Tag: linked news

In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.

In it, Dr. Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.

Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, N.Y. But today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.

So after 52 years, he has retracted it.

The retraction came about when, on a whim, Dr. Jacobson ran a search for his name on Google. At age 84 and after 20 years of retirement, I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years? he said. It was vanity. What can I tell you?

He found many entries relating to his work on compounds called polymers; on information theory, a branch of mathematics involving statistics and probability; and other subjects. But others were for creationist sites that have taken up his 1955 paper as scientific support for their views.

Darwinismrefuted.com, for example, says Dr. Jacobsons paper undermines the scenario that life could have come about by accident. Another creationist site, Evolution-facts.org, says his findings mean that within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing water, an impossible feat without a supernatural hand.

Ouch, Dr. Jacobson said. It was hideous.

That is not because he objects to religion, he said. Though he was raised in a secular household, he said, Religion is O.K. as long as you dont fly in the face of facts. After all, he said, no one can disprove the existence of God. But Dr. Jacobson said he was dismayed to think that people might use his work in what he called malignant denunciations of Darwin.

Things grew worse when he reread his paper, he said, because he discovered errors. One related to what he called a conjecture about whether amino acids, the basic building blocks of protein and a crucial component of living things, could form naturally.

Under the circumstances I mention, just a bunch of chemicals sitting together, no, he said. Because it takes energy to go from the things that make glycine to glycine, glycine being the simplest amino acid.

There were potential sources of energy, he said. So to say that nothing much would happen in its absence is totally beside the point. And that is a point I did not make, he added.

Another assertion in the paper, about what would have had to occur simultaneously for living matter to arise, is just plain wrong, he said, adding, It was a dumb mistake, but nobody ever caught me on it.

Vance Ferrell, who said he put together the material posted on Evolution-facts.org, said if the paper had been retracted he would remove the reference to it. Mr. Ferrell said he had no way of knowing what motivated Dr. Jacobson, but said that if scientists look like they are pro-creationist they can get into trouble.

There is an embarrassment, Mr. Ferrell said.

Dr. Jacobson conceded that was the case. He wrote in his retraction letter, I am deeply embarrassed to have been the originator of such misstatements.

It is not unusual for scientists to publish papers and, if they discover evidence that challenges them, to announce they were wrong. The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.

So Dr. Jacobsons retraction is in the noblest tradition of science, Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobsons letter.

His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction, and people who cling to dogma.

REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world's population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland. An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair.

Some experts say that redheads could be gone as early as 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant for generations before returning.

National Geographic says the gene at first had the beneficial effect of increasing the body's ability to make vitamin D from sunlight. However, today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.

Listening to music releases the same “feelgood” chemicals as eating and having sex, researchers have found.

The neuroscientist and former rock music producer Prof Daniel Levitin said music activates the brain area responsible for feeling pleasure, excitement and satisfaction.

Prof Levitin, an associate professor of psychology at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that understanding how different types of music affects the body can help people choose songs or bands that could help them achieve tasks or goals.

He found the brain of someone listening to music reacts in a similar way to that of a gambler when winning a bet, a skydiver about to leap out of a plane or someone who has just taken drugs.

Someone listening to songs or tunes they enjoy experiences a release of dopamine, the hormone linked to reward and happiness. This association has led Prof Levitin, who worked with Stevie Wonder and the Grateful Dead, to claim to have discovered the “sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll” centre of the brain after collating research to be published this year.

He said: “The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll scenario proves that music is at the heart of creating moods and reactions.

“Research shows that music has specific effects on the body's physiology, including heart rate, respiration, sweating, and mental activity.
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“Music is effective at moderating arousal levels, concentration, and helping to regulate mood through its action on the brain's natural chemistry.

“People who can have music follow them around during their daily lives can use these properties of music effectively, to form a soundtrack for their day and their lives.”

Music has been shown to cause activity in brain circuits associated with physical reactions, such as sweating, sexual arousal, and “shivers down the spine”.

