Coming Out

No, not me. I am, from what the data says, unusually heterosexual, and any queerness I might choose to share doesn't involve just my information. So, no, I'm not talking about me. It is National Coming Out Day, however, and a couple of people are doing it up right.

Jen is, at Blag Hag:

Oh, it was awkward, and it was heartbreaking - but mostly because that's how all crushes are to a 13 year old girl. I was just lucky that I never thought it was sinful or wrong. I wasn't religious, and I was delightfully oblivious to the people who thought my feelings were disgusting.

But it still wasn't easy. There was something overwhelmingly horrible knowing the odds are against you - that, if you're rounding up, maybe 10% of people would also be interested in the same sex. I couldn't get my friend out of my mind, but I knew the odds of her feeling the same way were slim to none. It's terrible liking someone without them liking you back, but it seems just a tad more terrible when you know there's literally nothing you can do about it. No amount of persuasion will change their biology.

Do read the comments at Blag Hag. I love the number of people who are saying they already knew, and only partly because I also thought Jen was already out. There have been plenty of offhand, light references on the blog and on Twitter to finding women attractive, and I'm tickled to see how many people never considered that Jen would somehow have to be "just joking" about it. Some days, I like people.

Elizabeth is reflecting on being out as well, over at Sex in the Public Square:

And this brings me to a reflection on another difficulty of being out. Outness is partly a matter of context. In what circumstances at work does it become appropriate for me to make reference to other lovers? Relatively infrequently. But just recently a colleage to whom I'm not especially out asked me about weekend plans. As it happens I had a date with a woman I care deeply about. I said "I have a date." She asked no further questions, and so the conversation died there. I was ready to explain further, but she did not inquire and quite probably assumed that I either was making reference to going out with a friend or that I was referring to a date with Will.

While coming out is a continual process, ceremonial days like National Coming Out Day are useful because they provide a context for self disclosure. They also provide a ritual moment for reminding others that our lives may not be as clear and simple as they appear on the surface.

For all those who are not at all out, it is important that the rest of us show ourselves openly to help dispel stereotypes and to strengthen the system of mutual support that outness can provide.

It also makes me quite happy that most of the people I know who fall under the broad heading of GLBTQ (where Q = queer of some sort) are already generally out. A friend of a friend referred to today as "Happy 'Yeah we know dude' day." Today was a day for affirmation for most of them, rather than a day of added risk or longing for what it would be unwise to actually do. One person I'm proud to call a friend used the day to come out as bisexual to her Catholic family.

All that is progress, but it isn't enough. I live in a very liberal city, with lots of artists and academics for friends. I hang out with people who make a point of trying to question received wisdom about the social order. Even here, I know of one situation in which two of my friends don't feel comfortable being out. The prominent heterosexuality of the place is such that even identifying the location would out those people.

Then we get outside the city and outside my generation. I see a teenager who can't understand why "so gay" is an insult but still uses it as one, all but guaranteeing that her friends will at least hesitate before coming out to her. I see a woman several years into her retirement, who moved across the country with her "roommate" and whose parents will likely die within the next year or two without ever having discussed her sexuality (if they allow themselves to know about it). Then there are all the people who are not safe or who don't feel safe, just because of their sexuality, practiced--or merely experienced--in private.

Kelley expresses how this feels better than I can at Watching the Wheels:

I do know that I will love this man and stand by him as long as I am able. And I know that whatever the future brings we will work through it together.

Today I’m not telling my parents any of this. I wish that I could. It feels so wrong to be so happy and to not share it with two of the people that mean the most to me in this world. One of my sisters is sure I will be disowned. I don’t know with any degree of confidence that she’s wrong. Today I’m not ready to find out.

But I think it’s worth the risk, to share this part of my life with them. Maybe next year I’ll be ready. And maybe next year my fears will be proven wrong. Maybe I’ll be accepted, my happiness will be accepted. Maybe, but maybe not today.

For them (and for you, because in hiding is a scary, toxic place to be), come out today, if you can. If you can afford to take those risks, for yourself and for others, tell the world who you are. Come on out.

