"... T. rex is very gracile. In terms of tibia/femur and metatarsus/femur ratio, Tyrannosaurus is MORE gracile than Deinonychus!! It is also more gracile than any other 5 tonne critter, Mesozoic or Cenozoic!"

"... the article is pure blogging gold. But not in the sense you may think: it is actually very good. This is because it uses functional MRI (fMRI) on a dead salmon.

fMRI is a great tool for mapping cognitive processes into specific areas of the brain. It is our tool to connect between mind and brain, so to speak.

The pixels that appear in an fMRI scan are called voxels, or volume picture elements ....

With the sheer number of images, can certain voxels light up as false-positives? You betcha. Is every voxel significant? Well, to answer that, Craig Bennett and his colleagues took a dead Atlantic Salmon, and placed it in an fMRI. The salmon was then shown a series of photographs depicting humans in various social situations. The (dead, remember?) fish was asked to determine which emotion each individual has been experiencing. They scanned the salmon’s (did I say it was dead?) brain, and collected the data. They also scanned the brain without showing the fish the pictures. The images were then checked for change between the brain doing picture recognition tasks, and the brain at rest, voxel by voxel. They found several active voxel clusters in the (yes, still dead) salmon’s brain."

"Newly published research suggests that ... Americans do believe and trust researchers.

But we focus our attention on those experts whose ideas conform with our preconceived notions. The others tend to get discounted or ignored."

"In their attempt to marginalize atheists, accommodationists are homing in on a common strategy ..."

(I would use "apologists for religion" here in place of "accomodationists". I'm used to hearing "moderate atheists" called "accomodationists".)

1. There is more than one way of finding out the truth about the universe. Science is one way, religion another. ...

2. If you think that empirical evidence and reason is the sole arbiter of what’s true, you’re guilty of scientism. ... (This seems to be a favorite complaint of religionists.)

3. And, by the way, science itself makes mistakes. Scientists are human and some of their claims are unreliable. Also, science continually replaces old ideas with new ones, so scientific “truth” is unstable. ...

4. Science and religion contribute fruitfully to each other. ...

5. Most important, those New Atheists are just so mean and shrill that they contribute nothing, nay, can contribute nothing, to the “dialogue” between science and faith."

'Regardless of how pervasive the phenomenon is, it is clear from Dunning's and others' work that many Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth. It is interesting, therefore, to see the phenomenon's mirror opposite in another culture. In research comparing North American and East Asian self-assessments, Heine of the University of British Columbia finds that East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities, with an aim toward improving the self and getting along with others.' "

"A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.

Lifton said, 'The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.' "

"... I often wonder what else it is that we’re just completely missing that will integrate all sorts of our current scientific ideas. But we don’t have to know the whole answer right now. What I like to call the PB&J -- the passion, beauty, and joy -- is in the pursuit of it, right? That’s what we love about science. It is, absolutely, to me, the best idea humans have had. Science. I’ll even say science is the best idea we’ve had so far.It could change, right? Got a better idea? Bring it on."

Computer Programming:

1. Every problem can be solved by breaking it up into a series of smaller problems.
2. The computer will always do exactly what you tell it to.

Software Engineering:

"Dawkins: When a moth flies into a candle flame presumably it is responding to the candle flame as if were a celestial object at optical infinity and acting appropriately to that situation, not the one it is in fact currently facing. It frequently happens that the real world evolves faster than an animal's cognitive map of it.

Skeptic: Does that ever happen to human beings?

Dawkins: Human beings are completely surrounded by the equivalent of "candle flames." Notorious examples are our desire for sugar and fat--in nature the rule is, whenever you can get them, eat them. But when there's a surplus of those substance, they become bad for you. Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature. But now the goal-seeking apparatus has been switched to different goals, like making money or hedonistic pleasures of one sort or another. Natural selection equips us with "Rules of Thumb," which in a state of nature have the effect of promoting the survival of our selfish genes. The Rules of Thumb go on, even though in this world of "candle flames" they no longer promote our inclusive fitness.

Skeptic: Would you consider increasing population and war to be examples of candle flames?

Dawkins: Increasing population itself is not an individual behavior pattern. It's a consequence of many things which are manifestations of individual behavior in a collective environment. To take a much simpler case, the dominance hierarchy is a manifestation of attacking and subservience between pairs of individuals, but the dominance hierarchy itself is not something that natural selection favors or disfavors. What natural selection favors or disfavors is the individual behavior of which the dominance hierarchy is a manifestation. I would put war and overpopulation in that category.

