Failing US Government Schools Corrupt--Bypass Methods Needed

Across the United States, government school districts are plagued by incompetence and corruption. The education of students is too often secondary to lining the pockets of teachers' union officials and other corrupt participants in the taxpayer funded system.

In St. Louis, Missouri, charter schools are booming as an alternative to the corrupt and violent school districts.

In Baltimore, Maryland, where many government schools are in critical condition on life support, applications for new charter schools are multiplying rapidly.

In Denver, Colorado, a successful virtual charter program is under attack by corrupt politicians, at the behest of the Colorado teachers' unions.

In Los Angeles, California, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad is donating over US $10 million to charter schools to bypass the corrupt California Board of Education, and the LA Unified School District. Both institutions are fighting to hold onto every taxpayer dollar they can funnel into their incompetent and corrupt grasp.

In Arizona, the Goldwater Institute is calling for abolition of government school district monopolies.

Single sex education is another alternative to traditional government schooling that may help many students. Given that students often do better with instructors of the same sex, same-sex classrooms may become more prevalent.

The range of alternatives varies from charter schools, school choice options and vouchers, virtual schools, home schooling, and other approaches that may not have been imagined yet. The need to bypass the corruption and near complete incompetence of government schooling is acute.

An Interesting Approach to Teaching Science to Children

North American children are lagging in science behind children in other parts of the developed world. A lot of the blame for that belongs with the standard government school approach to teaching science--memorizing facts and formulas.

Imagine a school where children learned scientific concepts hierarchically, in a logical progression much as they were originally discovered? What if science classes consisted almost entirely of experiments?

One day, I taught my students the principle that water pressure increases only with depth. I gave them a powerful demonstration by poking holes at the same depth in two vessels of dramatically different diameters, and observing identical jets of water coming out of the holes. They were shocked and fascinated, and when one student’s mother came to pick him up, he immediately went to the board and started drawing diagrams and testing her about this principle to see if she understood it as well as he did. Such enthusiasm springs from a first-hand grasp of relevant principles, which can be achieved only by means of a hierarchy-driven curriculum.

The principle of hierarchy is just as crucial in teaching more abstract scientific knowledge to older children as it is in teaching the simplest scientific knowledge to younger children. Consider the subject of physics.

Most science teachers present the highly abstract laws of physics as if they are self-contained truths, unrelated to the long history of scientific development. For example, Newton’s discovery of universal gravitation, one of the most extraordinary discoveries in the history of thought, is usually presented as an out-of-context commandment to be memorized—as knowledge that, along with Newton’s apple, fell from the sky.

A proper science teacher, by contrast, recognizes what the students must know for this law to be intelligible. He explains the steps in Newton’s reasoning, and ensures that the students have already learned the discoveries leading up to Newton’s theory, the principles they must know if they are to follow his reasoning.

In the famous incident with the apple, Newton asked himself if the same attractive force from the Earth caused both the apple’s descent and the moon’s orbit. In order to check the idea, Newton needed to know the acceleration of the apple (which he learned from Galileo), the size of the Earth (which had been measured by Eratosthenes), and the distance to the moon (which was calculated by Aristarchus). If the students are to grasp the law at hand, they must first grasp these facts—as did Newton.

Further, in arriving at this hypothesis, Newton was relying on Galileo’s principle of inertia, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, and the law of circular acceleration (which Newton himself had discovered a few months earlier). Without this knowledge, Newton could not even have raised the question. Therefore, without this knowledge, the students cannot grasp the question and they certainly cannot understand Newton’s final answer.

Having been taught physics as it progressed historically, the students at VanDamme Academy know the discoveries of Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Kepler, and Galileo. When guided through the ingenious process by which Newton integrated this knowledge and built upon it, the students thoroughly grasp the principle of universal gravitation: They see that it is true and why it must be true. The law of gravitation is, in their own minds, connected to reality. It is real knowledge.

Does the hierarchical approach to teaching science require that students be taught the entire history of science, including every detail of every experiment ever performed? No. A crucial part of teaching in accordance with the principle of hierarchy is to select only the essentials. This is in contrast to the common view, expressed in a local newspaper by a high school biology teacher, that the hardest part of his job is keeping up with all the latest discoveries in his field. The latest developments in biology are properly the concern of Ph.D. biologists who have the context to understand them and the need to apply them.

High school students should be taught a carefully selected list of the most essential discoveries in the field, and should be taught them in hierarchical order. Only if they are taught by this method will they emerge with a sound understanding of the fundamental concepts of science and a genuine ability to think. Anything else deprives them of independently grasped, real knowledge, in favor of passively accepted pseudo-knowledge.

Source.

For more about the VanDamme Academy--a modified Montessori approach--go here.

Children need to learn science and technology experimentally. Educational methods need to exploit the strengths of the child's mind and motivation, but too often education is designed to undermine a child's confidence and prevent the acquisition of competence.

Europe to World: "I'm Shrinking, I'm Shrinking!"

Everyone who keeps up with world demographics understands that European populations are shrinking due to low birth rates. While immigration into Europe from dysfunctional third world countries helps slow the drop of population in absolute numbers, low quality immigration will likely do little to support the future productivity and prosperity of Europe.

Pastorius uses a "Funny Condom Ad" on YouTubeas a springboard to discuss the European dilemma. Will Europeans choose to fade into obscurity through population implosion? Would the rest of the world even notice?

There is no major Western European country that is producing enough children to replace the current population. Instead, they are replacing their population with Muslim immigrants.

