Blazers Mania: Rip City 2009!

I spent a lot of years avoiding watching Basketball.  First of all, the players are too tall.  I can’t relate.

But, seriously, Portland wasn’t exactly top notch for a long long time.  When I was a kid I was really into them.  Back in the Kevin Duckworth days.  It’s been nearly 18 years and finally the Blazers are doing something worth getting excited about.  I’ve been watching the playoffs for the first time since 1992!

I’m not alone.  Rip City was dormant for a spell, but it’s coming back in droves.  Tuesday nights win over the Rockets only wet the appetite.

We’ll likely not get past this first round, but it feels like a victory anyway.   Over the last ten years or more, the Blazers were largely known as the dumping ground of the the NBA’s asshole players that no other team wanted.  Now we’ve got a group of really good guys who we can be proud of.  And that’s more important than a winning record.  (Though, that’s nice too!)

Goldwater on Christianism

Andrew Sullivan quotes Barry Goldwater:

“There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.

If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism,'” – Barry Goldwater, Congressional Record, September 16, 1981.

Torture vs. War: Which is Worse?

A question being mulled over at the Daily Dish.

Manzi asks the question. I approach this from the just war tradition in which war, however vile, is sometimes defensible against a greater evil. Torture, however, is never moral or defensible under any circumstances. Why? It has to do, I believe, with autonomy. An enemy soldier that you are battling in combat remains autonomous (and potentially dangerous) until the moment of capture or surrender. At that point, his autonomy ends, as he is in captivity, unable to cause you further harm. And the infliction of severe pain or violence on someone who is thereby defenseless carries a much deeper moral weight than a fair or even unfair fight.

Get Rid of Tenure?

Is tenure good for America? Is graduating people with PhD’s good for America?

Mark Taylor, a professor of religion, has observed (in the New York Times) that

“graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist)…[with] sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans.”

This is not really true of the sciences, where the main product is the research that is central to graduate education, research that often leads directly to improvements in healthcare, agriculture, engineering, or environmental quality. Nor do science PhD’s usually take on much debt. (If you are applying to grad school in science, and they don’t promise you fellowship support or paid teaching opportunities sufficient to meet minimal living expenses, it’s either because you are poorly qualified or because the program is poorly funded. Either way, you should reconsider.)

But programs in the sciences do collectively graduate more PhD’s than they hire, so a PhD is no guarantee of a faculty position.

Denison goes on to argue for tenure in the sciences, or at least being aware that taking away tenure could have an adverse effect on the scientific output of Universities, which in turn would have an adverse effect on our country, and the world, as a whole.

He may be right.  But, he’s wrong about the debt.  At this point, the debt accumulated isn’t from ones graduate program generally, it’s from ones undergraduate program.  It is VERY  easy to graduate with more than $50,000 of debt from your undergrad at a STATE school.  Way higher from private schools.  Only people with rich Mommies and Daddies (or a willingness to go part time for 6 or more years while working full time) can avoid it.

And besides, tenure is a dying dream in ALL fields.  Unless you graduate from one of the top 20 schools in your field, forget about getting a tenured position at a research university.  That’s a pipe dream.

But, don’t worry, the adjunct life ain’t bad.  And PhD’s at a think tanks and research firms don’t do bad either.  Neither of which are affected by the tenure system in a direct way.

Melanoma Risk and the Genes You Wear

Just because you have dark hair and skin doesn’t save you from melanoma risk:

Overall, the presence of certain MC1R variants was associated with a more than two-fold risk of melanoma, but this risk was largely confined to those patients who would not usually be considered to be at elevated risk.

Although those with dark hair are not thought to be at increased risk for melanoma, if they had dark hair and also inherited certain MC1R genetic variants, their risk for melanoma increased 2.4-fold. However, no elevated risk was associated with these same MC1R variants in those with blond or red hair.

MC1R was also associated with increased risk among those with dark eye color (3.2-fold increase), who did not freckle (8-fold increase), who tanned after repeated sun exposure (2.4 fold increase) or who tanned immediately without burning (9.5-fold increase). People with these characteristics are usually thought to be at reduced risk for melanoma.

(Hat Tip:  Gene Expression)

Are Umbrellas Bad for Science?

John Hawks reviews a new paleoanthropology book by Richard Wrangham called ““Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.”  He worries that Wrangham’s umbrella thesis (a thesis based on a one-cause argument) may not be enough.

Wrangham’s hypothesis falls into a long tradition in paleoanthropology — the “umbrella hypothesis”, a term coined by John Langdon (1997). In Wrangham’s version, cooking was the fundamental change from which most of the other changes in early Homo can be derived. Other well-known umbrella hypotheses include the “expensive tissue” hypothesis, the aquatic ape hypothesis, and the “killer ape” hypothesis.

An umbrella hypothesis isn’t necessarily false just because it relies on a single cause. Hey, maybe cooking really did cause all that other stuff. Many well-respected scientific theories started out as umbrella hypotheses, like continental drift, or the K-T impact hypothesis.

But an umbrella hypothesis can be difficult to test because its supporters may draw in many facts that are explained equally well by other causes, or worse may be irrelevant. Take for example the argument that a fire provides an attractive location for social interactions. That is certainly true in many recent human hunter-gatherers. But food-sharing hominids may have had home bases attractive for social interactions without fire. And ethnographic hunter-gatherers really do leave groups because of social conflicts. They are much freer to move than male chimpanzees are, and this freedom to move has nothing obvious to do with cooking.

Will Wilkinson Goes Canuck

The Libertarian gets life long Canadian citizenship. His dad was Canadian, but lost his citizenship when he moved to the US before Will was born.  Will is being “reinstated” via a new Canadian immigration bill C-37.

Are Brain Cells Like Salmon?

A cool post at Neurophilosophy on the adult brain cells:

The journey undertaken by newly generated neurons in the adult brain is like the cellular equivalent of the arduous upstream migration of salmon returning to the rivers in which they were hatched. Soon after they are born in the subventricular zone near the back of the brain, these cells migrate to the front-most tip of of the olfactory bulb. This is the furthest point from their birth place, and they traverse two-thirds of the length of the brain to get there.

He’s included a cool video, too!

Coming Out: Bert and Ernie

Well, it’s about time.

CTW spokeswoman Irene Hutchins was quoted as explaining that

“Sesame Street has always evolved with the times in which real children are living.  More and more children today are living in proximity to happy, healthy, gay people who have no interest in hiding.  We think portraying Bert and Ernie in more traditional romantic “couple” ways will be affirming for children with gay uncles or family friends in their lives.”