The neurospychology of irritable bowel syndrome

The Other Brain Also Deals With Many Woes - New York Times

In the 1970s and 1980s there was a real enthusiasm for "psychosomatic" causes of irritable bowel syndrome. I recall by the early 1980s, however, neuroendocrine studies of the bowel suggested that natural was highly conservative -- the same neurotransmitters and receptors were used in the gut and the brain. I think it was pretty common even then to figure one day we'd find out that some gut motility disorders reflected a neurotransmitter defect that was probably also present in the brain; later an association between bowel dysfunction and autism underscored that hypothesis (though that's been usually misinterpreted as having something to do with gluten).

Now, 20 yeas later, we have some data.

...''You can run any test you want on people with I.B.S., and their GI tracts look essentially normal,' Dr. Mawe said. The default assumption has been that the syndrome is a psychosomatic disease. [jf: that was the assumption in 1980, the journalist is being dramatic here]

But it turns out that irritable bowel syndrome, like depression, is at least in part a function of changes in the serotonin system. In this case, it is too much serotonin rather than too little.

In a healthy person, after serotonin is released into the gut and initiates an intestinal reflex, it is whisked out of the bowel by a molecule known as the serotonin transporter, or SERT, found in the cells that line the gut wall.

People with irritable bowel syndrome do not have enough SERT, so they wind up with too much serotonin floating around, causing diarrhea.

The excess serotonin then overwhelms the receptors in the gut, shutting them down and causing constipation.

When Dr. Gershon, whose work has been supported by Novartis, studied mice without SERT, he found that they developed a condition very much like I.B.S. in humans.

Several new serotonin-based drugs - intestinal antidepressants, in a way - have brought hope for those with chronic gut disorders.

But do they, as expected, have the same problem with SERT function in the brain?

Muddled thinking among the Darwinists

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution - New York Times

It's fair to label me a secular humanist, ergo a "Darwinist". As fair as any label anyway. Among my tribe pointing out muddled thinking is a duty, even when the muddler is one of us:

... Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science...

...The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.

The writer claims one can both accept the fact of evolution and maintain a 'personal faith in god', but then his next sentences rather severely circumscribe the nature of that deity. In particular it can't be a deity that has a particular 'plan for man' or who 'creates man in his own image'. So the author is suggesting that science and faith can be reconciled, but then he says the reconciliation only works with a particular sort of faith, incompatible with Christ the Divine. That seems like either muddled thinking or (worse) intellectual dishonesty.

This is too absolute for my tastes. Humans are flawed masses of compromise (favors evolution if you ask me -- surely a deity would produce a better product?). There have been great scientists who were staunch catholics, though it is true most seem to tend towards a more abstract and Spinozan view of a deity. Even so, I think I could come up with ways to reconcile a divine Christ with natural selection. Heck, it's not that hard (it helps that I'm agnostic, though the teachings of Christ are so radical as to suggest the miraculous).

On the other hand, it's dishonest to say that science doesn't suggest something about the Designer -- namely that if there is one (or many), She/they/it doesn't much resemble the Yahweh of fundamentalist judeo-islamic-christian teachings.

CT for lung cancer - remember neonatal retinoblastoma?

Warned, but Worse Off - New York Times

A very intelligent NYT OpEd about CT screening for lung CA (by Steven Woloshin, Lisa Schwartz and H. Gilbert Welch -- physician researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs and faculty members at Dartmouth Medical School.):

The less familiar, but more worrisome, harm comes from overdiagnosis and overtreatment. In the largest study to date, Japanese researchers using CT scans found almost 10 times the amount of lung cancer they had detected in a similar group of patients using X-rays. Amazingly, with CT screening, almost as many nonsmokers were found to have lung cancer as smokers.

Given that smokers are 15 times as likely to die from lung cancer, the CT scans had to be finding abnormalities that were technically cancer (based on their microscopic appearance), but that did not behave in the way most people think of cancer behaving - as a progressive disease that ultimately kills. So here's the problem. Because we can't distinguish a progressive cancer from a nonprogressive cancer on the CT scan, we tend to treat everybody who tests positive. Obviously, the patients with indolent cancers cannot benefit from treatment; they can only experience its side effects. Treatment - usually surgery, but sometimes chemotherapy or radiation therapy - is painful and risky. Some 5 percent of patients older than 65 die following partial lung removal, and nearly 14 percent die with complete removal.