Here are the birthrates per couple in various European countries:

Remember the birthrate for a population that is neither increasing nor declining is 2.1 babies per woman of childbearing age.

Ireland - 1.87
Germany - 1.3
Austria - 1.3
Italy - 1.2
Russia - 1.2
Spain - 1.1.

At a replacement rate of 1.1, Spain is at half the stable population replacement rate. This means Spain's population is halving every generation. The magnitude of the numbers is difficult to comprehend. In 2000, the total population of Europe was 728 million. By 2050 at the present rate of births, it will be less than 600 million, a loss of a staggering 125 million Europeans.

Source.

Nobody likes changing diapers or disciplining young children. But the alternative for a society is to simply fade away. How stupid is that?

Kinder, Gentler Robocop--and Other Robot News

Robots are coming out of the labs and into the workplace. Sohgo Security Services in Japan is putting a security robot into service at a Tokyo shopping mall.

While on patrol, four cameras mounted in the robot’s head and shoulders record video, and its sensors detect the presence of humans, water leaks and fire. When the robot encounters something suspicious, it alerts a computer in the security room and sends video. Human security guards view the video footage sent by the robot and determine how to respond.

Equipped with communication functions, the robot can also provide services to the people it is watching. A touch-screen embedded in the robot’s chest can be used to display information about lost children and other data about the surroundings, and a voice synthesizer enables the robot to tell the time, provide weather data and make promotional announcements.

Source.

Another Tokyo company is hiring out their robots for US $445 an hour. No doubt for that price the robot will be used mainly for PR functions.

Aerial robots, or UAVs, may soon be put to use patrolling the US-Mexican border. UAVs have accrued a significant track record in Iraq, and may prove useful in North America domestically.

Robots may soon find greater use helping rehabilitate stroke (CVA) patients and helping the development of autistic children. Robots also may soon find a use as companions for the elderly and disabled.

One blog that tries to keep up with robot trends, is Robot Gossip blog. Other useful robot links can be found on the Al Fin main page sidebar under the Androids, Robots . . . heading.

Very little is needed in terms of robot/android development, beyond the improvement of robot personality, including more human emotional expression. The ability to balance and ambulate like humans will eventually be useful, but robots that can safely roll from room to room inside a home or building could provide most of the services mentioned above, given the appropriate hardware and software.

Shortchanging Students: Boys Need Male Teachers, Girls Need Female Teachers

Boys learn better from male teachers, and girls learn better from female teachers. That should not be surprising, given that statistically males and females use different thinking strategies to perform the same mental tasks. A male teacher can teach boys male thinking strategies better, and a female teacher can better teach girls female strategies. Eide Neurolearning blog looks at the improved performance of students when schools provide teachers of their own gender.

What to do about this? There probably will be no quick fix, as gender differences among teachers are fairly steady. It might be that the gender divide among teachers might make it more difficult for students to buck gender predictions - like girls in math and science, or boys in language arts. Parents would do well to be on the alert for this - and if appropriate, search for tutors, mentors who could help.

Source.

Male teachers are becoming an endangered species. According to this CS Monitor story:

There seem to be fewer than ever these days. Just 21 percent of the nation's 3 million teachers are men, according to the National Education Association (NEA). Over the past two decades, the ratio of men to women in the classroom has steadily declined. Today it stands at a 40-year low.

"The teaching profession is definitely dominated by females," says Donald Washington, senior program analyst for the NEA.

The shortage of male teachers is most pronounced in elementary school, where men make up just 9 percent of teachers, but middle schools and high schools also suffer from a male-female imbalance.

Currently, in secondary schools, about 35 percent of teachers are men - the lowest level ever for the profession.

There are many ways that government schools fail students and their families, and the gender imbalance--whether from anti-male bias or no--adds significantly to the injury that society suffers from its schools. If you want a reason why the proportion of males in universities in North America is dropping, this gender disparity is one important one.

Kurzweil Predicts Human Immortality

At the recent SCO6 supercomputing conference, Ray Kurzweil predicted human immortality by way of nanomedicine, and more. "Nanobots" in our bloodstreams will repair cellular and tissue damage as fast as it occurs. Affordable computers will be a thousand times more powerful than a human brain . . . Kurzweil clearly believes in "singularity now!"

According to Kurzweil, here's what we can expect in the not-so-distant future:

—Doctors will be doing a backup of our memories by the late 2030s;

—By the late 2020s, doctors will be sending intelligent bots, or nanobots, into our bloodstreams to keep us healthy, and into our brains to keep us young;

—In 15 years, human longevity will be greatly extended. By the 2020s, we'll be adding a year of longevity or more for every year that passes;

—In the same timeframe, we'll routinely be in virtual reality environments. Instead of making a cell call, we could "meet" someone in a virtual world and take a walk on a virtual beach and chat. Business meetings and conference calls will be held in calming or inspiring virtual locations;

—When you're walking down the street and see someone you've met before, background information about that person will pop up on your glasses or in the periphery of your vision;

—Instead of spending hours in front of a desktop machine, computers will be more ingrained in our environment. For instance, computer monitors could be replaced by projections onto our retinas or on a virtual screen hovering in the air;

—Scientists will be able to rejuvenate all of someone's body tissues and organs by transforming their skin cells into youthful versions of other cell types;

—Need a little boost? Kurzweil says scientists will be able to regrow our own cells, tissues, and even whole organs, and then introduce them into our bodies, all without surgery. As part of what he calls the "emerging field of rejuvenation medicine," new tissue and organs will be built out of cells that have been made younger;

—Got heart trouble? No problem, says Kurzweil. "We'll be able to create new heart cells from your skin cells and introduce them into your system through the bloodstream. Over time, your heart cells get replaced with these new cells, and the result is a rejuvenated, young heart with your own DNA";

Source.