Nobel Conference: Bina Agarwal

"Can We Make Food Good for All?"

Bina Agarwal, Ph.D., professor of economics and director, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, India

Bina Agarwal spoke to us about solving the problems of making food good for the world's poorest. If you only watch one lecture, I recommend you make it this one. It is the least easily captured in notes, and it contained the best use of slides of any of the talks. As before, below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. Note that Dr. Agarwal used "collectivities" in the place of "collectives" to differentiate them from the Soviet-style agricultural collectives. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

• Cooking in mother's kitchen was a sacred, meditative act. Required bathing and silence.
• Hindu scriptures divide food into three categories. Satvik (pure and health promoting), Rajasik (over-stimulating), Tamasik (decaying).
• What food is "good" varies by culture, but the poor cannot always afford nutritious food, much less "good" food.
• About 1B people undernourished in 2009. Challenge will grow with population, even without climate change.
• Nutrition/food security challenges: production (who), distribution, preparation, and consumption.
• Biofeul production in food exporting countries, like U.S. have implications for security of importing regions.
• Farming labor force is declining worldwide and becoming more female. Biases thus have a large impact on agriculture.
• Forest lands declining. They are an important source of supplementary food items, particularly for the poorest.
• Climate change expected to have the most dramatic (negative) impact on the cereal crops of Africa and South Asia.
• Entitlement to food is not equally distributed either nationally or internationally. Much starvation due to entitlement issues.
• Clean cooking fuel is a limited resource. Biofuels (firewood, crop waste, animal dung) are not clean.
• Unclean fuels disproportionally affect cooks (women) and the children who play near them: r espiratory distress, cancer.
• Even with clean, abundant food, the challenge of junk is ever present, particularly as the rich West is emulated.
• Community-managed irrigation less sexy than big dams, but taking hold in India. May be more sustainable.
• Small farmers (mostly women) don't have political or investment power. Autonomous collectives may be the solution.
• Small collectives increase skill sets, knowledge bases and economic resources, decrease social isolation.
• In de-collectivized post-Soviet areas, large percentages of farms voluntarily remained in collectives. Saw many benefits.
• Collectives have methods to check free-riding. Show higher productivity than single-family farms.
• Collectives have also made food available cheaply to poor in areas, enhancing community food security.
• Collectives in India also increasing women's status. Some evidence for decreasing domestic violence.
• Degraded forest land has been given to local Indian communities to protect. Forest land now increasing.
• Clean stoves a good step toward clean fuel, but don't solve all problems (dependence on forests, etc.). Need to make processed biogasses.
• Local solutions good, but don't alleviate international responsibilities: R&D, border issues, understanding interdependence.
• Women and poor not just main victims of food crisis. Also essential part of the solution.
• Not good data on utility of microloan programs. Pooled, rotating investment resources in collectives work well, however.
• Title to land, even not enough land to support you, provides a fallback and bargaining power for more.

Nobel Conference: Jeffrey M. Friedman

"Leptin and the Biologic Basis of Obesity"

Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and HHMI investigator, Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, and director, Starr Center for Human Genetics, The Rockefeller University, New York, N.Y.

Jeffrey Friedman provided the third lecture, which was essentially and introduction to why our cultural thinking on obesity is generally okay as far as it goes but doesn't go nearly far enough. It also addressed the idea that our emotional reaction to fat, as a culture, is completely out of line with the facts behind fat. As before, below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

