Saturday, October 13, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Congressman - evolution and bing bang "lies from the pit of Hell!"
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is seen in the video below saying that evolution, embryology, and the big bang are “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. The scariest part of this is that he is a current member of the Science Committee of the House of Representatives! No wonder we are lagging international in science education. We have young earth creationists operating at the upper echelons of our federal government!
Where the Buffalo Roam
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| Took this photo in the Black Hills of South Dakota last week. |
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| Chubby prairie dog. Black Hills, SD. |
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| Black Hills, Chippy |
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| Herd chillin' in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND. |
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| North Dakota natural gas boom. Drill baby drill. |
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| Wild horse! |
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| This guy was standing near a herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park on the western edge of North Dakota. Accidentally took photo with camera on a night setting. I like the contrast though. |
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| Pronghorn |
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Good Morning Hippie!
I woke up this morning to an interesting comment posted here at Tom Paine's Ghost. My old friend Troy decided it was time to let me know how appalling my support for Obama is. Troy is a good guy, a hard worker, a veteran, a family-man and a friend. I have a lot of respect for him and I am glad he has decided to engage in discourse here with us. Troy is mainly responding to a video I posted of the speech Obama delivered to the United Nations just a few weeks after the attacks on the US embassy in Libya. I will re-post his entire comment here and add my rebuttals in this green font as I think of them. Feel free to jump in and add to the conversation. OK, here we go...
Each and every human life lost in war is deplorable. I am not saying and I don't think Obama is saying that a Muslim mother who loses her son in war suffers any more or less than an American mother who loses her son. Consider this, it has been estimated that anywhere from 28,000 to 42,000 people have lost their lives in Syria alone since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011, LAST YEAR. So lets take the US deaths from 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and add them together = 9,220. Do I think Obama could have used more precise language when saying "that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism" Yes, I do. And being a bean counter when it comes to human life is a terrible thing to do. Every human life is invaluable, But I hardly consider the statement you quoted as Obama apologizing to moderate Muslims. He was attempting to give the world some perspective on the consequences and geography of terrorism.
Kris, Kris, Kris, for a “Freethinker’s Cove” I’m afraid you check your brain at the door and allow your far-left ideology and infatuation with Obama to rule over reality and reason!
I agree, the first 5-10 minutes of Obama’s speech was admirable and I appreciated listening to the short biographies of the Americans who lost their lives in the service of our country. But he quickly losses me when he starts making excuses for Muslims:
“Let us remember that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism.”
Really? What about the thousands of Americans who died at the hands of Muslim extremists on 9/11(2,606 people died in New York City in the World Trade Center and on the ground, 125 died at the Pentagon, and 44 people died in Shanksville, PA.) and their family members or the thousands of soldiers who have died from Muslim extremists to give Iraq (4,488 dead US Troops) and Afghanistan (1,957 dead US troops) a fresh start from tyranny and repression. What about the family members of the deceased still suffering from their losses?
Each and every human life lost in war is deplorable. I am not saying and I don't think Obama is saying that a Muslim mother who loses her son in war suffers any more or less than an American mother who loses her son. Consider this, it has been estimated that anywhere from 28,000 to 42,000 people have lost their lives in Syria alone since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011, LAST YEAR. So lets take the US deaths from 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and add them together = 9,220. Do I think Obama could have used more precise language when saying "that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism" Yes, I do. And being a bean counter when it comes to human life is a terrible thing to do. Every human life is invaluable, But I hardly consider the statement you quoted as Obama apologizing to moderate Muslims. He was attempting to give the world some perspective on the consequences and geography of terrorism.
Is it really enlightenment and tolerance to make excuses and apologize for these people? I think it is the highest form of enlightenment and tolerance to empathize with any group of people that is different from your own. I agree the Muslim community as a whole suffers from the extremists that use their religion for power. If you agree with this then you agree with what Obama said in the speech to the UN. The moderate Muslim’s in this world have to outnumber the extremists by millions. I don’t see them policing their own nearly enough if ever (What about Turkey? They still belong to NATO, have a strong military, and have a record of using military force against bad neighbors- ex: last week and Syria). Why doesn’t Obama apologize to America about his failed economic policies or his failure to protect our citizen’s in foreign embassies?
