How Meditation May Change the Brain
By Sindya N. Bhanoo   - NYTimes.com

25 Blasphemous Quotations  By Atheist Ireland | Published: January 2, 2010

God: theism or atheism?

• The brownnoser
• The polymath
• The pulseless
  
• The diverter
  
• The pariah
• The defiant
  
• The unprepared

The future success of online teaching and learning depends on developing course design and pedagogical models that serve the interests of both students and faculty. Participants in the Engaging Ideas Workshop adopt a common set of content, design and pedagogical principles in their online courses and to work together as a professional community to improve this model through experimentation, research and collaborative discussion.  Participation in this workshop is voluntary and alternative course models outside of this workshop are encouraged. 

Love in the Time of Darwinism  Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Autumn 2008

Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood's milestones--high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers--happily--in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import...

Playboy's philosophy may not have been Aristotle, but it was an attempt, of sorts, to define the good life. The Maxim reader prefers lists, which make up in brevity what they lose in thought: "Ten Greatest Video Game Heroes of All Time," "The Five Unsexiest Women Alive," "Sixteen People Who Look Like They Absolutely Reek," and so on.

Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will? --Science News

Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

Infant Transplant Procedure Ignites Debate
Ethicists Question Strategy in Which Hearts Are Removed Minutes After They Stop Beating
By Rob Stein -Washington Post

Surgeons in Denver are publishing their first account of a procedure in which they remove the hearts of severely brain-damaged newborns less than two minutes after the babies are disconnected from life support, and their hearts stop beating, so the organs can be transplanted into infants who would otherwise die.

The Boundaries of Organ Donation after Circulatory Death
The New England Journal of Medicine

In the August 14, 2008 issue of the Journal, Boucek et al. report on three cases of heart transplantation from infants who were pronounced dead on the basis of cardiac criteria. Moderator Atul Gawande, of Harvard Medical School; George Annas, of the Boston University School of Public Health; Arthur Caplan, of the University of Pennsylvania; and Robert Truog, of Harvard Medical School discuss key ethical aspects of organ donation after cardiac death.

Perspective Roundtable: Organ Donation after Cardiac Death (Flash Video)
1. Introduction
2. Criteria for Death
3. Dying vs. Dead
4. Rethinking the Dead Donor Rule
5. Public Trust
6. Consent and Prognosis
7. Conclusions

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - NYTimes.com

Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.

As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Seven reasons why people hate reason - opinion - 14 July 2008 - New Scientist

From religious fundamentalism to pseudoscience, it seems that forces are attacking the Enlightenment world view - characterised by rational, scientific thinking - from all sides. The debate seems black and white: you're either with reason, or you're against it. But is it so simple? In a series of special essays, our contributors look more carefully at some of the most provocative charges against reason. The results suggest that for all the Enlightenment has achieved, we still have a lot of work to do.

For Marriage, the Honeymoon's Over - ChronicleReview.com

If professional philosophers did their jobs, analyzed concrete philosophical problems, and won media attention for their conclusions, we wouldn't be sentenced to the cable simplicities of right-wing marriage pundits, or the often ahistorical rights-focused arguments of same-sex-marriage champions. We'd be forced to think hard about what marriage has been, is, and should be, before deciding to whom we're willing to sell tickets.

Toward a Type 1 civilization By Michael Shermer -LA Times
Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.

Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium.

We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.

Study: No gender differences in math performance -- Phsyorg.com

We've all heard it. Many of us in fact believe it. Girls just aren't as good at math as boys. But is it true? After sifting through mountains of data - including SAT results and math scores from 7 million students who were tested in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act - a team of scientists says the answer is no. Whether they looked at average performance, the scores of the most gifted children or students' ability to solve complex math problems, girls measured up to boys.

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

The Periodic Table of Videos - University of Nottingham

Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one.

The 411 to avoid boredom- Los Angeles Times

Crackberry. Only a metaphor for our addiction-like urge to check e-mail? Or does the term shed light on a deep biological truth about our hunger for information?

Human-motivation studies traditionally stress well-established needs: food, water, sex, avoidance of pain. In a culture like ours, most of these needs can be satisfied easily. Just open the refrigerator door, or blow on that spoonful of hot soup. (Satisfying the need for sex may require a bit more doing.)