Yes, obese people eat more and exercise less, but why?
Everyone has a set of convictions about obesity. Very little interest in hearing science-based answers.
Willpower as an explanation of differences in weight is most often favored by the lean.
Maintenance of weight under a variety of conditions suggests an inherent mechanism for balancing food intake and usage.
Mechanism will impose a basic drive in opposition to higher cognitive functions, no matter our desires.
Natural selection can act very powerfully over the short term. Recent increases in obesity not necessarily environmental.
BMI distributions don't have to change much to see large *categorical* (overweight, obese) differences.
Obesity estimated to be as heritable as height.
Leptin a hormone that provides negative feedback between fat tissue and hypothalamus (my simplification).
Fat tissue is an endocrine organ. Lack of leptin causes a starvation response: extreme energy conservation.
Obesity appears to be a hormone-resistance syndrome, like Type II diabetes.
Adding much more leptin to the system can affect some patients, dosage required too high to be practical.
About 1/3 of obese sensitive to lower doses of added leptin.
May be use for leptin on conjunction with leptin sensitizers (short-term plus long-term agents). Still in trials. [Friedman noted potential conflict of interest in that he consults for the company developing the regimen.]
Studying signaling pathways in presence and absence of leptin to determine where weight is controlled.
10% of morbid obesity due to single-gene defects. More from multi-gene and gene-environment interactions.
We have a good grasp of the physiological cycle. Still working on neurological processing.
Metabolic, sensory, and cognitive factors affect likelihood of feeding behavior, but do not control directly.
Work on obesity has provided a framework for studying physiological/psychological systems.
Time to provide better advice to obese than "Eat less; exercise more," which is millennia old.
Still things to do to protect health in the presence of obesity: exercise, eat well, stay at the leaner end of you weight range.
Vilification of the obese seems to be largely due to the human need to feel in control--or more than animals.
Good food choices? You don't care what you eat when you think you're starving.
Scientific debate ongoing over whether all calories are created equal with respect to long-term hunger signaling.

Nobel Conference: Cary Fowler

"Food Security in a Frightening and Finite World."

Cary Fowler, Ph.D., executive director, Global Crop Diversity Trust, Rome, Italy

Cary Fowler offered the second lecture of the conference, speaking to us about sustaining genetic diversity in crop plants as a means of providing some security against the challenges of a growing population and changing climate on a local and global scale. He also gave us a nice introduction to the seed bank in Svalbard, Norway. As before, below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

• But first, a shout-out to the ASL interpreter. :)
• Due to green revolution, we are the first generation to take abundance of food for granted.
• Africa is an exception to production growth, just reaching 1960s levels.
• Production increases have come due to much greater expenditure of resources: land, water, fertilizer, pesticides, etc.
• Land use increases stopped being as important to agriculture growth in 80s. Water usage is unsustainable. Drawing on aquifers.
• Water rights may lead to increased international conflict as food needs increase.
• When Kuwait recognizes Peak Oil (as they do now), the impact on food production must be considered.
• Natural gas is a requirement for current nitrogenous fertilizers.
• Climate change will change growing seasons and patterns.
• Hot summers have traditionally decreased production ~25%. Those will be the good years with projected climate change.
• "We are living through less than 1/2 of 1% of the history of agriculture, but I can promise you it will be the most interesting."
• Most people think of biodiversity as a Rousseau painting: exotics. More important is diversity within species.
• Maintaining diversity determines whether we survive climate change, or just the next pest or disease.
• Flooding in Philippines hit their seed bank, causing the extinction of several species. We will lose more seed banks.
• Loss of more seed banks, with the additional diversity, is a completely predictable event.
• Svalbard seed bank is far from human and weather dangers. Naturally frozen as well.
• "Doctor, are you telling me the genetic diversity in this seed bank is the world's most important natural resource?" "I think so." "And that Svalbard is the best place for it?" "I believe it is." "Then how can we refuse?" [Norwegian government's response]
• The most drought-resistant crop in Addis Ababa contains a neurotoxin. Starve or become paralyzed?
• [From Ben's Twitter stream] "If you can't go down to the supermarket because you have no money and there is no supermarket..."
• Collecting seeds allows the crop to be bred to reduce toxins without losing drought resistance.
• "If you want to be bored and depressed [by the situation], you don't have to do anything. It will come naturally."
• "But these problems can be solved. You can help solve them, and it's fun."
• We also need to find and preserve the wild relatives of our crop plants.
• Subsistence farmers maintain much of the world's crop diversity, but they are also the most vulnerable, and they're not curators.
• Fruit diversity threatened by Russian law that may force development of land growing plants that don't grow well from seed.
• Most national seed banks are of poor quality. "You wouldn't want to store your kid's lunch in them."

Nobel Conference: Marion Nestle

"Food Politics: Personal Responsibility vs. Social Responsibility."