What’s even worse is that the whole video excuse is a farce and a distraction from the fact that the Obama Administration dropped the ball on securing the US Embassy in Libya. I agree with this, just as I agree that the Bush administration dropped the ball on securing the World Trade Center on 9/11 But I am not a conspiracy theorist. I can sit here and complain all day that more was not done to prevent 9/11 but that does not mean I think Bush somehow caused 9/11 to happen, just as I do not think Obama somehow caused the attacks on the US embassy in Benghazi to happen. Terrorism exists and we need to be vigilant. I agree with this stance. Do you really think that a spontaneous riot would conveniently erupt on 9/11 from a video that was posted on the internet back in July? If that is the case Bill Maher’s “Religulous” would have started WWIII sometime in the past few years don’t you think? I don’t remember any backlash from that movie.
Liberalism, progressivism, whatever you want to call it, is zapping all the motivation, inspiration, ingenuity and drive out this country. The Obamaphone Lady in Cleveland, OH is a great example of where this country is heading under the leadership of President Obama:
Four years ago I would never have imagined myself thinking that I wish George W. Bush was still in office, but here I am thinking just that. It is appalling to me to see you idolizing Barack Obama like you do. Kris, where’s the hope and change he promised? Where’s the transparency (Here -transparency.gov) , the honesty and the openness? I have seen nothing but lies, deception and closed doors for the past four years. It is disgusting to me to see the President of the United States let other countries tell us what to do, especially China and Russia, or make excuses for my country in the name of tolerance and good-will. Kris, you’re an intelligent man. Why is it so hard for you to open your eyes and see the wrong this administration is doing to our country? What really has this man done in the past four years as president? (Yes, what has Obama done?) Please don’t answer with he killed Osama…
I tried to be as good as possible, I promise! I just hate to see an old friend wander down the wrong path. I appreciate your concern :) Miss you brother. How is your new family?
Friday, October 5, 2012
Colbert on "Pulpit-Freedom Sunday"
Stephen Colbert takes his satire to a whole new level here. He can hardly keep his contempt for Jim Garlow and his anti-church-and-state-separation mentality.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Fate or Feedback: is the microbiome driving our behavior?
Once upon a time there was an unsuspecting ant on the rainforest floor somewhere in Thailand. Marching along single-file between his brothers he was minding his own business, when he suddenly cocked his head and sniffed a moldy kind of smell. Thinking nothing of it, he kept on walking but soon found himself compelled to get out of line and began wandering off into the forest alone. He felt disoriented, confused, not knowing what was happening to him.
Our tiny friend then found himself at the base of a towering leafy plant. Looking up at the massive translucent leaves he began to climb. Higher and higher he climbed up the central trunk, passing branch after branch, all the while loosing any idea of where he was or what he was doing. Once he reached a height where the air was thick with humidity he stopped climbing and began to walk out onto a leaf. Over the edge of the leaf he could see the long homeward-bound procession of his brothers far below. But before he could make another move he felt an overwhelming urge to bite down on the central vein of the leaf where he found himself perched. As he bit down he felt all the energy in his tiny body flow to the muscles in his head and mandibles and he bit harder than he had ever bit before. His life flashed before his eyes and in an instant he was dead, frozen.
What has happened to our little ant friend?
Just a few days after the ant's demise a long grey tube began to grow from inside his head, eventually puncturing the top of his ant-skull it continued to grow into a large mushroom. As soon as the fruiting body had fully unfurled tiny spores were released from the cap and sprinkled like snow, slowly down over a fresh line of brother ants where the entire sordid tale began anew.
This is a true story. As you can see, this fungus has hijacked the ant's body turning it into a zombie of sorts, bending the ant's behavior to work exclusively for the benefit of the fungus.This is not the only example of this kind of fucked up relationship in nature. There is nematode worm that lives part of it's life cycle inside the guts of birds. When the birds poop in the jungle, ants eat the poo and with it the nematode larva. Inside the ant's stomach the nematode enters the next phase of its life cycle causing the ant's abdomen to swell and turn bright red. The round red ants look like ripe local berries to hungry birds and the cycle starts again. Crazy!
