loquacious

On Not Knowing

I'm not sure why I'm so interested in these stories about cosmology. I've really never had any desire to be a scientist, that's for sure. What I guess is interesting is how colossally wrong our view of the world might really be.

From the NYT's article on Dark Energy:

But is our luck about to run out? Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?

It's not just that we can't see the stuff, it's that it's actually not a part of any universe that we can conceive of. In other words, 96% of everything is currently completely unknowable to us. Why? Well, sort of like a recent Scientific American article posited, it seems that other dimensions may be where all the action is. We're just trapped in the 4% of the universe that we can understand. Like bygone days, when it was unimaginable that there were other suns, then unimaginable that there were other solar systems, then galaxies, we must now contend with the fact that perhaps our greatest failure is a failure of imagination and open-ness to the fact that everything we know may be an infinitessimal portion of what is really out there....

Self-Portrait

Well, you don't actually own your own DNA (although others can!), but you can buy it now - at least a visualization of it, thanks to a company called DNA 11. You send them the money, they send you a swab kit, you supply some salivary DNA, and, voila! art.  Or something like it, but suitable for framing. Read more in the NYT.

8 Hours of Sleep: A Myth?

Fairly interesting article about sleep in the latest SA Mind. Sleep has never been easy for me, so I'm always interested in learning more about it. As it turns out, we're the only mammal that seems to want to try and sleep for a continuous period of time. Even odder, it now seems that until recently (several hundred years ago, with artificial nighttime illumination) in fact most people did not necessarily sleep 8 straight hours at night. Instead, they'd sleep for 4, then wake up to have sex, family time, do some chores around the farm, or whatever, then back to sleep for another 4 hours before getting up. The writers actually postulate that it's only the demands of an 8am work start time that now force most people to try and do the 8-in-a-row version of sleep, since there is no longer really 11-12 hours available at night to get 8 hours of sleep.

They also mention in this article something that I've always found extremely interesting: that left to our own devices, the human internal clock runs in a 25 hour cycle. Not 24. This has been proven by locking subjects into dark rooms for weeks and weeks. Everyone operates on a 25 hour cycle, naturally - but when exposed to the earth's 24 hour cycle, we grudgingly adjust. No wonder everyone's grumpy - we innately feel that we're being cheated out of 1 hour each and every day we live!

I'm really struggling to come up with a natural-selection based reason why we'd have a 25 hour cycle. Did the earth once (recently) have a 25 hour day? Maybe we're actually from a different planet with a 25 hour day? ;)   This is one of those things that's going to bug me until they figure it out.

Book 25: The Ethical Brain

The Ethical Brain: the science of our moral dilemmas
Michael S. Gazzaniga
2005
178 pp.
Rating: 4 of 5

A pretty interesting book. Gazzaniga has a go at many of the ethical dilemmas that are being brought forth by brain science. He covers stem cell research, end of life issues (when does life actually begin or end, in strict scientific terms? his answers might surprise); brain enhancement techniques (through drugs, or through genetic manipulation); free will and responsibility (are criminals really to blame if the problem they have is a brain 'disorder'?); and what it means to be 'moral', and is there a universal moral sense shared amongst humanity?

Like Mind Wide Open, The Ethical Brain  goes into interesting but not too technical detail on the structures of the brain, and modern experiments that look at what parts of the brain are involved in doing what kind of chores. Like Mind Wide Open, this book shows that we have different parts of the brain that compete with each other, and also talks about a part of our brain that might act as a sort of organizer of the impulses of the various parts of the brain. This area is what tries to make sense of contradictory messages from different brain centers. If there is no good reason, it makes one up by trying to find any kind of potential reason, and has your vocal chords say something that can't possibly be true. Most famously, this is seen in some stroke/paralysis patients, who when asked why they can't move a paralyzed arm, frequently will say things like "that's not my arm" (even though they can see it is attached to their body), or "I just don't feel like moving it." They really believe these answers -- it's their 'meta brain's'  best guess (but  they respondent has no idea that it is a guessed response).

The book is quite rich with examples and some great moral/ethical dilemma situations, which would probably make for great party games as well.

Government Funded Research to De-Gay Sheep

Well, now I've seen three of my current areas of interest collide: queer issues, vegetarianism/animal rights, and brain science. And not in a good way.

Researchers at Oregon State University are experimenting on 'male-oriented rams' (about 5-8% of all rams apparently are uninterested in mating with female rams, though not all of them try to mate with male sheep). Essentially, they are conducting experiments to alter their male orientation to be female oriented. This is done through various heartless methods, and of course ends with the death of the rams and the dissection of their brains.

Read details in the Oregonian.