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H., Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, and professor of sociology, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University (blog: Food Politics, Twitter)

Marion Nestle (not Nestlé) provided the first lecture of the conference, focusing on the forces that shape our food choices, including the forces that shape the business of agriculture and food marketing. Below is my summary of the lecture in tweets. The full lecture, including the Q&A afterward with all the invited speakers, is available on YouTube.

• "When I started in nutrition, it never occurred to me that agriculture had anything to do with what we eat."
• The challenge is not how to feed 8-9 billion people, but to empower 8-9B people to feed themselves.
• The solutions are social, not technological (empowering women, social and political stability.
• You don't have to be a Nobel winner to figure out how to avoid obesity.
• Food industry can no longer just blame consumer personal responsibility for obesity. People eating less is big problem for industry.
• Junk food should be a special order. Healthful food should be easy to get--the default.
• Data slim, but rates of physical activity have changed very little since early 80s. People eating more.
• More calories available in the food system (not consumed) for every person.
• Everyone lies about food intake, but data still show 200 calorie daily increase.
• Farm subsidy program shifted from paying for not growing to paying for growing. Result: corn and food industry competition.
• Food companies also affected by new Wall Street demands for continual growth of profits. Industry changed in response.
• Eating out (higher calorie meals) got cheaper due to subsidies. Portion sizes in prepackaged food got bigger.
• "If there were one thing I could teach everyone in this room, it's that larger portions have more calories."
• It's been shown experimentally that larger portions = more calories is not intuitively obvious.
• Larger portions cause people to underestimate calories consumed by a greater amount.
• Ubiquity: "When did it become okay to eat and drink in bookstores?"
• Fast food burger on a sweetened bun is highly subsidized ($1). Salad is not ($5).
• "If you hear people talk about how expensive fruits and vegetables are, it's because they are."
• Indexed price of fruit & vegetables up 40% since 80s. Grain products down 10-15%.
• Food companies under tremendous pressure, but have generally not responded productively.
• Ah, health claims. Chocolate cheerios may reduce the chance of heart disease?
• FDA rolled on First Amendment arguments. Courts friendly to corporate speech claims.
• American Heart Association only cares about fats, not sugars, in endorsements.
• POM suing FDA over blocked antioxidant health claims. (First Amendment claim)
• "Functional foods" the only big marketing category that's selling these days, despite lack of regulation of claims.
• Companies will tell you they don't make health claims in their categories, only claims of "healthier" choices.
• Health labeling "standards" set by companies. Vast majority of foods don't meet independent standards set by nutritionists.
• Smart Choices = less than 25% calories from sugar.
• A better-for-you product may still not be a *good* choice. Fruit Loops = Smart Choice product.
• Marketing to children can instill brand loyalty for life.
• Kids' marketing identifies "kid" foods, generally highly processed and not things a parent can produce on own.
• Michelle Obama's good food campaign has a tiny fraction of the budget for marketing *one* breakfast cereal.
• Recent Salmonella eggs came out of dirty facility producing 2.3M dozen eggs per week.
• Food safety laws the legacy of Upton Sinclair in 1906. Still not substantially updated since then.
• Recent recalls show systemic failure. We know how to produce safe food, but we don't enforce it.
• We've had a good monitoring process (HACCP) that were developed for the first manned space mission. We don't use it.
• Need a single food-safety agency. Not happening. Senate has held food safety bill for 16 months.
• Schools are slowly experiencing the food revolution. Grassroots activism is making a difference.
• Buried on page 1206 of the health care reform act is national calorie labeling. Should be entertaining. Food lobby spending has shot up.
• Sustainability movement is producing return to the victory garden. Everyone votes with their fork for the food industry they want.
• You could not always walk into a supermarket and find fresh vegetables. This is progress.
• "The sugar previously known as high fructose corn syrup."
• We don't need to lose 100% of our industrial farming, but industry can get much better & we need diversity.
• There are no superfoods. Only food. The key is a diverse diet.
• Credibility of Am. Diatetic Assoc. destroyed by endorsements/partnerships.
• We still live in a democracy. If there is enough noise, legislators have to listen.