Kurzweil as author, is an example of an uber-synthesist. He sifts through mountains of information to find technology trends. He predicts the future, without bothering to have tongue in cheek.

His biological predictions may even be timid, but Kurzweil's predictions of nanotech healers and machine super-cognition may be more than a little optimistic--from his point of view.

Humans are certainly not ready for super-intelligence, and computers have no point of reference. Human intelligence is based on emotions, which are based on biological survival drives. Computers have nothing similar to build on, other than (anthropomorphizing alert!) an unconscious "need" for electricity, more memory, and faster processors. As soon as computers begin to understand the need for speed and power, we may all be in trouble. Computers are not bound by billions of years of kludgy evolution--they can evolve exponentially.

So it comes down to: how soon can engineers/scientists build emotions and drives into computers--computers with actuators and power to act in the physical world? Because that is when Kurzweilian things start happening. Only computers can program massively parallel computers. They simply need a good reason to do so.

Kurzweil uncharacteristically provides a caveat: terrorists may learn to use this advanced technology. But more realistically, modern terrorists would like nothing more than to take human societies back to the stone age, where merely talking about Kurzweil's predictions would get your head chopped off.

Cross-posted at Al Fin Longevity.

My Favourite Blog Carnivals

What is a Blog Carnival, you ask? A Blog Carnival is simply a blog posting that brings together in one place links to some of the best recent blog articles on a given topic.

My Favourite Blog Carnivals are:

Tangled Bank Excellent Science Carnival
The Synapse Neuroscience Carnival
Grand Rounds Medical Carnival

Blog Carnivals typically travel from blog to blog, which is an excellent way of getting to know new blogs. Following the carnival links themselves is a fine way to acquaint oneself with new and worthy blogs.

Carnivals come and go. The Carnival of Tomorrow is a fine blog carnival for futurist and singularitarian bloggers that is temporarily in stasis. Al Fin was fortunate to be included in a few COTs during COT's vibrant phase.

Go ahead and look at lists of carnivals here and here. You may very well find carnivals that suit your taste, and that might become your favourites. I hope so. The web has many fine features for which we should be grateful, and blogs and blog carnivals are some of the finest.

Update: Go here for the latest edition of Synapse. Thanks to Dr. Serani.

Update 2: Another good neuro-carnival is Encephalon. I am not certain how long both Synapse and Encephalon will continue to exist "in competition," but there is certainly enough new information in neuroscience and cognition to support two carnivals.

Five Minds for the Future? One Good Mind Would Do Wonders

Howard Gardner is a prolific author, Psychologist, and Harvard Professor. Gardner is perhaps best known for his tendency to multiply intelligences beyond what most experts feel is necessary. (apologies to Occam) Gardner's latest work, Five Minds for the Future, might at first seem to be following in the footsteps of his previous Multiple Intelligences work. Here is the distinction:

The five minds—disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical—differ from multiple intelligence in working in a more synergistic fashion as opposed to separate categories of intelligences.

Source.
If you look at the graphic above, you will see that Gardner is actually describing the way "one good mind" would function at its integrated best. Gardner seems to have hit on some valuable principles of mind formation here.

The mind must be DISCIPLINED in three senses. The person must be able to think in terms of the major scholarly disciplines (history, mathematics, science, and the arts); he/she must have at least one area of expertise; he/she must have those habits of continued application so that learning can continue throughout life.

Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann argues that in the 21st century, the most important mind will be the SYNTHESIZING MIND. Individuals are subjected to huge amounts of information. We must be able to decide what is important; how best to organize it for ourselves; how best to communicate it to others. Almost everything that can be automated will be.

The last frontier for the mind is that of CREATING New Ideas.... thinking outside of the box. Such thinking presupposes a certain discipline and considerable synthesizing ability but it cannot be constrained by what has been thought or done before.

The first three kinds of minds are cognitive. The last two relate to the world of other individuals, and are thus more social and affective.

The RESPECTFUL MIND goes beyond mere tolerance. Respectful persons welcome human diversity, seek to understand and work with others, and cultivate an atmosphere of openness and reciprocity.

The ETHICAL MIND builds upon respect but entails a more abstract attitude. Ethical individuals ponder their roles as workers and citizens. They carry out good work... work that is excellent, ethical and personally meaningful. They consider their roles as citizens of their community, their region, and the globe and act in constructive, non egocentric ways.

Source.

Gardner heads up Harvard's Project Zero educational research group. Certainly if the abysmal failure of government education in North America is to be salvaged, new ideas and approaches will be vital. It appears that government education has failed in developingevery single one of the five minds that Gardner highlights. Instead, schools develop the resentment mind, the entitlement mind, the addicted mind, the dependent mind, the lazy mind, indiscriminate mind, and the credulous mind. There is certainly a lot of work to be done, and one hopes that Gardner and his group will lend a hand.

Gardner's 11/10/06 (11 October) lecture on audio and transcript (scroll halfway down)

Hat tip The Mouse Trap blog.

What Do You Get When You Combine a Tumour-Eating Clostridium Bacteria with Liposome Packaged Doxorubicin and Irinotecan? More Dead Tumour Cells

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have been using Clostridium Novyi against tumours in mice for over five years now. But by combining genetically modified C. Novyi-CT with liposome confined chemotherapy agents Doxorubicin and Irinotecan, the scientists learned how to kill even more of the tumour cells.