Because there is no reason on the planet to try and 'fix' a 'problem' with 5% of all male sheep, it doesn't seem like to large a stretch of the imagination that these experiments may have intended impact on humans at some point, not just sheep. In fact, the researchers have said exactly that, in a 2004 journal article (Physiol Behav 83:233-245): "This research also has broader implications for understanding the development and control of sexual motivation and mates selection across mammalian species, including humans..."  (cited in a PETA letter picking apart the Universities' lame excuses for doing these experiments)

As a gay person, I'm offended by this research. I can't say why it'd be worth anyone's time to try and change the way that only 5% of all rams are? Can you?  I don't want to think that these researchers have an alternate agenda against gay humans, but it's hard not to suspect that that is someone's goal here. Gay people have been belittled, degraded, and treated inhumanely, including attempts to exterminate us, in the past -- so please forgive me if I'm seeming sensitive about experiments that are supposed to make any creature 'un-gay'.

I've been having this nagging little thought in the back of my brain, as I read more about neuroscience, genetics, and brain research: will it really be a good thing if a genetic or biological basis (or even tendency) for homosexuality is found? One the one hand, it completely vindicates what most gays and lesbians feel: that they were born this way -- and punishing us for an fact of birth is wrong (and immoral). However, people being what they are, and science being what it is, we can all be sure that if there is a 'test' for homosexuality that can be given in utero, some (maybe most all at this point in time) parents will get that test, and most (maybe all) I'd guess will stop that pregnancy. [out, I'm sure, of what they feel is a good motivation, to 'save' their prospective child from what they misunderstand to be a lifetime of strife]

And so, voila!  No gays and lesbians. Extermination through birth selection. Hello, eugenics, been a while since we saw you last.

A long ways off? Wrong. Genetic screening for fetuses is already here. Sex can be screened for, and in effect, selected for legally. Screening for genetic diseases will be next. If the 'gay' markers are known, how would anyone stop anyone from exercising their own right over their own bodies?  [Science and technology is already paving the way to the potential elimination of one group of people -- the deaf culture - see Sound and Fury.]

There are going to be tough times ahead, with some hard choices to make: are we against all genetic screening? are we against a woman's right to control her own body? should we begin a campaign to make sure the genetic/biological basis of homosexuality is never found? Will it all come down in 5 years or 20? No way of knowing. Where will gays and lesbians be by that time? Accepted by society? Enough not to be screened out at birth?  Will we shrink to .5% of the population?

For me, it creates even more urgency about the public education that needs to be done about gays and lesbians, because if by the time this all comes to pass, we're still viewed as having a problem that needs to be fixed, we're going to get fixed, and good.

Sign the PETA online campaign.

More information on the bad science behind this work, and the connection to intersex issues.

Book 22: Seeing Red

Seeing Red: a study in consciousness
Nicholas Humphrey
2006
160 pp.
Rating: 1 of 5

  An unfortunately complex and annoying book, trying to get at the difference between seeing, perceiving and experiencing. It has the noble goal of saying something philosophical about the nature of consciousness. Maybe I've been out of grad school too long at this point, but this 160 page book read like 320 pages because you have to read every page twice.

In this day and age, that just shouldn't be necessary. Skip it.

Book 21: A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
2003
478 pp.
Rating: 5 of 5

I think that Bryson has nailed it on the head here. The natural world around us is basically unknown to us. Those who understand its deep mysteries spend years becoming experts and don't know how to explain it all to anyone. Moreover, I'm not sure that we'd really get it. The universe is a bizarre place that life here on earth hasn't really prepared us to understand -- which is kind of logical, when you think about it. We don't really need to understand the macro world of the universe or the micro world of physics (and biology) to really get by, so why would most of us ever need to really try?

I guess you might reasonably ask at this point, "why read a book about things we can't really understand (or apply to our lives)?"  I don't have good answer to that, other than "why not try?"

Actually, I do think it's incumbent on us to try and understand the world we live in. Understanding the physical world/universe might just help us be better human beings. Plus I think that one of the big problems of the world is a general lack of inquisitiveness... so let's go!

I'm not even going to go much into the content of the book here - let's just say it includes the creation of the universe, how we figured out what our planet is made of, how old the earth is, animal and plant biology, and much much more. The book is a history of scientific thought (mistaken thought, more often than not!), and shows us how little we understand about the world we live in, and how little time we've understood what we now know. [which, given the historical evidence, could largely turn out to be mistaken]

In the end, the book does really make you look upon life - even your own life - as an amazing and precious thing. As Bryson points out, a whole lot of things (accidents mainly) had to happen over 10 billion years or so, in order for me to sit here typing at this moment. Matter in the early universe had to get dispersed in the right way for a big clump of it to form together (the Earth); various species (the majority of known species) had to go extinct while the one branch leading to homo sapiens survived, which then somehow attained consciousness; all of my ancestors had to meet and copulate at the right moment in time; etc. etc.! That's not even counting all the stuff that makes me (cells, etc.) continue along as planned.