Tweeting the Nobel Conference

Life is still busy. Yesterday and today are the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. This is an annual event, coinciding with the announcement of the winners of the year's Nobel Prizes, pulling together a number of scientists to talk about a particular topic. This year is "Making Food Good." Next year is "The Brain and Being Human."

Each scientist gives a lecture, but what follows may be the coolest part: All of the invited scientists then get together for a panel discussion of the lecture, asking questions outside their fields and trying to fit the information they're hearing into their framework of the topic. The presenting scientist also takes questions from the audience. That audience includes an internet audience, as the lectures are all streamed live.

What the lectures are not, despite the presence of lots of students from the college and from local high schools, is live Tweeted. At least, they weren't. After missing part of the first lecture due to an accumulation of delays yesterday morning, I checked the conference hashtag, #Nobel46. There was nothing. So I took over.

I'll blog the lectures later, with additional information, but if you want to follow along in the meantime, that hashtag is your place to be.

No Good Reason

This just happens to be my favorite birthday-related song at the moment, and it has a nice student-made video.

Me & the Minibar

No such details will spoil my plan.

About Those HPV Vaccines

Go get them for your kids who are in the appropriate age range. Tell people you know who have kids in that age range that these are important. That's all. Just help deal a major blow to the most pernicious forms of this virus.

Why?

Yesterday I had an appointment to get a Pap smear. This is a routine appointment for most women. It isn't for me. It was a six-month follow-up to my last test (clear), which was a follow-up to my surgery for cancer in situ last November.

It also marks the second birthday in a row during which I will be waiting for more information on my health. A friend noted yesterday, "It's not a Heisenberg cervix; you won't alter it by looking at it. So even if it WAS bad news, that means you can enjoy your birthday without having it hang over your head." It doesn't exactly change the situation, but at least it made me laugh, which I needed by then.

I didn't think the Pap was going to bother me. I thought it would be just as routine as any before last year. Some part of me had other ideas.

I should have known something was weird when I had trouble remembering I had the appointment. I nearly forgot to get a referral for insurance purposes. I forgot to put it on my work calendar. I scheduled client calls without thinking about whether they'd conflict. I forgot to account for it when planning the number of hours I'd need to work yesterday. I forgot to tell my husband about it at all.

It didn't get any better after I had to remember it. About an hour before the appointment, I started to get twitchy. I walked over to the doctor's office using a route I hadn't taken yet. In the elevator up, I remembered the only other two times I'd been to the office. The first was when I'd bled all over the place, due to what I termed "helpful violence." On the second, I was told I needed surgery, although what I was told didn't give me even a hint of what I was in for afterward.

I was panting just a little by the time I hit the office. I nearly laughed at the nurse who took my blood pressure, and I didn't bother to find out what it was. There was no point. It wasn’t going to tell anyone anything about the general state of my health.

They made a very smart move when they put me in the examination room to wait for the doctor. They gave me a little paper lap robe and made me take my pants off. In the ten minutes or so that I was waiting, that extra step between me and escape kept me where I was. Of course, it also kept me from pacing or doing anything else to burn off the adrenaline.

Instead, I looked at the kit for the test. Picture a tapered pipe cleaner on a long handle, about three-quarters of an inch of stiff white brushes, with a small metal paddle at the end for scraping. Next to that is a larger paddle that would look something like a white butterfly if it weren't made of hard white plastic with ridges for more scraping. Once I knew what everything was, I found something else to look at.

The doctor turned out to be much nicer than I remember. Fairly sweet guy, in fact. I have no idea what he saw when he walked into the room, but he went from "You'll have your results in just a couple of weeks if everything is fine" to "I'll call you when I get the results in a few days, whatever they are" in about a minute.

We talked about the new baseball stadium while I was getting my actual exam. I don't know whether he was being extra thorough because he didn't want to chance missing anything or whether the Pap smears I'll be getting for the rest of my life (most women can stop in their sixties) are just going to hurt and cramp that much. I'm healed from the surgery, but there's less of my cervix than there was the last time I had a "normal" exam, and that was the first time I'd bled from a Pap test.