Researchers used a variety of methods to measure the effect of music on the body, including heart rate, blood pressure, sweat response, breathing and brain wave activity.

Scanning techniques have allowed scientists to look at changes in specific parts of the brain.

Dr Levitin found instrumental music such as classical, jazz, techno or bluegrass were better for people studying text to avoid becoming distracted. Energetic tunes with a tempo above 96 beats per minute were best for those cooking, cleaning or doing household chores.

An interesting piece I found online. It's true, too.

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Never mind that today's factory-produced starlets and mini-clones just don't have the practiced chops of the supergroups of yesteryear, pop in a new CD and you might notice that the quality of the music itselfmaybe something as simple as a snare drum hitjust doesn't sound as crisp and as clear as you're used to. Why is that?

It's part of the music industry's quest to make music louder and louder, and it's been going on for decades, at least since the birth of the compact disc. The key to the problem is that, in making the soft parts of a track louder (in the process making the entire track loud), you lose detail in the song: The difference between what's supposed to be loud and what's supposed to be soft becomes less and less. The result is that, sure, the soft parts of a song are nice and loud, but big noises like drum beats become muffled and fuzzy. But consumers often subconsciously equate loudness with quality, and thus, record producers pump up the volume. Anything to make a buck.

The bigger problem is that this is all unnecessary. Stereo equipment is more powerful today than ever, and last time I checked, every piece of music hardware had a volume knob.

Don't take my word for it: Pop in the first CD you bought and play it at the same volume level as the most recent one you bought. You might be shocked by what you hear.

Anyone still wondering why the music business is suffering?

SARAH HAMPSON
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
June 7, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT

The penis rules.

Excuse me for being so bold, but I wanted to let readers know this is not a column about and for women only. Sure, many women feel that divorce is a particularly female rite of passage. You don't see men writing books about their personal journey following marital breakdown, do you?

But not discussing what men feel about marriage and divorce is like not discussing what's involved in the erection (sorry) of a stable building.

And a man's need for sex is what is often misunderstood. So, on the important subject of the horizontal relationship in marriage, here's what I've learned. The penis rules. Or should, anyway. If men don't feel respected or loved, if they don't feel like a man, if they have to walk around on eggshells when it comes to their sex drive, if their horniness is treated like an inconsiderate act of selfishness like typical male behaviour then they will reassert themselves with another woman, says a man I will call Mr. Multiply Divorced.

People who make coitus their career understand this. Ask Lou Paget, sex therapist and best-selling author of books about orgasms and helpful tips on giving blow jobs, among other bedroom matters. There's no other time in a man's life when he is more connected to his masculine self than when he is making love or having sex with the woman or partner of his choice, she explains.

And men know this. It's a huge part of the male psyche that he be acknowledged for what his efforts are, and he will go elsewhere to get it if his partner doesn't give it to him. He will get it through sports. He will get it through work by the accumulation of money. I can't tell you how many men I know who are massively successful but who have crappy marriages. Or they will get it from another woman.

It's children that change the sexual energy of a marriage. I remember an acquaintance of mine complaining about her husband's expectation of sex. She had two young sons at the time, and she was a wonderful hands-on and attentive mother. There were lunches to be made, laundry to finish, dinner to make, homework to help with, errands to run, and just before she passed out from exhaustion, a husband to do. And she did, because if nothing else, she is highly responsible. (And still married, by the way.) The whole yummy-mummy trend is really a statement of denial, if you ask me. Most young mothers will tell you that after having their bodies taken over by pregnancy, and then the demands of breastfeeding and constant monitoring of a baby, what they would really like at night is to be left alone for a bit, untouched. They've overdosed on closeness for the time being.

But husbands still want their wives to view them as the primary relationship. Another man I know okay, we can call him Mr. Former Boyfriend told me that in his marriage of 20 years and three children, his ex-wife, who gave up work to devote herself to the care of their offspring, denied him sex so often he had to beg for it. And when she relented, he felt it was out of pity or obligation.