Ahh, those young whippersnappers don't seem to remember one of the most disastrous errors in imaging screening -- neonatal retinoblastoma.

I'm not sure, however, that I remember the story correctly -- a quick PubMed search did not immediately validate my recollection. Either I'm mis-remembering or we're sweeping another of our mistakes under the carpet.

What I remember is that sometime when CT was new we started diagnosing a LOT of retinoblastoma. Many infant eyes were removed, with congratulations all around at disaster averted. The only question was -- why the sudden upsurge in this terrible malignancy? Ahh. That was the catch. It turned out the newfangled scans were detecting a lesion that looked like retinoblastoma, but actually spontaneously regressed (maybe we call this retinocytoma now?). In retrospect almost all of those eyes could have been retained. (I don't recall if any infants lost both eyes.)

Maybe my memory is completely faulty. I'd love to see comments if anyone else remembers this. If so, it's a story that bears repeating.

Total Information Awareness is not really dead ...

Remember Microsoft Passport and Intel/Microsoft's Palladium? When the public complained the names went away, but the work went forward.

Remember 'Total Information Awareness'? TIA was Poindexter's project to use massive databases to spot terrorists. It was a wee bit controversial (The 'Left Behind' people freak out about this 'number of the beast' stuff. The NRA doesn't like it either. Bush doesn't like them angry, so their opinions matter). It went away.

Sure.

As Schneier points out, it didn't go away at all. It's come back in other names and forms:

Crypto-Gram: August 15, 2005: Secure Flight

Last month the GAO issued a new report on Secure Flight. It's couched in friendly language, but it's not good...

... The TSA violated federal law when it secretly expanded Secure Flight's use of commercial data about passengers. It also lied to Congress and the public about it.

Much of this isn't new. Last month we learned that the TSA bought and is storing commercial data about passengers [jf: here he means traffic violations, credit ratings, etc. We know the quality of data in these commercial programs is utterly atrocious, and there's no regulation or feedback mechanism.], even though officials said they wouldn't do it and Congress told them not to...

... Commercial data had another use under CAPPS-II In that now-dead program, every passenger would be subjected to a computerized background check to determine their "risk" to airline safety. The system would assign a risk score based on commercial data: their credit rating, how recently they moved, what kind of job they had, etc. This capability was removed from Secure Flight, but now it's back. An AP story quotes Justin Oberman, the TSA official in charge of Secure Flight, as saying: "We are trying to use commercial data to verify the identities of people who fly because we are not going to rely on the watch list.... If we just rise and fall on the watch list, it's not adequate."

... My fear is that TSA has already decided that they're going to use commercial data, regardless of any test results. And once you have commercial data, why not build a dossier on every passenger and give him or her a risk score? So we're back to CAPPS-II, the very system Congress killed last summer. Actually, we're very close to TIA (Total/Terrorism Information Awareness), that vast spy-on-everyone data-mining program that Congress killed in 2003 because it was just too invasive.

Secure Flight is a mess in lots of other ways, too. A March GAO report said that Secure Flight had not met nine out of the ten conditions mandated by Congress before TSA could spend money on implementing the program. (If you haven't read this report, it's pretty scathing.) The redress problem -- helping people who cannot fly because they share a name with a terrorist -- is not getting any better. And Secure Flight is behind schedule and over budget.

It's also a rogue program that is operating in flagrant disregard for the law. It can't be killed completely; the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 mandates that TSA implement a program of passenger prescreening. And until we have Secure Flight, airlines will still be matching passenger names with terrorist watch lists under the CAPPS-I program. But it needs some serious public scrutiny.

Dumbest lead of the week: critique of hospital performance

It's the Simple Things, but Some Hospitals Don't Do Them - New York Times

This could have as readily been titled - astonishing quality of most healthy care systems in america. The data looked pretty good in most financially sound institutions; much better than 10 years ago. The complaints about difficulty delivering data seem very legitimate to me, the regulators are playing games here.

What the data does show is that financially troubled care systems fail to delivery quality care. That should come as no surprise, but I'm glad we're documenting it.

Why do we die in our sleep?

BBC NEWS | Health | Clue to why some die during sleep

At one time in Minnesota we had an unusual number of middle-aged Hmong adults dying in their sleep. I wonder if it could have been related to an odd depletion of preBotC cells:

Rats possess 600 of the specialised cells. The researchers believe humans have a few thousand, which are slowly lost over a lifetime.