Then it was over and I jittered my way out of there. I was still on the edge of tears, as I'd been for the whole exam, but at least I could move again. Unfortunately, I only had one errand to run, a quick trip to get some chamomile tea to help deal with the cramping. All too soon, I was back at my desk, expected to sit still and work as though nothing out of the ordinary had bitten a big hole in my day, as though nothing had taken out so large a portion of my last year that anything that reminds me of it terrifies me.

So why get kids the HPV vaccine, you ask? I'll admit it; part of my answer is that I want to see the bug that did this to me eradicated. I know that's unlikely, though. Still, I'll settle for fewer people having to go through anything approaching what I have.

Wouldn't you?

Weird

"Did you know that there are people who don't hold hands when they sleep?"

"Really? Weird."

"I know. What's up with that?"

"Or maybe we're weird."

"Don't care."

"Maybe they'll think we're so weird they'll ostracize us, drive us out of society."

"Still don't care. I'd rather hold your hand."

"Okay, that's pretty weird. But terribly sweet."

The Voor-What?

I am pleased to announce that Hanny & the Mystery of the Voorwerp is now available for free download or purchase in hard copy.

Who and the what? Well, actually, this is a collaboration between a bunch of friends of mine and NASA. It's science outreach telling the story of a highly successful bit of citizen science. I'll let Pamela Gay explain the background:

Sometimes, as an astronomer, I get to do some really weird stuff. This summer is one of those times. I actually, thanks to project PI (i.e. lead) Bill Keel, got an opportunity to help produce a comic book telling the story of how a Dutch school teacher found the light echo of a once bright Quasar. Light echos, like sound echos, for when waves (in this case light waves) bounce of a surface and reflect back to an observer, arriving after waves that took a more direct path. A man on a cliff may holler, with his initial outcry reaching you in factions of a second, while the reflection of his voice off a distant outcrop of rock may reach you a few moments later.

Trying to figure out that a random green blob of gas is a light echo was anything but easy. In this comic book, we try and tell the story of what it was like for the people involved and how exactly astronomy – in its not exactly Indiana Jones fashion – can be an amazing adventure.

Kelly McCullough also played a critical role at this July's CONvergence:

Workshop: Hanny finds the Voorwerp and goes to wise astronomers to seek knowledge, but is told she has found something new and magical, and is sent to discover the true nature of the object. Join our band of writers and illustrators as we chronicle Hanny's journey.

Jason Thibeault took part in the workshops and provided a chunk of the writing:

At CONvergence, we took part in several panels (there’s even photographic proof of the back of my and Kelly’s heads!) with Kelly McCullough, author of the WebMage series and all-around stand-up guy, the enthusiastic and incredibly sweet Dr. Pamela L. Gay, and the immensely knowledgeable Bill Keel, discussing how to go about turning the discovery and investigation of Hanny’s Voorwerp into a web comic in order to provide a manner of outreach, bringing the obvious human interest aspects of the story to the public. As it turns out, by doing so, we volunteered to help co-author the web comic. Not that I wasn’t absolutely honoured by the fact!

So we wrote several of the pages’ dialogue to help shoulder some of the burden, then Kelly gave them all a going-over to ensure we were all “on the same page”, so to speak. And for what minimal amount of effort we put in, we got a co-writing credit on the front page of the comic.

Me? Well, I had nothing at all to do with it. I just think my friends got together and produced something both truly awesome and beautifully inspiring, inspiring in a way more things should be. So go, check out the comic, and consider passing it around to others, both as inspiration for more involvement in science and as inspiration for ways to get yet more people involved.

Benny the Rat Embraces His Nazi Past

I wasn't terribly concerned over Joseph Ratzinger's election to pope simply because he had a Nazi past, having been part of the Hitler Youth. He was, after all, quite young at the time. That he didn't make the hard choice to oppose the government of his time was not exceptional, a fact that undermined any claim to a particular inherent virtue in the new pope but didn't make a case for inherent evil either.

