Skeptically Speaking on Friday will be: Brain Games with Tom Stafford, who co-wrote Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain. Friday evening. Details here!

Also, “Dr. Sarah Brosnan explains her study of game theory, and how humans compare to other primates when it comes to cooperative play.” Same show.

Don’t forget to download and listen to the Zebrafish and Dictionary Atheism conversation with PZ Myers. Here

Science Friday is going to cover a number of interesting topics this week a well. Will rising sea levels and melting sea ice change the way the Navy operates? and A retrospective analysis found that early flights had a one-in-nine chance of catastrophic failure, for instance (I had heard the failure rate estimate was pretty scary as it was.) Details.

Mental maps are interesting. I recently heard about reserch being done at the University of Minnesota in which it can be shown that rats develop a mental map of a maze, then later, when faced with moments of decision, pause in real space to run through alternative routes of the map in their heads. They have also been observed to dream the maps. We know that certain birds develop mental maps of their long distance migration routes, and these maps can be identified and differentiated in the neural tissue. Now, there is research showing that sharks have mental maps.

Some shark species make “mental maps” of their home ranges, allowing them to pin-point destinations up to 50km (30 miles) away, research suggests.

US-based scientists analysed data from tiger sharks tagged with acoustic transmitters, and found that they took directed paths from place to place.

Other species such as blacktip reef sharks did not show this behaviour.
bbc

Funny how all these animals with much less cultural learning and much less cerebral tissue (relatively speaking) have complex and detailed neural information that is entirely learned, but when humans vary in almost any way related to behavior there are so many people who insist that it must be caused by information encoded over the ages in their genes.

Use the following search box to find information from primarily “skeptical” blogs.

I’m currently in the process of adding sites, but you should find it useful as it is.

I’ve also placed the Skeptical Search box in the left sidebar for your easy access.

Ohio Senate Schedules a Fetus to Testify About Abortion Bill

In support of a bill that proposes banning abortions after the first heartbeat (something that can happen within eighteen days of conception), the anti-abortion group Faith2Action has scheduled a nine-week-old fetus to testify as a legislative witness before Ohio’s House Health Committee. …

Details

“Hey, look! I’ve located my first love! Cool, maybe we can go have dinner or something!” … precisely the words a newlywed husband was hoping to hear from his wife …

Amanda was sitting on the couch discovering Facebook, a place on the Internet she had been assiduously avoiding until only a day or two earlier. Finally, she became convinced that she could do this and keep it under control … keep her professional life (as a teacher) separate from it (if any of her students are reading this, don’t even try to friend her!). It was fun watching her learn the ins and outs, and to reconnect with many of her college and high school friends. So when she found her first love, I thought that was great, and as I headed downstairs to the blog cave, I congratulated her.

Then I sat down at my computer.
Continue reading Finding Facebook →

The Uptake-org reports that “protesters remain inside Wisconsin’s State Capitol building tonight. They may be getting what they want. In this video the crowd erupts when told of a rumor that Republican Senator Dale Schulz has decided to vote against a bill to strip public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights.”

I can’t show you the video because it starts with an ad, ends with an ad, is plastered over with ads, and you can’t see or hear anything on it. I can’t link to the uptake because their web site is currently so badly behaved it may crash your browser and I don’t want to do that to you. But if you open a browser you don’t mind crashing and type in “theuptake dog org” you can look around for the story.

First of all, it is not “your teenager” and if that is how you view the teenager, you’ve totally lost. Second, remember the ultimate truth that you knew when you were a teenager and that “your” teenager knows now: Teenagers know things that adults don’t understand. Most adults think this is something you “grow out of” but really, it is something that is ruined by getting old. So just keep that in mind.

But that isn’t really what I wanted to blog about.

I was just sent this post on “how to speak teenage” (which should really be called teenagerese) and as an anthropologist (who studies rocks) I have decided that I can do better. So here are parts of the original posts with my corrections.

In each case, there is the phrase (the thing the teenager says) and its definition followed by the response recommended by the Yahoo site which I shall call “Yahoo-ese.” My correction are in italics.
Continue reading How to communicate with your teenager →

Have I got that right?

Continue reading You can’t explain that. Therefore there is a god. →

La falsedad de los universales humanos
Existen universales humanos. Ahora concederme media hora para explicar por qué esto es correcto y falso a al vez. Pero primero, algo sobre el trasfondo y la definición.

Definido del modo más simple, un universal humano es un rasgo, una conducta o una característica cultural que encontramos en todas las sociedades humanas. Los hombres son de media más grandes que las mujeres. Todos los humanos ven exactamente el mismo rango de colores porque nuestros ojos son iguales. El rango de emociones experimentado por las personas es el mismo, y aparece en las expresiones faciales y otros efectos externos, del mismo modo, en todos los humanos.

… click here!

First we had this: Deputy AG suggests shooting Wisconsin Demonstrators to Death

Now, this: Indiana attorney general fires deputy over ‘live ammunition’ tweets aimed at Wisconsin protestors (sic)

Ahh… if only it was always this easy.

House Bill 302 was tabled by the Education Committee of the New Mexico House of Representatives on a 5-4 vote on February 18, 2011, suggesting that it is unlikely to come to a floor vote before the legislature adjourns on March 19, 2011. A version of the currently popular “academic freedom” antievolution strategy, HB 302, if enacted, would require teachers to be allowed to inform students “about relevant scientific information regarding either the scientific strengths or scientific weaknesses” pertaining to “controversial” scientific topics and would protect teachers from “reassignment, termination, discipline or other discrimination for doing so.”

Details here

A deputy attorney General of Indiana, responded to a tweet indicating that Wisconsin demonstrators might be swept out of the capitol building by police with this: “Use live ammunition.” Adam Weinstein, the original tweeter of the news from the Capitol building, who happens to be a journalist, writes:

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs” who were “physically threatening legally elected officials.” In response to such behavior, he said, “You’re damned right I advocate deadly force.” He later called me a “typical leftist,” adding, “liberals hate police.”

Later, Weinstein determined that the violent misanthropic tweeter was none other than Jeff Cox, Deputy Attorney General at Office of the Indiana Attorney General, and former comedy writer and editor with Sun Features.

Not funny, Jeff.

Look up “telling a lie” in the dictionary and you’ll see this video clip next to the definition as an excellent example:

Continue reading Rumsfeld: What did he know and when did he forget he knew it? →

Sarah likes herself, which is good to know. But she is violating a social media networking rule called “sock puppetry.”

Check it out.