jealous god

God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When god says the same we call him “loving” and build churches in his honor.

William C. Easttom II, skeptic at icon dot net

I am so stealing this! Thanks, Sven DiMilo!

P.S. See “Happy Winter Solstice!“

I’d forgotten about this until I began re-reading Great American Science Writing of 2007. Beside’s Mark Chapman’s excursion to the U.S. court case Kitzmiller v. Dover, it has an article about Bill Choisser’s discovery of face blindness. It’s a neurological condition that keeps people from recognizing faces. They will literally pass their own mothers on the street (as Bill once did) without recognizing them. It can lead to scarily funny moments, such as a fellow trying to start up a conversation with an attractive woman—who turns out to be his ex-girlfriend. People with face-blindness go to extraordinary lengths to live socially—to remember, and greet, people they know or meet.

The condition was known before, but in isolated cases of brain damage. The Internet, with its usenet groups and, later, Yahoo Groups, enabled the congenitally face-blind to find each other, realize how profoundly different they were from others, and break through some of their isolation. They provide subjects for research. The condition is now called prosopagnosia, from the Greek prosopos, face, and agnosia, not knowing. The odd thing is that they can learn to recognize houses or cars, the same way anyone else does. They try to learn faces that way But the talent of recognizing faces is so inborn and so sensitive that there’s really no way to recreate it by trying.

Bill’s book, Face Blind!, is online and free.

I wonder if people who “never forget a face” have an unusually large “Face Processing Area” in the visual cortex?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Certain so-called Christians of the “make up any old crap as long as it’s sensational” school are publishing nonsense about Halowe’en and witches cursing your candy. Well, it’s true that the gods of an old religion tend to become the devils of the next religion, as Baal became “Beelzebub” and the Virgin of Baal became “Jezebel”. But, really, that doesn’t mean that the old Celtic festival of late harvest, time to slaughter pigs, smoke bacon, and store turnips, time to pray the souls of the recent dead across to Summerland, must be a time for witches to curse Hallowe’en candy. The church re-purposed this time of the thinning of the barriers between now and the hereafter as All Soul’s Day and All Hallows’ Eve. But to pagan priests and priestesses, Christianity would have been just an upstart newcomer and largely irrelevant to their agricultural calendar cycle. On the contrary, it was Christians who borrowed the pagan calendar, from Hallowe’en to the winter solstice and the rebirth of the Sun–for Christmas–to Easter, the time of ferment and fertility–for the rising of their reincarnated avatar of the traditional hero-myth.

Quantum to Cosmos festival, sponsored by the Perimeter Institute

If you get TV Ontario you can tune in to the Quantum to Cosmos Ideas for the Future festival (Q2C) at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo… the discussions are being televised. I caught Cory Doctorow & others on the future of robotics tonight (show: The Agenda with Steve Paiken). During the show, the Agenda was taking chat comments and questions.

Sean B. Carroll (Molecular Biology & Genetics, U of Wisconsin) was on last night to discuss “Whose DNA is it?” The entire show is on the web.

Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, etc.) was on Tuesday night.

Natalie Angier (science writer) and Stewart Brand (The Long Now Foundation, The Whole Earth Catalog), among others, will be on tomorrow night.

People around the world are welcomed to follow Q2C events online at tvo.org/agenda and q2cfestival.com.As presenting media partner for Q2C, TVO will not only have extensive coverage of the festival for broadcast, but will also provide its web production capacity for live streaming of Q2C events. Some of the highlights include:

• Exclusive access to all the special lectures and panels taking place throughout the festival in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas. These discussions will be available for live streaming and on demand.
• Special web chats: from October 19 to 23, TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin will broadcast live from Perimeter Institute and feature guests attending the festival to talk about the big issues in science. Producer Mike Miner will moderate a web chat each night discussing everything from space exploration to the importance of science.
• A daily blog featuring some of the guests from The Agenda with Steve Paikin at Q2C.
• A comprehensive timeline of the major milestones in space exploration.
• Video kiosks: anyone attending Q2C can leave a comment or ask a science-related question at one of two TVO video kiosks at Perimeter Institute and at the Physica Phantastica exhibit. Comments or questions and answers will be posted at tvo.org.