That case was made by Ratzinger's adult behavior. His regressive attitude toward his predecessor's humanitarian gestures and his emphasis on authority over forgiveness on the subject of HIV and condoms told me all I needed to know about this new pope. Later revelations about his role as enforcer in keeping the church's predatory scandals quiet weren't a surprise. Not from Benny the Rat.

Now, however, Ratzinger seems to be reaching back to embrace his Nazi past.

Yes, I'm quite serious. What else can you call his recent statement about atheists?

“Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live,” he said.

“I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious people who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society …”

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs rightly calls it revisionism. Beyond that, it is revisionism that parallels what Ratzinger has seen before, in his formative years.

Jews may not be acceptable targets in most of the civilized world at the moment (I wish I could say, "anymore"), but atheists are still subject to open and unapologetic religious discrimination even from sects and authority figures that consider themselves religiously liberal. It is perfectly fine to suggest that our moral character is inherently defective, despite evidence to the contrary. It’s almost trendy to characterize our open, unashamed, sometimes opinionated existence as an attack on others. Our very lack of invisibility is considered a problem.

Then there is the atmosphere in which the pope's statements were made. It is not a mere coincidence that the Nazis came to power during a time of international economic turbulence and deep uncertainties about the future. I could say more about that, but Tom Levenson's excellent post on what Albert Einstein has to tell us about the tea partiers says it more eloquently than I could. (Read also his take on the moral failure of Ratzinger's remarks.)

Nor is the problem just that the pope is exploiting the uncertainty of our times. He is doing it as the head of an institution that bears direct responsibility for many of our global problems. Don't know what I'm talking about? Turn away from your comfortable "First World" life for a moment and think about what the promotion of poverty, disease, overpopulation and submissiveness means to our world, both in general and specifically in building tensions between the have-littles and have-nones. This tension is a political force that should never be underestimated, particularly in its power to destroy.

Yet Ratzinger not only fails to take responsibility for the actions and policies of his institution, or for the power that gives them such far-reaching effects. He also deflects this responsibility onto atheists, an unorganized group without anything like the power to create the phenomena for which he blames them. Atheists, denied social influence by virtue of their atheism--and political power in many places, can no more be specially responsible for the world's problems than the Jews of Germany could be responsible for the failures of the German government.

They can, however, serve as a scapegoat for a leader who wants power without the responsibility that should come with it. Of all the current political and religious leaders in our world, Ratzinger has the fewest excuses for claiming ignorance as to where that can lead.

Ratzinger was a child when he participated in the Hitler Youth. He shouldn't be held responsible for what he supported then, although a truly moral man might claim that responsibility despite his immaturity at the time. We are, after all, none of us ever truly mature, and it's the repercussions of our lingering immaturities of which we should be most aware.

Benny the Rat is no longer a child. He is an adult of an age to have seen the Holocaust first hand and remember its lessons. That he has said what he has said under the circumstances in which he said it strongly suggests that he is embracing those lessons. It is appalling that he can remain the head of an institution with any power at all when he is so clearly embracing the wrong ones.

Back on the Radio

Life is keeping me a wee bit busy these days. In the course of a week, I did a guest lecture on religious skepticism and made my return to Atheists Talk radio. Mike Haubrich is doing hostly duties these days, so I get the leisure of interviewing fun people from time to time while mostly sleeping in on Sundays.

This past Sunday, Jason and I got up early to talk about arguing over astrology and what does and doesn't constitute scientific evidence.

Who says online arguments are worthless? All right, so it probably depends on what you’re arguing about and who you’re arguing with, but even arguing with a bunch of astrologers over whether there’s any proof for astrology can teach you something. If nothing else, it can teach you how not to construct a valid argument over scientific evidence. Join Jason Thibeault and Stephanie Zvan as they discuss what evidence there is for and against astrology, what evidence would be required to prove astrology, and what might happen if astrology were proven true.

• The post that started it all: Deepwater Horizon foretold by astrology!!! (Well, post-told)
• The argument against astrology: If it smells like Funk, it must be astrology
• Some code showing how the Mars Effect actually works
• What if astrology WERE true?
• For fun: Horoscopes

Now, Jason was a little bit (!) nervous about the show, as he hadn't done any public speaking in over a decade. So I didn't post anything ahead of time. However, he did a grand job (just like everyone I agree to have on the show with me) despite some sound issues with the international call, so go check out the podcast. And while you're there, check out what Atheists Talk has been up to since its rebirth.

