Here’s an amazing TED Talk.

I live in North Carolina’s 8th district, I don’t believe in the Jedeo-Christian God, and because of that, I’m supremely frustrated and disgusted with my representatives in both the House and Senate. Last week, I saw this advertisement paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). I write a letter.

Later that same day, I learn that my representative in the United States Congress, Robin Hayes, said the following at a McCain rally: “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” It took me a week, but I finally wrote a letter to him earlier today. Not even an hour after sending off that letter, I see this advertisement ‘approved’ by my Senatorial representative, Elizabeth Dole. It’s basically a modified version of the NRSC, so I sent Dole a modified letter.

You can read my specific responses to these in my letters (reprinted below the fold). But all three of them together reveal a trend: they are un-American. America is the land of the free where all people are free to believe (or not believe) whatever they choose and express themselves. Furthermore, we are all entitled representation in the federal government. The three items described above go beyond simple expression of disagreement – they actively seek to disenfranchise non-believers. They express a belief that is disturbingly wide-spread in the GOP; that atheists/agnostics don’t deserve representation. We’re not “real” Americans. Given that religious freedom is the first right explicitly protected in the Bill of Right, such activities are anti-democratic and un-American.

If you are a constituent of either of these two candidates, I encourage you to write them letters as well expressing your disapproval. I also encourage you to vote against them next Tuesday.

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The New Yorker has a fascinating article about differing views on human sexuality between conservatives and liberals. While there’s not much too terribly new in it (we already know liberals take a realistic approach to human sexuality that emphasizes family planning where conservatives want to dominate human sexuality through fear and misinformation), it’s well written and has some interesting insights. Here are a couple of excerpts:

[Social scientists and family-law scholars] Regnerus and Carbone and Cahn all see a new and distinct “middle-class morality” taking shape among economically and socially advantaged families who are not social conservatives. In Regnerus’s survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it.

Evangelicals are very good at articulating their sexual ideals, but they have little practical advice for their young followers. Social liberals, meanwhile, are not very good at articulating values on marriage and teen sexuality—indeed, they may feel that it’s unseemly or judgmental to do so. But in fact the new middle-class morality is squarely pro-family. Maybe these choices weren’t originally about values—maybe they were about maximizing education and careers—yet the result is a more stable family system.

For too long, the conventional wisdom has been that social conservatives are the upholders of family values, whereas liberals are the proponents of a polymorphous selfishness. This isn’t true, and, every once in a while, liberals might point that out.

Anyway, if you want a great overview of the opposed views of human sexuality, this article is well worth reading.

RCRDLBL_ has done it again and introduced me to another band with great potential. I just wish I had the time and resources to pursue all the great stuff I’m hearing on that site.

This time, they’ve introduced me to Autodrone. Their two tracks up for offer are Final Days and Kerosene Dreams. I’m particularly fond of the former. The kids these days describe their music as ’shoegaze’, though the band themselves prefer ‘dream pop’. I just call it damn good. It reminds of a mix of upbeat Portishead and Catherine Wheel’s slower material. There’s plenty of spacey guitars, active acoustic drums, and detached female vocals.

Check out their freely downloadable songs below and let me know what you think.

But it’s not your fault. According to a short but fascinating article in Scientific America, dogs, and almost all other mammals, don’t like any music. Humans are nearly unique (damn you bats!) in there ability to easily distinguish tones within a twelfth of an octave (and less). Dogs, for instance cannot distinguish within a third of an octave. Thus a C note and a D note sound identical to them. Apparently, we have this ability thanks to separate and more sensitive neural pathways for natural and unnatural (pure tone) sounds.

It’s good to be human.

A group of awesome researchers are creating a cancer-fighting beer. The beer they are developing will also fight heart disease and slow aging. Sounds too good to be true? Not so! Scientists already know that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wines, already has these effects.

The problem with resveratrol in red wine is that one would need to consume at least half a bottle of red wine every day to see any benefits. Also, the amount of resveratrol varies widely from bottle to bottle. The incredibly cool team of researchers at Rice University believe that they can create beer with a consistent amount of the miracle chemical from brew to brew. Furthermore, they believe they can enhance both the amount and effect of resveratrol in beer. The best part is that since resveratrol is orderless and tasteless, it will not effect the flavor of beer. How does the team plan on making the best drink on the planet even better? They are genetically modifying the yeast used to ferment the beer.

I love science.

Here are two more worthy downloads from RCRDLBL_. These two tracks are by Home Video. You can also stream their new album on their website.

This band seems to fit the profile of modern bands that appeal to Sid. Each song is a masterful blending of electronic and alternative rock (favoring the electronic side in most songs), the production values are top-notch, and the vocals add greatly to the song without distracting from the underlying music.

A little over a month ago, Skeptic published an online article called The Great Divide (scroll down after following the link). The author, Shawn Stover, writes about the functional value of Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA).

NOMA is the idea that science and religion are quests for knowledge in two completely separate areas of human understanding. Science address the empirical universe, and religion addresses ethical and spiritual concerns. As such, science and religion are not in conflict.

This view has been roundly rejected by both the ‘new’ atheists and creationists. They both point out that both fields do make separate claims about the same thing: the origin of humans. Their magisteria do overlap. The falsity of NOMA should be obvious if one considers the history of science and religion. For instance, the center of the solar system used to be identified differently by both fields of human endeavor.

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here’s a free download courtesy of RCRDLBL_ that’s worth a listen. The band is 1913 and the song is Can’t Move On. It’s a very catchy pop-rock song with mild electronic influences. I’m most impressed with the bass guitar. It drives the verse and pre-chorus with very disco-like rhythms, but moves into a standard rock sound for the choruses that are nonetheless catchy. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

You can see the video and hear more of their music on their MySpace page (warning: video and music plays automatically and the video ending is cheesy in a way that only teen angst can produce).

In a previeous post, I promised to write about a rebuttal to Jonathan Haidt’s model of human morality. The one I found most interesting was from Norm Doering.

Haidt is trying to demonstrate that liberal morality is more contracted than conservatives. In particular, he describes five foundations of morality of which, liberals only concern themselves with two. Doering argues that Haidt’s five foundations are incomplete. In fact, he thinks that the five are only half the story – that each represent only one polar end of continuity. Thus according to Doering, Haidt did not discover three moral foundations exclusive to conservatives, but the conservative end of three continua. Here is Doering’s expanded moral foundations:

1) Harm/Care____________|________Punish/Judge
2) Fairness/Reciprocity___|________Privilege/Bully power
3) Inclusive/Expansive______|________Ingroup/Loyalty
4) Question authority_______|________Authority/Respect
5) Rights/Secular Freedom___|________Purity/Sanctity

The ones in bold represent Haidt’s original five. The left side represent the foundations of liberal morality and the right represents conservative foundations. Note, however, that Doering relabels the sides as ’secular’ and ‘theocratic’ respectively, assuming that all conservative morality is religiously based.

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