Lead researcher Professor Jack Feldman said: 'We speculate that our brains can compensate for up to a 60% loss of preBötC cells, but the cumulative deficit of these brain cells eventually disrupts our breathing during sleep.

'There's no biological reason for the body to maintain these cells beyond the average lifespan, and so they do not replenish as we age.

'As we lose them, we grow more prone to central sleep apnoea.'

The UCLA team believes that central sleep apnoea may pose a particular risk to elderly people, whose heart and lungs are already weaker due to age.

They also suspect the condition strikes people suffering the late stages of neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's disease.

In most populations this is not necessarily a significant health problem. Most of us would not resent dying in our sleep in the late stages of disabling and untreatable disease. As a sign of how the brain ages it is scientifically very interesting.

Gates funds the Discovery Institute

Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive - New York Times

Gates is no scientist:

... financed by missionary and mainstream groups - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides $1 million a year, including $50,000 of Mr. Chapman's $141,000 annual salary ...

This adds another dimension to the controversy about Gates closeness to an evangelical minister who claimed credit for ending same-sex partner benefits at Microsoft. These benefits were later reinstated.

It also adds another dimension to Gates support for Bush's reelection. I'd thought that was payback for Bush ending the anti-trust action against Microsoft, but this sugests another explanation. Gates may share Bush's evangelical and messianic mission.

Annotations of the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document"

The Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document"

This is the document that outlines the true mission of the Wedge Document. Note that they aren't confused for a moment about the identify of the "intelligeng designer".

First a preface by Lenny Frank:

NOTE FROM LENNY FLANK: The Wedge Document is an internal memorandum from the Discovery Institute (the leading proponent of Intelligent Designer "Theory") that was leaked to the Internet in 1999. The Discovery Institute later admitted to its authenticity. Since then, Discovery Institute hasn't talked very much about the document, or the strategy it outlines. The reason is crushingly obvious, since the Wedge Document makes it readily apparent that the Discovery Institute is flat-out lying to us when it claims that its Intelligent Designer campaign is concerned only with science and does not have any religious aims, purpose or effect.

Next, excerpts with my annotations:

CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE & CULTURE

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God [jf: this is the critical issue for creationists. How would random evolution produce something "resembling" a sort-of-human-looking deity?] is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences. [jf: so Darwin is a threat to democracy and free enterprise. Also progress?]

Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud [jf: so note Marx is next to Darwin. As compared to, say, Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. These people dislike psychiatry almost as much as scientologists] portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art

The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics, political science, psychology and sociology. [jf: the dreaded relativism, that says that Americans are not necessarily the sole owners of virtue]

Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal justice [jf: Willie Horton], product liability, and welfare [jf: "welfare queens]. In the materialist scheme of things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for his or her actions. [jf: So we don't get to torture or kill those who do bad things, and we don't get to watch the poor starve. These people like killing their enemies. I can see why a deeper understanding of human nature terrifies them.]

Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking they could engineer the perfect society through the application of scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth. [jf: Darwin is responsible for Stalin. Clear, isn't it?]

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism.

The Center is directed by Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer. An Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College, Dr. Meyer holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He formerly worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company.

THE WEDGE STRATEGY

Phase I.
* Scientific Research, Writing & Publicity
Phase II.
* Publicity & Opinion-making
Phase III.
* Cultural Confrontation & Renewal

THE WEDGE PROJECTS

Phase I. Scientific Research, Writing & Publication
* Individual Research Fellowship Program
* Paleontology Research program (Dr. Paul Chien et al.)
* Molecular Biology Research Program (Dr. Douglas Axe et al.)

Phase II. Publicity & Opinion-making
* Book Publicity
* Opinion-Maker Conferences
* Apologetics Seminars [jf: see this article for the religious connection]
* Teacher Training Program
* Op-ed Fellow
* PBS (or other TV) Co-production
* Publicity Materials / Publications

Phase III. Cultural Confrontation & Renewal

* Academic and Scientific Challenge Conferences
* Potential Legal Action for Teacher Training [jf: this is very interesting. I presume they mean to litigate that teachers be trained to teach Intelligent Design'
* Research Fellowship Program: shift to social sciences and humanities

FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY

The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. [jf: So it's Darwin first, then the rest of science. Bin Laden would understand these people.] This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points [Darwin is the weak point, but physicists should not rest easy]. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions [Galileo came to understand what Christian science meant.]