Combining C.novyi-NT and liposomes filled with chemotherapy seems to have its synergistic effect on tumors owing to the presence of an enzyme found lurking in C. novyi-NT cultures, which Ian Cheong, Ph.D., in the Vogelstein lab dubbed liposomase. It destroys fatty membranes and may disrupt the outer layer of liposomes releasing their drug contents.

“Drugs contained in these ‘Trojan horse’ compartments are specifically released at the tumor site by the C-novyi-NT bacteria which may improve the effectiveness and safety of the therapy,” says Cheong who is the lead author of the study.

The scientists note that liposomase could be used in a variety of other targeted therapies besides the bacteria combination. Such approaches could include attaching liposomase to antibodies that have an affinity for specific tumors or adding its DNA code to gene therapy. As many drugs can be packaged within liposomes, the investigators say the approach could have general utility.

In a companion study published in the November 19 online issue of Nature Biotechnology, the Hopkins team decoded the entire C.novyi-NT genome which Zhou says “was instrumental in identifying liposomase and will help improve our bacterial-based therapies.”

Preliminary safety tests of injected C. novyi-NT alone are under way in a small number of cancer patients.

....The likely explanation for the greater cancer cell kill by the combination treatment is that the bacteria expose the tumors to six times the amount of chemotherapy than is usually the case by improving the breakdown and dispersal of the chemotherapy’s fatty package at the tumor site.

The investigators repeated experiments using two packaged chemotherapy drugs -- doxorubicin and irinotecan -- and observed similar tumor-killing effects of both when used in combination with the bacteria.

“Packaged” cancer drugs currently are available in microscopic fatty capsules called liposomes which gravitate to tumors because they are too large to fit through the skins of tightly-woven blood vessels surrounding normal tissue and small enough to get through tumor vasculature.

Source.

Using bacteria and viruses against tumours is a biological form of nanotechnology medicine. It is actually the enzymes and other nano-sized molecular machines that assist human scientists in killing the tumours. Eventually scientists will learn to make improved versions of these nano-machines. For now, it is nice to be able to use the deadly spore-forming bacteria as a force for life.

The Real Reason France Prohibits Women Cyclists from Le Tour

The French have always seen themselves as being somewhat "progressive" in comparison to most other people, particularly the British, the Germans, the Americans, . . . Feminists have long wondered why the French, as progressive as they clearly are, continue to deny women cyclists the opportunity to compete in Le Tour de France. Finally, science has learned the true reason for the prohibition.

Women who participated in prolonged, frequent bicycling had decreased genital sensation and were more likely to have a history of genital pain than women runners, researchers in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine and The Albert Einstein College of Medicine report in the current issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The researchers compared 48 women competitive cyclists to 22 women runners. They used non-invasive techniques to evaluate the possible effects of bicycling on genital sensation and sexual health. Participants in the study were women bicyclists who consistently rode an average of at least 10 miles per week, four weeks per month. Women who ran at least one mile daily or five miles weekly were chosen as a control group because they represent an active group of women who were not exposed to direct pressure in the perineal region.

....“This is the first study to evaluate the effects of prolonged or frequent bicycling on neurological and sexual function in women,” said Guess. “While seated on a bicycle, the external genital nerve and artery are directly compressed. It is possible that chronic compression of the female genital area may lead to compromised blood flow and nerve injury due to disruption of the blood-nerve barrier.”

Source.

Although the researchers deny that women cyclists suffer adverse effects to their sexual health or performance, one tends to question such glib reassurances. Particularly since male cyclists can suffer from genital numbness and erectile dysfunction.

Leave it to the French to be progressive even when it looks like they are being bigots and chauvinists.

Surprise! New Genetic Map Shows We are Not All the Same Genetically, After All

Recent research published in Nature, Nature Genetics and Genome Research shows that humans can be significantly different from each other, genetically--a fact that has been strenuously denied by social scientists for decades. The new genetic map, a Copy Number Variant (CNV) map, indicates that instead of being 99.9 per cent identical, humans can vary genetically by up to 10%.

One person's DNA code can be as much as 10 percent different from another's, researchers said on Wednesday in a finding that questions the idea that everyone on Earth is 99.9 percent identical genetically.

They said their new version of the human genetic map, or "book of life," fills in many missing pages and chapters to explain how genes are involved in common diseases.

"This important work will help identify genetic causes of many diseases," Dr. Mark Walport, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust, said in a statement.

Instead of showing single variations in human DNA that make people unique, the map looks at differences in duplications and deletions of large DNA segments known as copy number variants or CNVs, which can help explain why some people are susceptible to illnesses such as AIDS and others are not.

"We're a patchwork of DNA sequences, gains and losses," Dr. Charles Lee of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts told a news conference.

Scientists from more than a dozen centers around the world identified about 3,000 genes with variations in the number of copies of specific DNA segments. The changes can affect gene activity, including susceptibility to diseases.

The Human Genome Project mapped the billions of letters that make up the human genetic code. Scientists later refined the map by looking for single variations called SNPs or single nucleotide polymorphisms.

The CNV map gives researchers a different way to look for genes linked to diseases by identifying gains, losses and alterations in the genome.

"We estimate this to be at least 12 percent of the genome, similar in extent to SNPs. This has never been shown before," said Dr. Matthew Hurles of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Source.