Skeptic: In River Out of Eden, you also say that, "Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not" (p. 33). But doesn't one first have to make the choice or decision to use pragmatism as the standard by which we judge? That is, we must first agree to base our decisions on what works, rather than on revelation or intuition. Isn't the most we can ask of the religious crowd, "Either lay hands on flat tires and pray for the sick, rather than taking them to a mechanic or a doctor, or if you are not willing to be consistent, just shut up and go away?" Doesn't the religious view amount to, "When we're afraid, we seek God. When God doesn't answer our prayers, blame it on the Devil?"

Dawkins: Yes, it's a kind of pathetic, childish response to some failure.

Skeptic: Then could you say that the reason that evolutionism is resisted so strongly is that our minds evolved to think in terms of personalities and entities rather than in terms of processes?

Dawkins: Yes, it's the idea that somebody has got to be responsible. It's what children do--the petulant throwing the tennis racquet on the ground, blaming it for their bad shot. So is the reflex to sue somebody when you slip on the ice and sprain your ankle. Again, somebody has got to be blamed. It doesn't occur to many people that nobody's to blame, there's just ice and it's slippery and you fell down.

Skeptic: Along that line, you have the following passage in River Out of Eden:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference (p.133).

This sounds rather like physicist Steven Weinberg's, "the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless" (The First Three Minutes), or William Shakespeare's "a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing." Is that in fact your position?

Dawkins: Yes, at a sort of cosmic level, it is. But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot. You can still set up goals and have a very worthwhile life and not be nihilistic about it at a personal level.

Skeptic: Well, if we don't accept religion as a reasonable guide to "what is" or even a reasonable guide to "what ought to be," does evolution give us such a guide? Can we turn to evolution to answer not what is, but what ought to be?

Dawkins: I'd rather not do that. I think Julian Huxley was the last person who attempted to. In my opinion, a society run along "evolutionary" lines would not be a very nice society in which to live. But further, there's no logical reason why we should try to derive our normative standards from evolution. It's perfectly consistent to say this is the way it is--natural selection is out there and it is a very unpleasant process. Nature is red in tooth and claw. But I don't want to live in that kind of a world. I want to change the world in which I live in such a way that natural selection no longer applies.

Skeptic: But given the clay from which we are made, doesn't natural selection make it relatively unlikely that some things will work? Doesn't Darwinism undercut the great socialist hope, "Why, because we will it so!"?

Dawkins: Some goals may be unrealistic. But that doesn't mean that we should turn around the other way and say therefore we should strive to make a Darwinian millennium come true.

Skeptic: But then isn't what we ought to do (as David Hume argued long ago) just a matter of preference and choice, custom and habit?

Dawkins: I think that's very likely true. But I don't think that having conceded that point, I as an individual should then be asked to abandon my own ethical system or goals. I as an individual can adopt idealistic or socialistic or unrealistic or whatever sort of norms of charity and good will towards other people. They may be doomed if you take a strong Darwinian line on human nature, but it's not obvious to me that they are.

Skeptic: I think that you are saying that many of the lessons of evolutionary biology about morality or ethics are contrary to what we might normally call morality or ethics in ordinary discourse. When we look back at the Old Testament and the New Testament, it seems there's a lot about how to maximize one's inclusive fitness. If that's the case, do such religious views have anything to tell us?

Dawkins: If it is true that some of the morality of the Old Testament, say, maximizes somebody's inclusive fitness, I don't think that has anything to tell us about what we ought to do.

Skeptic: Then wouldn't we be better to throw out all this half-baked religious mumbo jumbo and move on to something else?

Dawkins: Well yes, but that's obvious!"

"National Geographic presents the first accurate non-stop voyage from Earth to the edge of the Universe using a single, unbroken shot through the use of spectacular CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) technology."

"The Falcon 9 rocket reached its intended 300 km-high orbitA private US capsule that could soon be hauling cargo and even astronauts to the space station has splashed down after its maiden flight.The Dragon ship launched from Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket at 1543GMT (1043 EST) on Wednesday.The capsule separated about 10 minutes after launch, reaching its 300km-high orbit shortly after.After completing several manoeuvres some 300km above Earth, the capsule splashed down in the Pacific.Dragon and Falcon 9 are both products of California's SpaceX company."

"Twenty-four years later, the now 58-year-old actress is the star, writer, and co-director (with Jody Shapiro) of Seduce Me, a series of online shorts created for the Sundance Channel about the sexual proclivities of animals.

"Using my radiant thermometer (pyrometer, such a word!), I satisfied myself that an egg on a griddle cooks well if the griddle is around 125 Celsius (260 Fahrenheit). Doing a bit more messing around, I found that an egg will cook on a surface that’s only 55 Celsius (130 Fahrenheit). It just takes time -- almost 20 minutes. So indeed, it can be hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk."