Humans are still plagued by extreme parasites as well. The killer gut bacteria Clostridium difficile (widely known as C. diff) causes 14,000 deaths in the US annually according to the Centers for Disease Control. The extreme diarrhea symptomatic of C.diff. can cause patients to loose a third of their body weight or more. As C.diff usually proliferates in the wake of long antibiotic regimes it is often resistant to antibiotics. At the same time C. diff. ferociously out-competes the diversity of benign bacteria (part of the microbiome) that regularly inhabit the ecosystem inside the human gut.
Fear not! A radically simple and effective treatment has emerged for this problem. Fecal transplants! That's right, people get so desperate when they have lost 80+ lbs and are too weak to walk they will try anything. But this shit actually works! Doctors get a "donor" to poop into a container, then they mix it up into a slurry with some water, and deliver the slurry to the colon with a colonoscopy-style tube, or... the doctors can also deposit the donor's poop slurry through a nose-tube into the stomach. I almost just barfed typing that out. Usually the fecal "donor" is a spouse or a parent, and four out of five patients who receive this poop infusion are cured on the first go!
It is hard to think of near-fatal diarrhea as a behavior but, strictly speaking, it is. The point I want to make by bringing up C.diff infection is that a human behavior - extreme diarrehea - can be changed by a fecal transplant. A transfer of the microbial garden from one field to another can literally change the culture.
So far I have examined extreme examples of behavior modification by parasites. They are extreme in the sense that the victims pay with their lives, but what if there were a whole lot more of these relationships than we ever thought? Relationships in which the host's behavior only had to be manipulated slightly to help the parasite. What if much of human behavior is largely dictated by the the non-human denizens of our bodies? One out of ten cells making up a person's body are actually of the species Homo sapiens. The rest? Fungus, bacteria, mites, protozoa and a whole ecosystem of diverse fauna. The question is, how democratic is the human body in decision making? Do the peptides secreted by your gut bacteria help decide what to eat, who to mate with, when to fight and when to run?
Enter Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoa that has just such subtle effects on human behavior. In an article published in the European Journal of Personality researchers report that human beings inoculated with these tiny creatures are more outgoing socially, have a higher rate of car crashes, and become less and less conscientious the longer they carry the parasite (especially men). The shocking part of this study was the number of people who host this little bug - 22.4% of the US population over the age of 12! T. gondii is generally thought to be benign unless present in pregnant women or infants where it can cause damage to developing tissue. The protozoa is so small during the stage of its life cycle when it lives inside humans it actually penetrates the cells, living in heart and brain tissues. As it replicates it can form benign cysts in the heart and brain... yuck! The prevalence of T. gondii is underscored by it's signature behavioral modification - extroversion. By rendering its host more outgoing it increases the likelihood it will spread to additional hosts. Diabolical! Are there any benefits to knowing this? could someone with chronic shyness inoculate themselves with this bug and make themselves more sociable? Might we extract the biochemical mechanism this bug uses and just make an extroversion drug instead? Who knows! Time will tell.
To me, it is interesting to ponder how deep this connection between medical ecology and human behavior will play out. Are we, like the ant at the beginning of this story, bouncing like a pin-ball between the needs and desires of tiny creatures that call our bodies home?
By writing out these thoughts I want to get my readers thinking about behavior and the unseen factors that influence it. You know that person at work who really gets on your nerves with the constant close-talking? Maybe it's not their fault. May they're acting on a whim of one of their microbial free-riders. Maybe this is true for a lot of human traits. Will we identify more human behaviors that operate under direct feedback by bacteria? fungus? protozoa? cats? dogs? Can we "fix" people by modifying their microbial clouds? Should we? How will super-cheap gene sequencing affect social dynamics?
I do not have the answers to these questions. Maybe you do. Is this a worthy line of scientific inquiry? Share your thoughts below or find me on twitter @thorsonofodin.