The Wedge strategy can be divided into three distinct but interdependent phases, which are roughly but not strictly chronological. We believe that, with adequate support, we can accomplish many of the objectives of Phases I and II in the next five years (1999-2003) [jf: they've accomplised all of them], and begin Phase III (See "Goals/ Five Year Objectives/Activities").

Phase I: Research, Writing and Publication
Phase II: Publicity and Opinion-making
Phase III: Cultural Confrontation and Renewal

Phase I is the essential component of everything that comes afterward. Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade. A lesson we have learned from the history of science is that it is unnecessary to outnumber the opposing establishment. Scientific revolutions are usually staged by an initially small and relatively young group of scientists who are not blinded by the prevailing prejudices and who are able to do creative work at the pressure points, that is, on those critical issues upon which whole systems of thought hinge. So, in Phase I we are supporting vital witting and research at the sites most likely to crack the materialist edifice.

Phase II. The pnmary purpose of Phase II is to prepare the popular reception of our ideas. The best and truest research can languish unread and unused unless it is properly publicized. For this reason we seek to cultivate and convince influential individuals in pnnt and broadcast media, as well as think tank leaders, scientists and academics, congressional staff, talk show hosts, college and seminary presidents and faculty, future talent and potential academic allies. Because of his long tenure in politics, journalism and public policy, Discovery President Bruce Chapman brings to the project rare knowledge and acquaintance of key op-ed writers, journalists, and political leaders. This combination of scientific and scholarly expertise and media and political connections makes the Wedge unique, and also prevents it from being "merely academic." Other activities include production of a PBS documentary on intelligent design and its implications [jf: Now we understand why Bush seized control of PBS and put his troglodyte in charge, these people consider PBS to be a fortress of reason], and popular op-ed publishing. Alongside a focus on influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Chnstians. We will do this primarily through apologetics seminars. We intend these to encourage and equip believers with new scientific evidence's that support the faith, as well as to "popularize" our ideas in the broader culture.

Phase III. Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings. We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula. The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready. With an added emphasis to the social sciences and humanities, we will begin to address the specific social consequences of materialism and the Darwinist theory that supports it in the sciences.

GOALS

Governing Goals

* To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
* To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

Five Year Goals

* To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
* To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
* To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals

* To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
* To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts. [First Darwin, then the rest.]
* To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life. [jf: Theocracy.]

FIVE YEAR OBJECTIVES [jf: They didn't get all of these objectives accomplished.]

1. A major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists (by 2003)
2. Thirty published books on design and its cultural implications (sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion)
3. One hundred scientific, academic and technical articles by our fellows
4. Significant coverage in national media:
* Cover story on major news magazine such as Time or Newsweek
* PBS show such as Nova treating design theory fairly
* Regular press coverage on developments in design theory
* Favorable op-ed pieces and columns on the design movement by 3rd party media

5. Spiritual & cultural renewal:

* Mainline renewal movements begin to appropriate insights from design theory, and to repudiate theologies influenced by materialism
* Major Christian denomination(s) defend(s) traditional doctrine of creation & repudiate(s) [jf: that would be the NYT article by the catholic church]
* Darwinism Seminaries increasingly recognize & repudiate naturalistic presuppositions
* Positive uptake in public opinion polls on issues such as sexuality, abortion and belief in God

6. Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory [jf: I'm not sure they've gotten all 10 yet]

7. Scientific achievements:
* An active design movement in Israel, the UK and other influential countries outside the US
* Ten CRSC Fellows teaching at major universities [jf: not sure about this]
* Two universities where design theory has become the dominant view [jf: depend how you define "unversity".
* Design becomes a key concept in the social sciences
* Legal reform movements base legislative proposals on design theory

ACTVITIES

(1) Research Fellowship Program (for writing and publishing)
(2) Front line research funding at the "pressure points" (e.g., Daul Chien's Chengjiang Cambrian Fossil Find in paleontology, and Doug Axe's research laboratory in molecular biology)
(3) Teacher training
(4) Academic Conferences
(5) Opinion maker Events & Conferences
(6) Alliance-building, recruitment of future scientists and leaders, and strategic partnerships with think tanks, social advocacy groups, educational organizations and institutions, churches, religious groups, foundations and media outlets
(7) Apologetics seminars and public speaking
(8) Op-ed and popular writing
(9) Documentaries and other media productions
(10) Academic debates
(11) Fund Raising and Development
(12) General Administrative support
...