CNV mapping is a different way of looking at the human genome which can more powerfully elicit genetic differences between humans and between humans and other animals.

This new approach casts a new light on recent research that reveals IQ differences between human groupings. IQ and other genetic differences between nation populations and groups might go a long way toward explaining different behaviours. With these new tools for studying the genome, far more genetic differences between human groups should be revealed.

Hat tips to Fatknowledge blog and Intelligence Testing blog.

This will place even more stress on western liberal values of egalitarianism, but as long as the primary focus of equality is equality of opportunity and equality before the law, the problems can be worked out. Only when society attempts to guarantee equality of outcomes does egalitarianism become completely unworkable--given the genetic differences in aptitudes and interests between groups of people--even between genders.

Journalists May be Unintelligent, But They are Certainly Biased

Journalists are a lot like actors in many ways. Generally flakey and prone to superstition and groupthink. Few journalists have the talent and courage to stand out from the crowd, and present original, fact-based stories. The more we learn about how modern journalism is done, the more typical Jayson Blair seems to be of journalists. Most simply do not get caught.

James Q. Wilson, an expert in government and public policy, takes a look at how the media has presented the Iraq military action by the US coalition.

Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed the successes. About 40 percent of the stories reported terrorist attacks; scarcely any reported the triumphs of American soldiers and marines. The few positive stories about progress in Iraq were just a small fraction of all the broadcasts.

When the Center for Media and Public Affairs made a nonpartisan evaluation of network news broadcasts, it found that during the active war against Saddam Hussein, 51 percent of the reports about the conflict were negative. Six months after the land battle ended, 77 percent were negative; in the 2004 general election, 89 percent were negative; by the spring of 2006, 94 percent were negative. This decline in media support was much faster than during Korea or Vietnam.

....Thankfully, though, the press did not cover World War II the way it has covered Vietnam and Iraq. What caused this profound change? Like many liberals and conservatives, I believe that our Vietnam experience created new media attitudes that have continued down to the present. During that war, some reporters began their coverage supportive of the struggle, but that view did not last long. Many people will recall the CBS television program, narrated by Morley Safer, about U.S. Marines using cigarette lighters to torch huts in Cam Ne in 1965. Many will remember the picture of a South Vietnamese officer shooting a captured Vietcong through the head. Hardly anyone can forget the My Lai story that ran for about a year after a journalist reported that American troops had killed many residents of that village.

....Reporters and editors today are overwhelmingly liberal politically, as studies of the attitudes of key members of the press have repeatedly shown. Should you doubt these findings, recall the statement of Daniel Okrent, then the public editor at the New York Times. Under the headline, is the new york times a liberal newspaper? Okrent’s first sentence was, “Of course it is.”

What has been at issue is whether media politics affects media writing. Certainly, that began to happen noticeably in the Vietnam years. And thereafter, the press could still support an American war waged by a Democratic president. In 1992, for example, newspapers denounced President George H. W. Bush for having ignored the creation of concentration camps in Bosnia, and they supported President Clinton when he ordered bombing raids there and in Kosovo. When one strike killed some innocent refugees, the New York Times said that it would be a “tragedy” to “slacken the bombardment.” These air attacks violated what passes for international law (under the UN Charter, people can only go to war for immediate self-defense or under UN authorization). But these supposedly “illegal” air raids did not prevent Times support. Today, by contrast, the Times criticizes our Guantánamo Bay prison camp for being in violation of “international law.”

....mainstream outlets like the New York Times have become more nakedly partisan. And in the Iraq War, they have kept up a drumbeat of negativity that has had a big effect on elite and public opinion alike. Thanks to the power of these media organs, reduced but still enormous, many Americans are coming to see the Iraq War as Vietnam redux.

....This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines, and television programs we enjoy.

Source.

Not many people are motivated to look beyond exclusively negative media coverage, to the "new media" outlets run by veterans of Iraq. Fewer still are motivated to look at the history of the various political and religious movements that come together in the current violence in today's Iraq, and neighboring countries. The multi-level truth of Iraq and today's middle east (including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran), is somewhat beyond the interest and comprehension of most people--who are otherwise occupied.

Iraq is a disaster, no question of that. The entire arab world is a disaster, if the truth be known. Oil wealth conveys a false image of progress in some arab states that fools many.

The trick is to find better ways to keep the disaster of arab countries contained to the arab countries--without paying too high a cost in western lives. Because if the arab madness escapes to the world at large, many intelligent people will look back on the current "quagmire" in Iraq with nostalgia.

Growing Cholinergic Nerve Circuits to Fight Alzheimer's

Most current medical treatments for Alzheimer's involves preserving brain cholinergic nerve function as long as possible. Nerve growth factors that improve brain cholinergic nerve growth might be very helpful for Alzheimer's Disease patients. Recent research has narrowed the search to the neurotrophins--and neurotrophin 3 in particular.

Richard Robertson, professor of anatomy and neurobiology, and other researchers from UCI's School of Medicine found that cholinergic nerve fibers grow toward sources of neurotrophin-3 during early development. In experiments with mice, without neurotrophin-3 to direct growth, the developing cholinergic nerve fibers appeared to not recognize their normal target cells in the brain. Because of this, the axon nerve fibers aided by these circuits grew irregularly and missed their specific target neural cells.

This finding, according to Robertson, has significant implications for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Cholinergic neuronal circuits play a key role in the proper information processing by the cerebral cortex and other areas of the brain. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that determines intelligence, personality, and planning and organization, and these actions are compromised by neurodegenerative diseases.