It really is crazily improbable that you, gentle reader, or I should exist. While I'm not quite ready to consider God as a plausible explanation for existence (somehow adding an omniscient diety into the mix just seems to add a layer of improbably complexity!),  it is quite humbling to consider the lengths to which nature had to go to create this world, and these sacks of water and protein for us to exist in.

Book 20: Mutants

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
Armand Marie Leroi
2003
448 pp.
Rating: 4 of 5

I'm not quite sure how I got sidetracked onto these science-related books, but I'm really enjoying it. They actually interact with the religion books in an interesting way, but more on that later....

Anyway, Mutants is not a sensationalist/sideshow sort of book at all. It's really about genetics. I can sense your eyes glazing over already, but wait --  Mutants is a great read. Leroi does a great job of explaining a lot of interesting information about genetics by using it to explain a lot of common human mutations. Why do conjoined twins occur? Why is our skin the color it is (or isn't, if you're albino)? Why are some people incredibly tall and others short? There are a lot of very interesting biological processes behind these variations in human anatomy, and they all get explained here. For example. while we're fetuses, apparently there is some group of cells that have the job of starting as a bump on our torsos, then they build an appropriate appendage from wherever they are. If they are in the wrong starting place, voila, you've got an arm growing out of your back!  If they give out before they get the fingers done, you might be electrodactyl. Or if they keep working too long, you end up with 6 fingers (a pretty common human mutation, you don't see it much because doctors tend to cut off extra digits).

There's a great section on intersex/hermaphrodite genetic mutations as well. Some estimates put hermaphroditism at occurring somewhere (to some degree) in one in every 2000 people. That would put the intersex population of the US at somewhere around 150,000.  Our normal "XY or XX" understanding of male or femaleness is woefully inadequate, there are several variations on those two combinations available. I haven't seen much if anything written about how this might relate (or might not) to homosexuality or transgender issues - but that would be interesting to know.

It's also worth noting that we share much genetic information with other animals on the planet. 98% of our genes are the same as a chimps. 90% of our genetic material is identical to any other mammal's - from a whale to a mouse. 60% of our genes are identical to those of insects, for gods' sake.  This is where things start to get interesting to me. One experiment showed that if you snipped the genetic codes out of a fruit fly that make a fruit fly eye, and you put them in a mouse (in place of the mouse codes for mouse eyes), what happens is not a mouse with fly eyes, but a mouse with regular old mouse eyes. That is to say, most of our genetic material is actually - literally even! - interchangeable with other animals.  This really puts humanity in it's place, I'd say. Or at least I'd hope so.

Finally, understanding how these genetic and biological processes work is always astounding. It's pretty incredible that such complex (and simultaneously fragile and robust) evolved to make you or I. I'm not doubting that evolution is what created it, it's just interesting that it's one of those things that's bigger than the human mind can really consider well - I think both because it happens on  a scale so much larger than us (in terms of time) and simultaneously so much smaller than us (the physically microscopic). In a certain way, you do have to take it on faith that the systems exist and occur as we are told they do.

Book 18: Mind Wide Open: your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life

Mind Wide Open: your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life
Steven Johnson (2004)
216 pp.
Rating: 5 of 5

Okay, every chapter of this book was great, but I’m a little pressed for time so I’m not going to blog about each one, which is too bad since each one had it’s own insight and interesting connection to one of my favorite questions: what does it mean to be human/to be conscious?

Again, I did not intentionally read this right after Rattling the Cage, but the two books go really well together. Right off the bat, Johnson starts to tackle the consciousness question. He goes into some detail to explain what it means to be conscious of self (stage 1) and conscious of others (stage 3 I think).  From why babies are so adept at recognizing the human face (we need to understand quickly that other consciousnesses exist), to our ability to easily distinguish between the facial expressions connoting 412 distinct emotional states, to the current best thinking about what ‘causes’ autism (failure to recognize other minds and their emotional states), to why people are ticklish (yes, it has to do with recognizing consciousness in others), this is a scientific whirlwind (yet very readable, thank god) of discovery about the brain.

I hate having to overly simplify every complex book I read, but here goes for this one: The idea that we are each one conscious person is apparently out of date. The various parts of our brain, while networked certainly, also remain quite autonomous (for various evolutionary reasons). This is why it’s pretty easy for humans to perceive things that aren’t actually there, or not perceive things that are there.  He goes over many common examples of how to quickly and easily show parts of the brain conflicting with each other (example – the Stroop Test. Quick, say out loud the color of the text of the word in quote here: “blue”).  In additional, he gives some pretty interesting information on the hormonal chemistry of the brain, and how biology and environment can permanently subtly alter the chemicals that might well determine important aspects of your or my personality.