"When newly minted Tory peer Howard Flight recently suggested that our welfare system discouraged the middle class from procreation while encouraging those on welfare to breed, he stumbled head first into a long-smouldering public debate. There was rapid and somewhat predictable response. Writing on the blog Liberal Conspiracy Dave Osler denounced Flight as “the latest upholder of the tradition of class-based eugenics”. Class-based? Not really. The Telegraph’s Ed West on his blog quickly waded in with a long list of socialist and radical eugenicists, which included such luminaries as the Webbs, John Maynard Keynes and Howard Laski. Eugenics was, he argued, a thoroughly left-wing passion.

... many of the proponents of eugenics he mentions, like George Bernard Shaw and Marie Stopes, were also prominent humanists. ...

It is a sad fact (sic) that prior to the 1930s it is a struggle to find prominent British rationalists who were not in favour of some form of eugenics. Even Bertrand Russell was writing approvingly on the subject."

"Which brings me to the point of this polemical piece. It has become accepted belief in some quarters of theism that atheism is a religion. Careful arguers might refer to atheism as a quasi-religion, just to protect themselves against the criticism of referring to something as religion that is clearly not religion. ...

The first thing to say about the claim that atheism is a religion is that it is patently false. But let's not let that fact get in the way of a good analysis of another pointless idea. Did you know that there are atheistic religions? Yes, Jainism has no gods and Buddhism has no personal gods. But neither Jains nor Buddhists align themselves with atheists. (I'm an atheist and a Buddhist and I'll say quite forcefully that I "align myself" with both atheists and Buddhists.) Furthermore, the majority of the world's atheists reject Jainism and Buddhism along with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and all the other religions that have been created by humans over the course of history. ...

I won't belabor the point, but humans love to create and tell stories. No. We don't just love it, we are compelled to do it. It's what makes us what we are. Science is one of our stories or collections of stories. Perhaps, it is our best story. In the debate over what it is that separates humans from the rest of the animals I vote for this story-telling drive, this love of narrative that strives to connect disparate items into some sort of satisfying, coherent whole. In the never-ending argument over what makes us special, I go for that ancient human pastime of sitting around the campfire and telling tales. ...

The kinds of stories science creates are unique. They are fallible, revisable, testable, modifiable, and ultimately falsifiable. Science changes its stories to fit with our growing knowledge of the universe. Creationism doesn't do that. Creationism, in fact, is dogmatic in its assertion that some desert nomads got it right a few thousand years ago and anyone who discovers anything that contradicts what these ancient savants said is a fool. Rather than modify its beliefs to fit with our expanding knowledge of the world, creationists reject science a priori and try to construct a new narrative that fits science with their biblical beliefs. The only way to do this is to declare that all scientists and scientific methods are in error. To be blunt: young Earth creationism is one of the stupidest stories humans have ever told."

For a religionist to compare science to theology is either hypocrisy or ignorance."

"A row has broken out in France over whether 15- and 16-year-olds should be allowed to create transgenic Escherichia coli bacteria in the classroom.

Practical experiments in which students learn how to use plasmids to alter the DNA of the bacteria have been under way for 17 and 18-year-olds in the final year of the scientific baccalaureate at schools across France for the past decade. But this year teachers have for the first time been offered the option of teaching the experiments to younger students.

The Committee for Research & Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) in Caen, France, which lobbies for stricter controls over genetic engineering, is particularly upset because in the experiments the students modify the bacteria to become resistant to the antibiotic ampicillin. ...

These practical experiments have been part of the biology option for 17–18-year-old science baccalaureate students for ten years, and are not compulsory for younger pupils, says Serge Lacassie, president of the APBG, who teaches biology and geology at the Lycée Berthollet in Annecy. ...

The biggest risk is that the bacteria could escape into the environment, so 'we teach students how to take the necessary precautions to ensure this doesn't happen', he says. In addition, 'the bacteria are not pathogenic and are destroyed with bleach when experiments are over'. "

"... the private aerospace start-up Ad Astra Rocket Company, and ... founder Franklin Chang Díaz [are] building a rocket engine that’s faster and more powerful than anything NASA has ever flown before.

Speed, Chang Díaz believes, is the key to getting to Mars alive. In fact, he tells me as we peer into a three-story test chamber, his engine will one day travel not just to the Red Planet, but to Jupiter and beyond."

" 'I have a few agendas, and one of them is to get more attention for science and more investment. It's said that 6.7 per cent of our gross domestic product in this country comes from physics-based industry. That is more than the City. Yet if you look at the investment we make in physics, it's tiny.

I do have a very clear message. ... make Britain the best place in the world to do science and engineering. It's a realistic ambition. Science is astonishingly cheap, small change compared to the money we spend on other things. Making science a national priority means spending £1bn or something. It's not ludicrous.' "

"Science may not be the only way of organizing and understanding our experience, but for accuracy it fares better than religion, politics and art."