"Studies on the brains of Alzheimer's patients have shown a marked decline in these cholinergic circuits. Our work demonstrates that neurotrophin-3 is essential to maintain the connections to cerebral cortex neurons," Robertson said. "This study shows that a neurotrophin-3 therapy may be able to induce nerve fibers to regrow in the cerebral cortex, which would be beneficial to people with Alzheimer's."

In further studies on this subject, supported by a recently awarded three-year grant from the Alzheimer's Association, Robertson and his colleagues are testing the respective roles of nerve growth factor and neurotrophin-3 in a laboratory model of Alzheimer's disease. Laboratory rats with experimental damage to forebrain cholinergic circuits will be treated with either nerve growth factor or neurotrophin-3, or a combination of both, to determine their ability to produce anatomical, molecular and behavioral recovery.

Study results appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Neuroscience.

Source.

Tissue growth factors and their cell receptors are vital for ongoing tissue growth and repair, in both developing tissue and in mature tissue function and maintenance. While there is much more to Alzheimer's Disease than mere cholinergic brain function, there is little question that the preservation of cholinergic cortical circuits will help preserve much of the brain function lost in Alzheimer's Dementia.

Understanding the role of adult stem cells and brain derived tissue growth factors will change the outlook for dementia patients and patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

Arab Illiteracy and Other Omens of a Stormy Future

The causes of Arab underdevelopment identified in the report are lack of freedom, marginal participation of women in public life and educational backwardness.Arab people enjoy least freedom compared to any other region in the world — less than even the countries bordering southern Sahara. Civil rights are mostly ignored though they are incorporated in constitutions and legislations in those countries. There are several impediments for the free functioning of the agencies that are supposed to ensure these rights. Arab women get the least opportunity to participate in the economic and political activities compared to any other place in the world. The level of education among Arab women is the lowest in the world. More than 50 percent of them are illiterate. One of the most alarming facts revealed by the report is the backwardness of Arabs in the field of science. The level of education in the region is falling while the per capita spending on scientific research and development is the lowest in the world. In 1996, it was 0.4 percent of the GNP which is one-third of what Cuba spent on scientific research. In 1994, Israel allocated 6.35 percent for the GNP for research programs while in Japan it was 6.9 percent. Naturally, the educational backwardness increases the rate of illiteracy among Arabs. More than 65 million people, which accounts for 43 percent of the Arab population, are illiterate.Source.

* Islamists who do not recognize that humanistic ideas can serve as a basis for society. In their view, everything has existed in the past, and is present in the holy text [the Koran]. The present and future are not in our hands, but in the hands of a force that propels us like puppets. According to these Islamists, the proper way to live is to return to the times of our forefathers, in the seventh century, and to adopt the principle of the Shura [the consultative council] of early Islam.

When it is argued that the Shura never convened in the early Islamic era, that its representatives were appointed and not elected, that the idea of a society like that of the forefathers is imaginary with no basis in historical fact... they have no answer except to curse those raising these questions and to accuse them of heresy.

Al-Houni concludes that there is no point in arguing with Islamists so long as the starting points are different. The Islamists consider the past to be the pinnacle of humanity, whereas Al-Houni's starting point is human experience and history as an unending process.Source.

Arabs seem to be caught in their own traps of illiteracy and primitive modes of thinking. There may be no escape whatsoever. Sadly, the younger generation of arabs is not only huge, but illiterate, and oddly drawn to violent and irrational strains of Islam. It does not look good for the arab world, and anyone who must deal with it.

Of all the sins Bush is guilty of, over-optimism in dealing with the arab and muslim world may be his greatest.

Is Iraq a Debacle?

de·ba·cle Pronunciation (d-bäkl, -bkl, db-kl)
n.
1. A sudden, disastrous collapse, downfall, or defeat; a rout.
2. A total, often ludicrous failure.
3. The breaking up of ice in a river.
4. A violent flood. Source

A lot of web commenters have labeled the US coalition military action in Iraq a "debacle." Is it possible the word does not mean what they think it means?

After 9/11/2001, it was obvious that Afghanistan was the rat's nest--it had to be cleaned out and disinfected. Iraq seemed like a ludicrous target to me. But it seemed that the US President Bush was in a hurry to depose Saddam. Only after Saddam's government collapsed did the US government seem to be aware that Iraq would have to be governed--which might not be easy. Well, hindsight is 20/20, of course.

After the US coalition was in Iraq, it became obvious that a precipitous exit would indeed be a debacle for the US and the west. Staying in place, amid a bloody civil war between three distinct groupings was a bad choice, but not as bad a choice as a precipitous retreat would have been.

Iraq can only be called a fiasco in relation to some other similar action. Vietnam? No, compared to Vietnam, Iraq has been a roaring success. Only those with no knowledge of Vietnam would make the comparison with a straight face. Iraq would become a Vietnam, a true debacle, were the US coalition to choose a precipitous retreat at this time. Certainly Al Qaida celebrated recent US elections as preludes to a debacle in their favour. Muslim extremists and supremacists in general celebrated those elections, in hope of a coming debacle.

In the current clash of civilisations between primitivism (Islam) and modernism (the west), perceptions are crucial. A primitive society built on blood feuds, petty raids, and wars of conquest, is not impressed by opponents that run away from a fight. Osama and his cohorts were most encouraged by the Clinton retreat from Somalia. A similar retreat from Iraq would be even greater encouragement.

George W. Bush is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Nor is he the dullest. Many of his most vocal critics appear far duller.

