucking robots are conscious. Or, approaching consciousness. By introducing desire (through reward mechanisms) into robot design, this Hod Lipson guy and whoever he works with has created robots that learn and evolve. It's fucking cool and also terrifying in that potential-Matrix-style-apocalypse sort of way. Watch--it's only 6 minutes.

Hod Lipson: Robots that are "self-aware"

This Is It

The interview I have been waiting for. The interview that is so amazing, I would never have even dared to hope that it would actually happen. The interview full of questions and answers so perfect, I will have the entire thing fucking memorized into my DNA because after I have read it seven billion times I will burn it and inject the ashes into my bloodstream. Like, seriously, when I saw it I almost fainted.

It's Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein on their relationship, the mind, religion, and what it's like to be awesome.

I totally believe in true love right now. I will find my Steven Pinker and we will have a billion and five amazing brilliant genius babies, and it's gonna be fuckin sweet.

Seriously, if you only read one interview for the rest of your life, read this fucking interview. Please please please please please.