I thought I might have been too harsh in my criticism of the Discovery Institute. Not so, I was too restrained.

The Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document" -- a wolf in sheep's clothing

Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive - New York Times

The Discovery Institute likes to present itself as a voice of skeptical reason. A New York Times article exposes the snout of the wolf:

These successes follow a path laid in a 1999 Discovery manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which sought 'nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies' in favor of a 'broadly theistic understanding of nature.'

Materialism is code-word for "secular humanism" or "the enlightenment".

The Discovery Institute's mission is to undo science.

As of today there are only over 700 hits in Google on the "wedge document". Good. Let's get that document up front and center.

BTW, the NYT article is a bit of a muddle. I wonder if the editor hacked it up, it seems to switch directions rather abruptly.

The invisible war -- when the peasants die, who notices?

Blood Runs Red, Not Blue - New York Times

Bob Herbert just won't let the go of the invisible war.

... College kids in the U.S. are playing video games and looking forward to frat parties while their less fortunate peers are rattling around like moving targets in Baghdad and Mosul, trying to dodge improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades.

There is something very, very wrong with this picture.

If the war in Iraq is worth fighting - if it's a noble venture, as the hawks insist it is - then it's worth fighting with the children of the privileged classes. They should be added to the combat mix. If it's not worth their blood, then we should bring the other troops home.

If Mr. Bush's war in Iraq is worth dying for, then the children of the privileged should be doing some of the dying.

Would George be vacationing if Jenna were drafted to drive a truck in Iraq?

This is a war of old Europe, where the "peasants" fight and the nobles hunt. If we'd had a national service, we would have invaded Afghanistan, but we would have thought very hard and long before invading Iraq. If we had a national service, Bush would not have been re-elected. If we had a national service, Rumsfeld would have been happy to avoid prison.

Mac serial number analyzer: see if your Mac is in a recall or exchange program

Apple has finally announced a repair program for iMac's with the notorious capacitor, power supply, heat problems. It includes machines sold as recently as May 2005.

Klantenservice: Serienummers will check your serial number for qualification to a number of these programs:

[Harald van Arkel] We updated our serial number analyzer. It is now aware of the iMac G5 Exchange Program. If you enter the serial number of an iMac, it will warn you that it is part of an Exchange Program. The analyser takes the serial number of any Mac (or other piece of Apple hardware) and tells you what exact model it is and when it was produced.

Tales of the Piraha -- how flexible is man?

Just when one is inclined to think biology is everything, come stories of the Piraha:

George Monbiot � A Life With No Purpose

...Two days ago, I would have claimed that the demand for more was universal – that every society has or had its creation story and, as Joseph Campbell put it, “it will always be the one, shape-shifting yet marvellously constant story that we find”.(11) But yesterday I read a study by the anthropologist Daniel Everett of the language of the Piraha people of the Brazilian Amazon, published in the latest edition of Current Anthropology.(12) Its findings could scarcely be more disturbing, or more profound.

The Piraha, Everett reveals, possess “the most complex verbal morphology I am aware of [and] are some of the brightest, pleasantest, most fun-loving people that I know.” Yet they have no numbers of any kind, no terms for quantification (such as all, each, every, most and some), no colour terms and no perfect tense. They appear to have borrowed their pronouns from another language, having previously possessed none. They have no “individual or collective memory of more than two generations past”, no drawing or other art, no fiction and “no creation stories or myths.”

All this, Everett believes, can be explained by a single characteristic: “Piraha culture constrains communication to non-abstract subjects which fall within the immediate experience of [the speaker]”. What can be discussed, in other words, is what has been seen. When it can no longer be perceived, it ceases, in this realm at least, to exist. After struggling with one grammatical curiosity, he realised that the Piraha were “talking about liminality – situations in which an item goes in and out of the boundaries of their experience. [Their] excitement at seeing a canoe go around a river bend is hard to describe; they see this almost as travelling into another dimension.” The Piraha, still living, watch the sparrow flit in and out of the banqueting hall.(13)

Similar anthropologic stories have evaporated on closer inspection (the Inuit have only a handful of names for snow, Margaret Mead's cultures were very violent ...). It will be interesting to see if this one survives. Will our memes infect the Piraha? The course of that infection should be watched closely, even as it destroys all that they once were.