What does Bush mean by "staying the course?" Probably something far different than what his critics mean. Of course, almost no one in the world really knows what "the course" means to Bush and his planners, though the critics think they know and feel free to hold Bush and his "course" in contempt.

I am taking a lot more into account, looking at a deeper game, than most Bush critics. History may very well hold Bush in the contempt that many ideologues and critics hold him in already. Or not. All I know is there is a lot more at stake than whether Bush is President or Cheney is Vice-President of the US. The future of Europe and the west is at stake. Anything that is done by the west at this time to give aid and encouragement to the jihadis and islamic supremacists is a knife in the back of western civilisation.

This post is not an endorsement of the Iraqi action, nor of US President Bush. Rather it is a suggestion that the surface "truth" is not the same as the deeper truth. That the way events are portrayed in the media may not represent the actual events in their entirety. Most people have no knowledge of military strategies, much less the treacherous interactions of civilisations in conflict. There is more going on here than you know.

Interesting News Briefs

Salk Scientists Learn Limb Regeneration Secrets: Scientists at Salk have accomplished the regeneration of the wing of a chicken embryo. Since chickens are not known to regenerate limbs, this accomplishment may help lead to regeneration of human body parts and organs.

Scientists Detect Viruses with Lasers and Silver Nanotech: UGA researchers have invented a device to detect pathogenic viruses using laser light and silver nano-whiskers. The procedure is very fast and very accurate. Dr. McCoy's hand-held body scanner cannot be far off.

China Executes 80% or More of World's Executed Prisoners--For Body Parts!!: While political activists excoriate the US for executing fewer than a hundred violent prisoners a year, China executes 10,000 or more yearly--including political prisoners. Such political activists are like the drunks who look under the streetlight for their keys, even though they dropped them two blocks down the street. The light is better under the streetlight, you see.

A Boat with a Porpoise: A crazy Kiwi has invented a "dolphin boat" that dives, breaches, and swims like a playful dolphin. Be the first on your lake to drive one of these "porpoise-ful" boats around the water.

Hat tip, keelynet.com

Morality Only Applies if You Are Alive

....morality and compassion are things you can only afford when you're in a nation that's isn't fighting for survival.Source.

Morality has become fashionable in politics, with both sides of the US political debate claiming the moral high ground. Always be suspicious of politicians appealing to morality. By definition, politicians and lawyers are liars. Priests and Pastors are almost as bad. Special interest morality is unsatisfying to anyone who values truth. The media laps it up like dogs, though. So do people with little experience in life, or little personal ballast despite experience.

There are different approaches to morality, some of which are fairly objective. Special interest morality is a focused morality that ignores far more than it includes. It is very useful to lawyers, politicians, and priests--not to mention partisan media pundits. The problem is being able to detect the stunted morality before it causes you to change your behaviour. Most people are incapable of doing that.

If schools wanted to provide a service to students, they would require them to analyse a full spectrum of arguments on a particular issue, and not only identify the logical parts of the argument, but locate logical fallacies and logical shortcomings--including blatantly ignored alternative premises. The reasons schools rarely do this, is that such an exercise presents a danger to the school's (or professors') underlying argument or point of view. We cannot have that.

So I will do something similar. I present links to three point of view articles--here, here, and here. You may choose the topic that interests you most and analyse it.

Morality exists on many levels. The failure to distinguish between levels of morality, and how they might affect an argument, is a major shortcoming of modern education and public discourse.

Finally, there is Marc Hauser's book, Moral Minds. I have skimmed the book and read several reviews. I have read other books by Hauser. I consider the new book an essential early step in looking at the biology of morality. I plan to read the book in detail fairly soon, as it may fit in the reading rotation.

Philosophy once encompassed ethics. Now biology is elbowing its way in, quite rudely. There is something offensive about biological imperatives that force their way into polite conversation, over cocktails. Nevertheless, a growing number of dissenters from politically correct self-censorship are beginning to speak more loudly--and publishers are finding it harder not to publish them. This is a trend.

The popular media has temporarily hit on a "formula of morality" that seems to sway the majority of voters in some parts of the developed world. What the popular media may not realise is that morality is a fickle servant, subject to significant recoil.

For interested observers, I strongly recommend reading Hauser, Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins, and other students of human behaviour with Darwinian perspectives. Then look at what societies' liars--politicians, lawyers, media pundits, clerics, PC professors--are doing to morality arguments. Fascinating.

Just Stick to the Formula, Asshole!

In fiction, people often claim there are only so many plots available--here is a look at anything from one to thirty-six plots that may be available to you as a budding writer. Here is the formula for the one plot approach: Exposition - Rising Action - Climax - Falling Action - Denouement.

Finding different formulas is pretty easy on the internet. There you can find formulas for fiction (here and here), formula for humor, romance fiction, the perfect Hollywood script, formula for a good life and even a perfect butt!

The sad thing is not that executives in the music, TV, and movie industries have bought into the formula racket. The sad thing is that the news media pundits and ordinary people are buying into it. If you want the public to see things a certain way, just spin the news to fit a certain formula, et voila! People get the picture you want them to get.

I remember an episode of the TV series "Northern Exposure," where the Inuit shaman went from one Anglo Alaskan to another, trying to get them to tell him a mythic story from Anglo culture. Inuits and other native peoples all have traditional mythic stories that once shaped their lives and paradigms of the world. The shaman was disappointed that none of the Anglos seemed to have a story to tell him.