Such a dynamic is common and emasculating, notes Esther Perel, a New York-based couples therapist and the best-selling author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic, published last year.

It's not healthy for men to feel pathetic about their urges and shame about their desire. It's not just their masculinity they are expressing through sex but also their lesser masculine qualities, their tenderness, their vulnerability, their desire to give pleasure and receive it, she explains.

This expression through the body is often the primary language that men use to say these things. It's easy for the women to just brush it off, and say, All he wants is sex.' What they should be asking is, Why am I never interested? What happened to my own desires?' Ms. Perel's prescription for good marital sex is what she calls more air. Too much intimacy, having to know everything your partner did and share every activity he or she enjoys, kills lust, she believes. The paradox is that the pursuit of passion involves excitement, mystery, unpredictability. But the pursuit of intimacy involves wanting to be known completely and expecting predictability. And yet we want both.

The trick, she says, is allowing a modicum of freedom in a relationship. Don't ask the other person to give up freedom so you can feel more secure.

Many men, not being the greatest communicators, resort to anger when they're not getting the intimacy they crave. They will say lack of sex makes them feel they were sold a bill of goods, as one guy explains, since women are much more sexually aggressive and suggestive during the courting stage, and inexperienced men can be fooled by that.

I've come to believe firmly that people need to be honest with themselves [and their partners] about their libidos, he continues. If they have big ones, they should seek out partners with a matching appetite. (Yes, that's Mr. Multiply Divorced talking.) He has a point, but married life can be stressful, what with mortgages, kids and work-life juggling; and stress, for women, is a sex-killer. For men, on the other hand, a romp in bed is stress therapy. For us, it can be like golf or watching television, admits a source from the world of men.

Of course, for women, talking is like golf. (Confused yet?) Women want to emotionally share and talk about their day, the man continues.

Still married to his wife of 21 years, with whom he has two children, he should be called Mr. Highly Evolved. But he didn't get there on his own. All that wisdom about how women and men think differently comes from years of couples therapy.

For men, it's like Chinese water torture to be talking about something endlessly, he says. Guys think, Just fix it.' So when the wife says she wants to be asked how she is, the man goes, What? We've got to have an hour and a half discussion about emotional connection before you feel like having sex? What happened to sex on the kitchen floor?' Mr. Highly Evolved was preparing for divorce, he confesses. Part of the equation for me to stay in my marriage was that I care about my boys, and ultimately, I realized that if I want to live in a relationship, whether it's with my wife or someone else, I have to do this work. And as long as my wife is interested in doing it, too, which she was, then it's worth it.

On a final note, let's return to Ms. Paget, who, 51 and once married and divorced, now enjoys a live-out boyfriend and a live-in 20-pound cat called Mr. Freddie. I could hear him meowing for her attention in the background of her Los Angeles home.

Men marry for two reasons, she states. They're proud to be with that woman socially. Look, she adds in best-girlfriend whisper, we both know women who have sex with men who aren't seen with them publicly. The second reason men marry is sexual compatibility.

Which brings me to a final bit of good advice. Be a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom. And help him understand that before talking dirty, the whore sometimes needs to have a cuddly chat about her day.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070606.l-genex07/BNStory/lifeFamily/home

A sign the times they are a changin'. I wish I'd heard of this years ago..

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NEW YORK (AP) – Jim Stone, a 29-year-old from west Texas, has been traveling nonstop since March of 2004. Sometimes in a pickup truck and other times on a motorcycle, he's trekked through much of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. But he's slept in a hotel just one night over that stretch of nearly 1,000.

That's because Stone is part of a growing network of people online who've gone a step beyond hotels, hostels and even apartment swapping in their travel planning: They sleep on each others' couches.

A number of Web sites have sprung up to help pair travelers searching for a place to crash and hosts with a spare couch. Sites like hospitalityclub.org, couchsurfing.com and globalfreeloaders.com are often free, serving only as middlemen and offering tips on how to find successful matches.