1.) Andersen SB, Gerritsma S, Yusah KM, Mayntz D, Hywel-Jones NL, Billen J, Boomsma JJ, & Hughes DP (2009). The life of a dead ant: the expression of an adaptive extended phenotype. The American naturalist, 174 (3), 424-33 PMID: 19627240
2.) Khoruts A, Dicksved J, Jansson JK, & Sadowsky MJ (2010). Changes in the composition of the human fecal microbiome after bacteriotherapy for recurrent Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea. Journal of clinical gastroenterology, 44 (5), 354-60 PMID: 20048681
3.) Jitka Lindová1,, Lenka PÅ™Ãplatová,, & Jaroslav Flegr (2012). Higher Extraversion and Lower Conscientiousness in Humans Infected with Toxoplasma European Journal of Personality, 26 (3), 285-291 DOI: 10.1002/per.838
Our tiny friend then found himself at the base of a towering leafy plant. Looking up at the massive translucent leaves he began to climb. Higher and higher he climbed up the central trunk, passing branch after branch, all the while loosing any idea of where he was or what he was doing. Once he reached a height where the air was thick with humidity he stopped climbing and began to walk out onto a leaf. Over the edge of the leaf he could see the long homeward-bound procession of his brothers far below. But before he could make another move he felt an overwhelming urge to bite down on the central vein of the leaf where he found himself perched. As he bit down he felt all the energy in his tiny body flow to the muscles in his head and mandibles and he bit harder than he had ever bit before. His life flashed before his eyes and in an instant he was dead, frozen.
What has happened to our little ant friend?
Just a few days after the ant's demise a long grey tube began to grow from inside his head, eventually puncturing the top of his ant-skull it continued to grow into a large mushroom. As soon as the fruiting body had fully unfurled tiny spores were released from the cap and sprinkled like snow, slowly down over a fresh line of brother ants where the entire sordid tale began anew.
This is a true story. As you can see, this fungus has hijacked the ant's body turning it into a zombie of sorts, bending the ant's behavior to work exclusively for the benefit of the fungus.This is not the only example of this kind of fucked up relationship in nature. There is nematode worm that lives part of it's life cycle inside the guts of birds. When the birds poop in the jungle, ants eat the poo and with it the nematode larva. Inside the ant's stomach the nematode enters the next phase of its life cycle causing the ant's abdomen to swell and turn bright red. The round red ants look like ripe local berries to hungry birds and the cycle starts again. Crazy!
Humans are still plagued by extreme parasites as well. The killer gut bacteria Clostridium difficile (widely known as C. diff) causes 14,000 deaths in the US annually according to the Centers for Disease Control. The extreme diarrhea symptomatic of C.diff. can cause patients to loose a third of their body weight or more. As C.diff usually proliferates in the wake of long antibiotic regimes it is often resistant to antibiotics. At the same time C. diff. ferociously out-competes the diversity of benign bacteria (part of the microbiome) that regularly inhabit the ecosystem inside the human gut.
Fear not! A radically simple and effective treatment has emerged for this problem. Fecal transplants! That's right, people get so desperate when they have lost 80+ lbs and are too weak to walk they will try anything. But this shit actually works! Doctors get a "donor" to poop into a container, then they mix it up into a slurry with some water, and deliver the slurry to the colon with a colonoscopy-style tube, or... the doctors can also deposit the donor's poop slurry through a nose-tube into the stomach. I almost just barfed typing that out. Usually the fecal "donor" is a spouse or a parent, and four out of five patients who receive this poop infusion are cured on the first go!
It is hard to think of near-fatal diarrhea as a behavior but, strictly speaking, it is. The point I want to make by bringing up C.diff infection is that a human behavior - extreme diarrehea - can be changed by a fecal transplant. A transfer of the microbial garden from one field to another can literally change the culture.