Forced Perspective

I'm loving this video. For once, the entire internet understands what heights look like to me. Sooo nice to not be the only one.



Update: Noooo! Not fair. They took it down. Something about giving the industry a bad image or something. Although, how any industry involving heights can have a good image is beyond me to start with.

Ah, well. Try this one instead.

Korans and Crackers, Identity and Authority

I generally agree with PZ Myers on the topic of Crackergate, but he has a post up today that makes me wonder a little whether he's forgotten exactly what he did. He's defending, by analogy to his own actions, the burning of the Koran that is scheduled to take place in Florida this weekend. I understand that he's reacting to some statements that protest the proposed burning on ridiculous grounds. However, I don't think that's any excuse for underestimating the thought that he put into throwing a communion wafer (or whatever the exact appropriate terminology is) in the trash.

PZ didn't just throw away a cracker and a rusty nail. He also included pages from the Koran and Dawkin's The God Delusion. Those were critical to conveying his message that the authority claimed by the church was the problem, as is any authority, religious or secular, that can't provide external justification for its actions. Admittedly, many people weren't and still aren't capable of understanding that, but that doesn't change the fact that those pages were important to what he did.

Nor did he just post a picture of his trash can. The "offending" picture was accompanied by a history and explanation of blood libel--one cost of the authority of the church to those over whom it claimed that authority. Beyond that, the whole brouhaha occured in the context of the church exercising its authority over someone without consent.

That was the message I supported and still support.

That is not the message coming out of Florida. Jones will not undermine his own authority in order to call the authority of the Koran dangerous. In fact, he is claiming the authority for his actions comes from his god, and burning the authority of another is only intended to raise him further. This authority allows him to call Islam the "devil's religion," making believers not misguided equals or the blindly privileged, but a dangerous minority who are a threat not for what they do, but for who they are. And we know how that works, or we should.

That isn't a sloppy version of what PZ said much better. It's an entirely different animal, whether or not believers can't see the difference. I would hope that the rest of us can.

Religious Skepticism: A Bibliography

I'm delivering a guest lecture at a local community college this evening on religious skepticism. The following is a bibliography of further reading on the main topics I'm covering. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

Updated: A big thank you to the students for your time, attention, and some excellent, fearless questions! If you want more information on something we talked about, please ask in the comments.

Modern Skepticism in Historical Context
At PhilosophyOnline, Gareth Southwell presents an introductory theory of knowledge, including a history of classic skepticism.

At the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Steven Novella and David Bloomberg differentiate scientific skepticism from other modern definitions of "skepticism" and discuss untestable religious claims.

External Evidence for God(s) and Religion
Theopedia discusses the problem of "God of the Gaps" apologetics.

Nonauthoritarian sources of ethics: Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism.

Primate Diaries discusses the existence and origin of morality in nonhuman animals:

• The Evolution of Morality
• Punishing Cheaters Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation
• Chimpanzees Prefer Fair Play To Reaping An Unjust Reward

The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (book)

Cognitive Daily reports on a study discussing how belief in free will versus determinism affects cheating behavior.

The Frontal Cortex looks at the complicated relationship between religious identity and moral behavior.

Internal Contradictions Within Religions
One bible school points up the "dangers" of several versions of the Bible that claim to be inerrant.

Another Christian group takes on the idea of inerrancy by looking at the contradictions between biblical passages.

August Berkshire tackles common apologetics addressing the problem of evil.

Common Philosophical Stances on Religion, Defined
John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts delves into definitions of agnosticism and what can and can't be known of the existence of god(s).

Additional Reading
Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson (book) and an interview with author Jennifer Michael Hecht on NPR's Speaking of Faith.

Lousy Canuck discusses types of prayer and why prayer is nonsense.

Feeling Alone?
Minnesota Atheists
Humanists of MN
Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
Minnesota Atheists Meetup
Twin Cities Atheists Meetup
Skeptic Meetups