The sites aren't moneymakers. They're largely the creations of 20-somethings bitten with wanderlust and the hope to help bridge together people from different cultures. They often depend on volunteer administrators to help manage the Web operations.

Among the biggest is hospitalityclub.org, a site founded in 2000 by Veit Kuehne, who was then a 22-year-old business student. Kuehne wanted to use the Internet's reach to help foster the ideas of a group called Servas, an international peace organization that encourages cultural exchanges through travel.

The site grew to 1,300 members by 2002, 100,000 members by January 2006 and 200,000 by September.

From his home in Dusseldorf, Germany, Kuehne said hospitalityclub.org funds itself through online advertisements, which pitch student-exchange programs, Thailand volunteer opportunities or cheap tickets to west Africa.

“We're not really soliciting donations yet,” he said.

Kuehne said he doesn't get a salary from the site and has been depending on volunteers to help develop and operate it. Living off savings recently, he found a cheap, $200 plane ticket to India, where he plans to spend the winter working on the site and benefiting from lower living costs.

The west Texan Stone uses another site, couchsurfing.com, where membership has catapulted to above 128,700 since launching in January 2004.

Its members, like hospitalityclub.org's, stretch across the globe: Although the United States is the country with the largest number of members, making up about 25 percent of couchsurfing.com's total base, Europe overall boasts 41 percent. The average age is 25, though 43 percent of members are between 18 and 24.

Couchsurfing.com got its indirect start years ago, when New Hampshire native Casey Fenton found a cheap airplane ticket to Iceland. In the few days he had to find a place to stay, Fenton happened upon the student directory of the University of Iceland.

Fenton sent e-mails to about 1,500 students, asking for a place to crash and within 24 hours received dozens of responses. Through staying with a local, Fenton said he was able to see their Iceland rather than merely the tourist's view.

Couchsurfing.com depends largely on member donations to pay the operating bills. When it falls short, administrators send requests to members asking for more assistance. Recently, the site raised $8,000 it needed after e-mailing 6,000 members.

Aside from asking if the services are really free, one of the top questions on most of the sites' Frequently Asked Questions is some variation of: “Is this safe?”

Eric “Rico” Lesage, a 35-year-old from Montreal remembers hearing that question from his mom when he told her about couchsurfing.

“She was not all into it,” said Lesage, who had his first couchsurfing experience in 1990 when a couple of guys he met on a California beach let him sleep on their couch. “But she's not a tut-tutter; I'm responsible.”

Sites do offer some safeguards to help members: Members can vouch for each other and leave references for someone they've stayed with or hosted, similar to eBay's rating system. But Web sites warn that they are not liable for any possible dangers that could arise between host and traveler.

“We are not responsible for the outcome of host/surfer negotiations,” couchsurfing.com's Fenton said. “We can't guarantee what will happen. We'll do as much as we can to provide data (about the person), but beyond that, that's all we can do.”

Lesage, a photographer and a volunteer administrator for couchsurfing.com, said the best way to stay safe is to read closely the information available on members' profiles. He also sets a general three-day limit for how long people can crash on his couch.

Noemie Cliche, a 21-year-old geography student from Montreal, said she has had just one problem since joining couchsurfing.com in March. “Once, I hosted a guy who was not nice and was a little weird,” she said. “I just asked him to leave, and yes, he did leave.” Otherwise, Cliche said she finds couchsurfing much more enjoyable than the hostels she used to stay at while traveling. Recently, she journeyed through California with the west Texan Stone, who has not had a permanent address since he began his walkabout in 2004.

He acknowledges he's a hard-core couchsurfer, taking on the ethos of meeting interesting people through their couches as a lifestyle. Among the more interesting couches, Stone says he slept on one aboard a 39-foot sailboat moored outside Jacksonville, Fla.

“I haven't found another lifestyle that I enjoy this much,” he said.