What's been missing from this scientific research is humans' nonstop need for more information.

'Ten Commandments' of race and genetics issued - New Scientist

1. All races are created equal: No genetic data has ever shown that one group of people is inherently superior to another. Equality is a moral value central to the idea of human rights; discrimination against any group should never be tolerated.

The Evolution of Economic Rationality: Do Monkeys Understand Money? | Psychology Today Blogs

Money is a powerful force in human life and affairs. Its very power gives pause to those who look to evolution for full explanations of human behavior, because money has not existed long enough to have influenced evolution. By some estimates, money only goes back a couple thousand years, which is too short even to have influenced human evolution.

Still, one can get some clues as to how evolution prepared us for money from the burgeoning research that seeks to present animals with economic choices. To gain perspective on human financial decisions, one may ask, what would monkeys do?

Corporate media colludes with democracy's demise.
by: Bill Moyers, In These Times | truthout.org

I heard this story a long time ago, growing up in Choctaw County in Oklahoma before my family moved to Texas. A tribal elder was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, "It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf won?"

The old Cherokee replied simply, "The one I feed."

Democracy is that way. The wolf that wins is the one we feed. And in our society, media provides the fodder.

Our media institutions, deeply embedded in the power structures of society, are not providing the information that we need to make our democracy work. To put it another way, corporate media consolidation is a corrosive social force. It robs people of their voice in public affairs and pollutes the political culture. And it turns the debates about profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.

---
This article was adapted from Bill Moyers' keynote address at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis on June 7. [pdf]

When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans - NYTimes.com

If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister

Study Finds left-wing Brain, Right-wing BrainBy Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times

In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

English wiki browser by chainofthoughts.com

Type in a subject you would like to research and this generates a list (you choose its length) of related keywords and topics. You can visit a Wikipedia page at any time or continue navigating through the related keywords until you find what you want. It is a very cool way of diversifying a research effort.

Remarks of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold...

..."Mr. President, I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new President, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure.

So I hope my colleagues will think long and hard about their votes on this bill, and consider how they, and their constituents, will feel about this vote five, ten or twenty years from now. I am confident that history will not judge this Senate kindly if it endorses this tragic retreat from the principles that have governed government conduct in this sensitive area for 30 years. I urge my colleagues to stand up for the rule of law and defeat this bill. "

Download Audio (29MB)

'The Dumbest Generation' by Mark Bauerlein - Los Angeles Times

In the four minutes it probably takes to read this review, you will have logged exactly half the time the average 15- to 24-year-old now spends reading each day. That is, if you even bother to finish. If you are perusing this on the Internet, the big block of text below probably seems daunting, maybe even boring. Who has the time? Besides, one of your Facebook friends might have just posted a status update!

Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We? | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet

Ask the political scientists and you will be told that there is damning, hard evidence pointing incontrovertibly to the conclusion that millions are embarrassingly ill-informed and that they do not care that they are. There is enough evidence that one could almost conclude -- though admittedly this is a stretch -- that we are living in an Age of Ignorance.

Surprised? My guess is most people would be. The general impression seems to be that we are living in an age in which people are particularly knowledgeable. Many students tell me that they are the most well-informed generation in history.

Why are we so deluded?

Believe Me, It's Torture: Politics & Power: Christopher Hitchens ~ vanityfair.com

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, "waterboarding" was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

"What is Life?" Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question

"We're all machines," says Rodney Brooks author of "Flesh and Machines," and former director of M.I.T.'s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, "Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are -- we are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel -- but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic."

Years Later, Stanley Milgram's Shock Experiments Still Provide Insight - NYTimes.com

Some of psychology's most famous experiments are those that expose the skull beneath the skin, the apparent cowardice or depravity pooling in almost every heart. The findings force a question. Would I really do that? Could I betray my own eyes, my judgment, even my humanity, just to complete some experiment?

The answer, if it's an honest one, often gives rise to observations about the cruelties of the day, whether suicide bombing, torture or gang atrocities. And so a psych experiment -- a mock exercise, testing individual behavior -- can become something else, a changing prism through which people view the larger culture, for better and for worse.

Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers - Chronicle.com

College students are increasingly downloading illegal copies of textbooks online, employing the same file-trading technologies used to steal music and movies. Feeling threatened, book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop the online piracy.