Of course, anybody but a TV script writer would know that the Anglo mythic stories of modern times are the movies. Best-selling novels of course, but who reads these days? If the book is not made into a movie, most people won't have heard of it. Movies are our stories--our paradigms--and movies are made strictly according to formula.

What I'm saying is, you are living a formula, whether you know it or not. And your strings are showing. Not just anybody can pull them, mind you, but there are a lot of people out there who can.

Have you not found yourself--do you not know "who you are?" How sad for you--you haven't found your formula. Stick in there, and if you are lucky, that formula will come along.

What would it take for a society to develop citizens who were independent-minded, and original? High intelligence? Sorry, that won't quite cut it. High intelligence plus self-discipline? Much better, but not quite there yet. High intelligence, self-discipline, and the wisdom of experience and perspective? Okay, I'll buy that.

How can a society escape its own formulaic traps and prisons? First it has to want to. I see no evidence of that, from what I can see in the media and institutions of society. So instead of seriously considering what I am trying to say, you might just stick to the formula, asshole! Or so most people would probably tell you. Maybe they're right. I like to think not.

Politics of Genetics--Eugenics=Far Right; Dysgenics=Far Left

If you look at the essence of the political left and political right, you will inevitably look at attitudes toward "genetics as destiny." The old far right believes in maintaining "pure blood lines", and feels that breeding will show. The left traditionally believes that genetics is of minor--if any--importance in human affairs. They believe humans are humans are humans. Genetics simply does not signify.

Given current leftist ascendancy in universities and the media, it is understandable that eugenics has a bad reputation, synonymous with nazism in many minds. Dysgenics is simply ignored as unimportant.

But is dysgenics as unimportant as leftists would have you think? Psychologist Richard Lynn wrote a book discussing the implications of modern dysgenic policies in the western world. Like Charles Murray before him, Lynn addresses the documented differences in aptitude and achievement between genetically different groups of people, and takes the reader on a sober journey into the dysgenic future.



Dysgenics comes into play in the modern world mainly through immigration policies, although badly designed welfare programs, and anti-meritocratic practices in school admissions and employment also promise dysgenic results.

Briefly, European populations in Europe, North America, Oceania, and other scattered outposts are not reproducing enough to sustain their population proportions. The IQ component of a society contributed by European peoples is becoming less prominent, as populations that average higher test scores on IQ tests are being replaced by populations that average lower IQ test scores.

How will this apparent lowering of population average IQ scores translate sociologically and economically for these societies? In general, one could look at the societies in Africa and the Middle East that are supplying replacement populations for Europe, and societies in Latin America which are supplying replacement populations for North America--and one could predict the futures of these formerly European dominant societies by the past of their replacement population societies. In general, one could conceivably do that.

Societies with average IQs below 90 tend to be failed societies. It is difficult to conceive of a successful modern society with such a low average IQ. Yet immigration policy by a typical leftist completely ignores the dysgenic effect of policy.

Countries have an obligation to their current citizens to only admit new immigrants who have merit--who have something to offer. Immigration policy in most western countries does not follow that one simple important guideline.




In a previous Al Fin article, I looked at this topic, and pointed to the worthy blog Audacious Epigone, as one of many blogs (including GNXP.com and iSteve.com) that attempt to monitor research relating to this topic. The ongoing insurrection in France by young muslims, and increasing threats of homegrown muslim terrorism in the UK, should serve as sufficient indicators of the now and future clash of populations for anyone sober enough to drive a car or hold a job.

How Do Memories Get From the Hippocampus to the Neo-Cortex?

Recent research in Nature Neuroscience adds intriguing new details to theories of long term memory formation and transfer from the hippocampus to the neo-cortex. Surprisingly, the transfer process appears to be controlled from the neo-cortex and involves inhibitory neuron phase-locking, or phase coupling.

To study this dialogue, Mehta recorded electrical activity in rat brains. To mimic the deepest sleep states, the rats were anesthetized then fitted with two electrodes. One electrode measured the electrical activity of thousands of cells in the neocortex. These cells were excitatory, meaning that they spark communication between nerve cells. The other electrode recorded the activity of a single inhibitory cell in the hippocampus. These inhibitory cells shut down dialogue between nerve cells.

Using this groundbreaking single-cell recording technique, honed in Sakmann’s laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, researchers made an important finding: During deepest sleep, in both the hippocampus and neocortex, the patterns of neural activity are both regular and highly related. The cells in the old and new brains fired nearly in synch, evidenced by similar peaks and troughs shown on electroencephalographs.

This is surprising; Previous studies showed that during deep sleep, when the excitatory cells in the neocortex showed rhythmic activity, excitatory neurons in the hippocampus showed erratic activity. This stumped Mehta and his colleagues: If these two parts of the brain talk during deep sleep, why didn’t they appear to be speaking the same language? They are, Mehta and his team discovered, if you listen to inhibitory, not excitatory, cells in the hippocampus. Mehta and his team also showed that the activity of the cells is related. The timing of activity, or talk, was the same in both brain regions, with a small delay in the hippocampus – as if those cells were echoing the speech in the neocortex.

This discovery of synchronized communication between the old and the new brain – a phenomenon known as “phase-locking” – has two key implications. It suggests that the neocortex, not the hippocampus, drives the discussion between these brain systems during deep sleep. It also suggests that the inhibitory neurons control the conversation.

Source.

Chris Chatham at Develintel follows research in phase coupling of "cross frequency" neuro-communication. I expect to read some interesting commentary at Chris' blog on this research as well.