///////////////SPAIN WINS EURO FOOTBALL CUP AFTER 1964
///////////////SW=Silence of the Bees
Posted: 25 Jun 2008 07:33 AM CDT
You may have heard that honeybees in this country are dying off. You may know that scientists have called this epidemic "CCD," or colony collapse disorder, where honeybees seem to lose the ability to find the hive again, and disappear forever. Scientists think CCD may be caused by a virus, or a combination of other factors, such as the presence of pesticides or the poor nutrition and high antibiotic use of commercial bee populations. There are other theories too.
Nature on PBS reports that, if the rate of collapse continues, all honeybee populations in the US will die out by 2035.
But did you know there is an area in China where this has already happened? And pollination has to happen by hand?Read the rest of this post... Read the comments on this post...
Posted: 25 Jun 2008 07:33 AM CDT
You may have heard that honeybees in this country are dying off. You may know that scientists have called this epidemic "CCD," or colony collapse disorder, where honeybees seem to lose the ability to find the hive again, and disappear forever. Scientists think CCD may be caused by a virus, or a combination of other factors, such as the presence of pesticides or the poor nutrition and high antibiotic use of commercial bee populations. There are other theories too.
Nature on PBS reports that, if the rate of collapse continues, all honeybee populations in the US will die out by 2035.
But did you know there is an area in China where this has already happened? And pollination has to happen by hand?Read the rest of this post... Read the comments on this post...
//////////////////////DARWINS BULLDOG-GLB=On this day in 1895, T. H. Huxley died at the age of 70. Huxley was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" because of his defense of Darwin's important work in evolution. He debated Samuel Wilberforce in 1860, and people have been debating creationists since.
Huxley invented the term "agnostic" and described himself as one.
Huxley invented the term "agnostic" and described himself as one.
///////////////////////EMOTIONAL=JASBATEIN
/////////////////MM="Psychological essentialism in selecting the 14th Dalai Lama"
Posted: 28 Jun 2008 06:02 PM CDT
There's an interesting short paper by Paul Bloom and Susan Gelman in the July issue of Trends in Cognitive Science with that title. Unfortunately, it's not yet available without a subscription (though Bloom tends to put his papers on his website once published, so it might show up there sometime in the near future), but if you have a subscription or access to a university library, you can read it here.
If you're not familiar with the idea, "psychological essentialism" is the belief that entities have an internal set of necessary properties, or an essence, that make them what they are. For example, people tend to believe that there's something about tigers (their DNA, perhaps) that make them tigers. There's a great deal of evidence that people are "psychological essentialists" about natural kinds (animals, elements, that sort of thing), and a growing body of evidence that we tend to be psychological essentialists when it comes to certain social categories as well, like gender, race, and sexual orientation.
Bloom and Gelman relate the story of the selection of the 14th Dalai Lama, in which those doing the selection presented a child with objects that the 13th Dalai Lama had owned, as well as similar objects, and observed which of the objects the child selected. Since he picked all of the objects that had belonged to the Dalai Lama, he was chosen to be the 14th, and current Dalai Lama. They conclude:
Our point here is not that the authentic objects were actually imbued with the essence of the 13th Dalai Lama (a metaphysical question that is beyond the scope of our inquiry). What matters is that the Tibetan bureaucrats believed that the objects were. Hence they constructed a procedure that presupposes the existence of invisible essences - essences that require special powers to perceive - and used this procedure to make a decision of major importance. We take this as evidence of the ubiquity, naturalness and importance of psychological essentialism. (p. 243)
Bloom, P. & Gelman, S.A. (2008). Psychological essentialism in selecting the 14th Dalai Lama. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(7), 243.Read the comments on this post...
Posted: 28 Jun 2008 06:02 PM CDT
There's an interesting short paper by Paul Bloom and Susan Gelman in the July issue of Trends in Cognitive Science with that title. Unfortunately, it's not yet available without a subscription (though Bloom tends to put his papers on his website once published, so it might show up there sometime in the near future), but if you have a subscription or access to a university library, you can read it here.
If you're not familiar with the idea, "psychological essentialism" is the belief that entities have an internal set of necessary properties, or an essence, that make them what they are. For example, people tend to believe that there's something about tigers (their DNA, perhaps) that make them tigers. There's a great deal of evidence that people are "psychological essentialists" about natural kinds (animals, elements, that sort of thing), and a growing body of evidence that we tend to be psychological essentialists when it comes to certain social categories as well, like gender, race, and sexual orientation.
Bloom and Gelman relate the story of the selection of the 14th Dalai Lama, in which those doing the selection presented a child with objects that the 13th Dalai Lama had owned, as well as similar objects, and observed which of the objects the child selected. Since he picked all of the objects that had belonged to the Dalai Lama, he was chosen to be the 14th, and current Dalai Lama. They conclude:
Our point here is not that the authentic objects were actually imbued with the essence of the 13th Dalai Lama (a metaphysical question that is beyond the scope of our inquiry). What matters is that the Tibetan bureaucrats believed that the objects were. Hence they constructed a procedure that presupposes the existence of invisible essences - essences that require special powers to perceive - and used this procedure to make a decision of major importance. We take this as evidence of the ubiquity, naturalness and importance of psychological essentialism. (p. 243)
Bloom, P. & Gelman, S.A. (2008). Psychological essentialism in selecting the 14th Dalai Lama. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(7), 243.Read the comments on this post...
///////////////////Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. -- Abbie Hoffman
//////////////////Youth is not the age of pleasure; we then expect too much, and we are therefore exposed to daily disappointments and mortifications. When we are a little older, and have brought down our wishes to our experience, then we become calm and begin to enjoy ourselves.
- Lord Liverpool
- Lord Liverpool
///////////////////
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