The New Atlantis » The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences

But leaving aside savage peoples, if a Descartes had come to Mexico or Peru one hundred years before Cortez and Pizarro, and if he had taught these peoples that men, composed as they are, are not able to be immortal; that the springs of their machine, as those of all machines, wear out; that the effects of nature are only a consequence of the laws and communications of movement, then Cortez, with a handful of men, would never have destroyed the empire of Mexico, nor Pizarro that of Peru.

The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: "There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time." To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one's time; it was a mark of intelligence. "This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind."

Is the Universe Actually Made of Math? | Space | DISCOVER Magazine

According to Tegmark, "there is only mathematics; that is all that exists." In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. By posing his hypothesis at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, Tegmark is harking back to the ancient Greeks with the oldest of the old questions: What is real?

Original image Source: World Prison Population Per 100,000 Population

A Brief History of Child Welfare in the United States

While there were attempts at times, there werent consistent legal limits placed upon the way a child could be treated, until 1875. At that time, Mary Ellen, a very abused child who had been beaten and chained in a room by the couple who took her from a charitable institution, was discovered by a church visitor. To her dismay, the worker found that the police were helpless to intervene. As a last resort, the worker made a plea to the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, stating that Mary Ellen was an animal in need of protection. The SPCA investigated, and took the case to court. The guardian was sentenced to jail and the child was removed. With this, the New York SPCA incorporated child protective services. Other SPCAs followed suit, and yet other communities formed separate Societies for Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Laws were written to protect children from abuse and neglect.

Antiquities, the World Is Your Homeland - James Cuno Challenges Nationalist View of Cultural Property - NYTimes.com

In the United States, for example, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act required every museum getting public funds to survey its collections; identify Indian remains and funerary, sacred and other objects; and consult with Indian tribes and "repatriate" the artifacts if requested. Such objects may have been legitimately purchased a century ago from the tribes or have no issue clouding their provenance, but claims of ordinary property give way before claims of cultural property.

DNA explodes Greek myth about women | Science | The Observer

Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants.

The discovery is part of an investigation by Manchester researchers into the founders of Mycenae, Europe's first great city-state and capital of King Agamemnon's domains.

'It was thought that in those days women were rated as little more than chattels in Ancient Greece,' said Professor Terry Brown, of the faculty of life sciences at Manchester University. 'Our work now suggests that notion is wrong.'

'Rage against the machines' by Tom Chatfield | Prospect Magazine June 2008 issue 147

Within the virtual worlds we have begun to construct, players can experience the kind of deep, lasting satisfactions that only come from the performance of a complex, sociable and challenging task. Yet such satisfactions will always remain, in a crucial sense, unreal. Whatever skills it teaches and friendships it creates, an eight-hour World of Warcraft session is nevertheless solipsistic like few other activities.

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

Can you become a creature of new habits? - International Herald Tribune

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try -- the more we step outside our comfort zone -- the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

9NEWS - Article - Colo. 'personhood' measure backers submit 130,000 signatures--DENVER (AP)

Supporters of a measure defining a fertilized human egg as a person say they have gathered 131,000 petition signatures in hopes of getting it on the Colorado ballot.

A group called Colorado for Equal Rights submitted the petitions Tuesday.

If the secretary of state verifies that at least 76,000 of the signatures are from registered Colorado voters, the proposed constitutional amendment would qualify for the November ballot.

Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist? by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Spring 2008

The favorite culprits for high black prison rates include a biased legal system, draconian drug enforcement, and even prison itself. None of these explanations stands up to scrutiny. The black incarceration rate is overwhelmingly a function of black crime. Insisting otherwise only worsens black alienation and further defers a real solution to the black crime problem.

How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure): Scientific American

Steele and Aronson's classic demonstration of stereotype threat emerged from a series of studies in the mid-1990s in which high-achieving African-American students at Stanford completed questions from the verbal Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) under conditions where they thought either that the test was measuring intelligence or that it was not a test of ability at all. Intriguingly, these participants' performance was much worse when they were told that the test was a measure of intelligence. This slide, the researchers argued, occurred because "in situations where the stereotype is applicable, one is at risk of confirming it as a self-characterization, both to one's self and to others who know the stereotype."