Death squads in Baghdad -- over 1100 dead in July?

Recirculated from 'The Independent'. The article is quite badly written. It sounds like these are largely revenge killings, possibly by Shia and Baathist hit squads, but the author confuses this mayhem with blast victims and occopation force victims.

Secrets of the morgue: Baghdad's body count

... July was the bloodiest month in Baghdad’s modern history - in all, 1,100 bodies were brought to the city’s mortuary; executed for the most part, eviscerated, stabbed, bludgeoned, tortured to death. The figure is secret.

We are not supposed to know that the Iraqi capital’s death toll last month was only 700 short of the total American fatalities in Iraq since April of 2003. Of the dead, 963 were men - many with their hands bound, their eyes taped and bullets in their heads - and 137 women.

... in just 36 hours - from dawn on Sunday to midday on Monday, 62 Baghdad civilians had been killed. No Western official, no Iraqi government minister, no civil servant, no press release from the authorities, no newspaper, mentioned this terrible statistic...

... Mortuary officials have been appalled at the sadism visited on the victims. "We have many who have obviously been tortured - mostly men," one said. "They have terrible burn marks on hands and feet and other parts of their bodies. Many have their hands fastened behind their backs with handcuffs and their eyes have been bound with Sellotape. Then they have been shot in the head - in the back of the head, the face, the eyes. These are executions."...

... It is clear that death squads are roaming the streets of a city which is supposed to be under the control of the US military and the American-supported, elected government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari...

I would like to see some other validation of these numbers. Baghdad is a very populous city however, and there is a lot of revenge to be sated. It's not immediately clear what to do about this; I don't think more military force would help.

Fermi Questions: quantitative games of meaning

I need to update my Fermi Paradox page with this link:

Fermi Questions / Fermi Problems: '... the estimation of rough but quantitative answers to unexpected questions about many aspects of the natural world. The method was the common and frequently amusing practice of Enrico Fermi, perhaps the most widely creative physicist of our times. Fermi delighted to think up and at once to discuss and to answer questions which drew upon deep understanding of the world, upon everyday experience, and upon the ability to make rough approximations, inspired guesses, and statistical estimates from very little data.' [Philip Morrison [1]]

Incidentally, I've corresponded with Stanlislaw (Stanlislav) Lem, a brilliant author, about the Fermi Pardox. Turns out he doesn't think much of it:

I am afraid Mr. Lem does not consider the Fermi Paradox an important (and particularly serious) issue.

Sincerely yours,

Wojciech Zemek, Mr. Lem's secretary

Hmm. That does give me pause ... I wish he'd say more, but I think that may be his last words on this particular topic ...

Junk science: $100 billion wasted on a pointless "missile defense" system

I'm sure something good came of the $100 billion we've spent on our worthless missile defense program -- there must be at least $1 billion of goodness there. Sigh. Creationism is not necessarily the worst form of junk science...

Kung Fu Monkey: I Miss Republicans.

TEST OF U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD FAILS

An attempt to launch an interceptor missile as part of the U.S. missile defence shield failed early Wednesday in the first test of the system in nearly two years ...

...This test, by the way, was cancelled a few days ago [previously] because of rain. Because. Of. Rain. And please note that the previous few successes were because the target missle had homing beacons in them, tuned to the exact frequency of the intercepting rockets. Now, you may mock this, but even now, we are negotiating with Iran and North Korea to have all their missiles emit this radio frequency. So joke's on you.

This is what we get for about $100 billion up to now, with about another $100 billion more spent in the next 5 years ... for these test results.

You understand, I'm not against defense spending. I'm not going to rant about how many school lunches this could buy. I'm ranting about junk science.

$100 billion dollars against an attack mode which is literally the most inconvenient, least likely way for bad guys to kill Yanks. Terrorists don't have missiles. Terrorists have VANS. A white-panel-truck defense shield, THAT would be worth our money. Tie the INS database into the Ryder rental computer. Now we're talking science.

Lots of smart people campaigned for that missile defense program. I'm sure they had their reasons, but I suspect the smart ones believed it would cost trillions and take fifty years to develop. Or maybe they were smart but deluded.

By the time these systems actually work:

1. the AI systems required to run them will have their own interests, and they hopefully won't involve us.
2. terrorists will be able to drop hydrogen bombs out of the back of freighters and detonate them offshore.