So far I have examined extreme examples of behavior modification by parasites. They are extreme in the sense that the victims pay with their lives, but what if there were a whole lot more of these relationships than we ever thought? Relationships in which the host's behavior only had to be manipulated slightly to help the parasite. What if much of human behavior is largely dictated by the the non-human denizens of our bodies? One out of ten cells making up a person's body are actually of the species Homo sapiens. The rest? Fungus, bacteria, mites, protozoa and a whole ecosystem of diverse fauna. The question is, how democratic is the human body in decision making? Do the peptides secreted by your gut bacteria help decide what to eat, who to mate with, when to fight and when to run?
Enter Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoa that has just such subtle effects on human behavior. In an article published in the European Journal of Personality researchers report that human beings inoculated with these tiny creatures are more outgoing socially, have a higher rate of car crashes, and become less and less conscientious the longer they carry the parasite (especially men). The shocking part of this study was the number of people who host this little bug - 22.4% of the US population over the age of 12! T. gondii is generally thought to be benign unless present in pregnant women or infants where it can cause damage to developing tissue. The protozoa is so small during the stage of its life cycle when it lives inside humans it actually penetrates the cells, living in heart and brain tissues. As it replicates it can form benign cysts in the heart and brain... yuck! The prevalence of T. gondii is underscored by it's signature behavioral modification - extroversion. By rendering its host more outgoing it increases the likelihood it will spread to additional hosts. Diabolical! Are there any benefits to knowing this? could someone with chronic shyness inoculate themselves with this bug and make themselves more sociable? Might we extract the biochemical mechanism this bug uses and just make an extroversion drug instead? Who knows! Time will tell.
To me, it is interesting to ponder how deep this connection between medical ecology and human behavior will play out. Are we, like the ant at the beginning of this story, bouncing like a pin-ball between the needs and desires of tiny creatures that call our bodies home?
By writing out these thoughts I want to get my readers thinking about behavior and the unseen factors that influence it. You know that person at work who really gets on your nerves with the constant close-talking? Maybe it's not their fault. May they're acting on a whim of one of their microbial free-riders. Maybe this is true for a lot of human traits. Will we identify more human behaviors that operate under direct feedback by bacteria? fungus? protozoa? cats? dogs? Can we "fix" people by modifying their microbial clouds? Should we? How will super-cheap gene sequencing affect social dynamics?
I do not have the answers to these questions. Maybe you do. Is this a worthy line of scientific inquiry? Share your thoughts below or find me on twitter @thorsonofodin.
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| Written by Kristopher Hite |
1.) Andersen SB, Gerritsma S, Yusah KM, Mayntz D, Hywel-Jones NL, Billen J, Boomsma JJ, & Hughes DP (2009). The life of a dead ant: the expression of an adaptive extended phenotype. The American naturalist, 174 (3), 424-33 PMID: 19627240
2.) Khoruts A, Dicksved J, Jansson JK, & Sadowsky MJ (2010). Changes in the composition of the human fecal microbiome after bacteriotherapy for recurrent Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea. Journal of clinical gastroenterology, 44 (5), 354-60 PMID: 20048681
3.) Jitka Lindová1,, Lenka PÅ™Ãplatová,, & Jaroslav Flegr (2012). Higher Extraversion and Lower Conscientiousness in Humans Infected with Toxoplasma European Journal of Personality, 26 (3), 285-291 DOI: 10.1002/per.838
Obama addresses the World
The President of the United States addressed the United Nation's General Assembly last week in New York City. Though the speech was covered by the mainstream news networks, it was by no means emphasized. In my opinion this 30-minute speech was the most historic speech President Obama has delivered and I think will go down in history as a shining moment. Famed biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin taught me that the Gettysburg address was barely noticed when Lincoln first delivered it. Few but the attendees in the front row could hear Lincoln's spoken words. Most of the crowd were not even paying attention to him but talking amongst themselves, much like contemporary people get distracted talking amongst themselves over social networks and so on. Don't let this historic speech pass you by. You can watch it right here on Tom Paine's Ghost!
P.S. I will be live-blogging the Presidential Debate from Colorado today. Tune in here at 9PM eastern, 7PM mountain time tonight!
P.S. I will be live-blogging the Presidential Debate from Colorado today. Tune in here at 9PM eastern, 7PM mountain time tonight!
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