This pattern of findings has been replicated with many different groups on many different dimensions of stereotype content. For example, Sian L. Beilock of the University of Chicago and her colleagues reported in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology that if female students are made aware of the stereotype that men have greater mathematical ability than women do, they tend to perform worse on complex mathematical tasks than they do if they are not alerted to this stereotype. Likewise, elderly people have been found to perform worse on memory tests if they take them after being made aware of stereotypes that associate aging with deteriorating cognitive ability.

Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain: Scientific American

Researchers long believed that because implicit associations develop early in our lives, and because we are often unaware of their influence, they may be virtually impervious to change. But recent work suggests that we can reshape our implicit attitudes and beliefs--or at least curb their effects on our behavior...

In other words, changes in external stimuli, many of which lie outside our control, can trick our brains into making new associations. But an even more obvious tactic would be to confront such biases head-on with conscious effort. And some evidence suggests willpower can work. Among the doctors in the thrombolytic drug study who were aware of the study's purpose, those who showed more implicit racial bias were more likely to prescribe thrombolytic treatment to black patients than were those with less bias, suggesting that recognizing the presence of implicit bias helped them offset it.

Brain Science and Mental Privacy

As the technology of brain imaging advances, some philosophers and civil libertarians are beginning to worry about a possible threat to privacy. What if brain scans could eventually detect specific thoughts? If scans could detect criminal proclivities, how would that affect our judicial system - which is based on actions, not thoughts. Do we have a right to mental privacy?

Listen to the MP3 Interview with Paul Roote Wolpe, bioethicist at the University of Pennslvania School of Medicine, and board member of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics.

Moving On Up!

Not Exactly Rocket Science : Unconscious brain activity shapes our decisions

It seems natural to think that we carry out actions after consciously deciding to do so. I decide to start typing and as a result, my hands move around a keyboard. But according to modern neuroscience, that feeling of free will may be an illusion. For over twenty years, experiments have suggested that, unbeknownst to us, a large amount of mental processing goes on in unconsciously before we become aware that we intend to act.

ABC News: Religion: A Figment of the Imagination?

"As soon as you have theory of mind, you have the possibility of deceiving others, or being deceived," he says. This, in turn, generates a sense of fairness and unfairness, which could lead to moral codes and the possibility of an unseen "enforcer" - God - who can see and punish all wrong-doers.

"Once you have these additions of the imagination, maybe theories of God are inevitable," he says.

Life Counts! | Colorado for Equal Rights- Personhood Initiative 2008

Colorado for Equal Rights is sponsoring a ballot initiative for Colorado's 2008 election. This proposed constitutional amendment will define a person in Colorado as a human being from the moment of fertilization, the moment when life begins. This amendment will establish a cornerstone for protecting human life in our society... and we all know this is the right thing to do. This campaign is not about the power of money... it is about the power of truth. We are giving Colorado voters an opportunity to vote their conscience and protect the most innocent and helpless ones among us. If life is protected from the very beginning, Colorado for Equal Rights believes that we can transform our nation from a culture of death into a culture of life. Therefore, we are taking the necessary action to allow Coloradoans to guarantee every person equal rights under our laws.

ABC News: Human Brains: Hard-Wired for Hierarchy

Monkeys and other animals have rules about who does what, too. It's called the social hierarchy. And it has a huge influence on us -- on how we act, whom we spend time with, even where we go and what we buy.

Now, researchers have found evidence that our brains may actually be hard-wired for hierarchy. And in fact, we may be wired to value the "top dog" over the people who rank below us.

Idea Lab - Memory - New York Times

How much would you pay to have a small memory chip implanted in your brain if that chip would double the capacity of your short-term memory? Or guarantee that you would never again forget a face or a name?

A man is walking past a hospital when he sees a physician in a white coat and a little girl coming toward him. As they come closer, he realizes the physician is an old friend whom he has not seen since their college days. They greet each other warmly and the friend says, "Since we last saw each other in college, I went on to medical school and I am now a surgeon at this hospital. I also married someone whom you don't know and have never met, and this is our daughter, Nancy." The man says to the little girl, "Nancy, you not only have your mother's name but you also have her brown eyes."