Tiny tiny chickens:

Stockholm and beautiful spring weather:

Mountains of beekeeping supplies needing attention:

Planting of interesting varieties of elderberry and discovering beautiful critters:

The first true democratic assembly of the Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation:

Flowers and bees:

Please don’t give up on me. Next week I’m going to the World Humanist Congress in Washington D.C. That should yield some interesting blog topics and release me from my writer’s block!

bees, beekeeping, chickens, humanism, stockholm

All in all it was a fun, friendly discussion. She wasn’t a creationist and I think ethically she and I would agree on most things - although she’s against euthanasia and thinks that diagnosing handicaps in the womb and preventing these fetuses from growing is a slippery slope. We shouldn’t give the scientists free reins, she opined, forgetting that it’s not the knowledge that’s dangerous, but the application. She also made a few other slightly baffling comments; for instance she was under the impression that scientists are pursuing a final answer and would be happy the day we know everything there is to know. During my turn to speak in the discussion afterwards I pointed out that the very jobs of scientists depend on there being more questions to ask.

I also asked her a question that seemed to piss her off, as she didn’t answer and instead made herself seem like an idiot. She had been lamenting the misuse of christianity during the crusades and in catholic countries outlawing homosexuality and the like. I asked her if it isn’t a little problematic to believe that her version of christianity is the right one, when these other christians believe just as fervently as she does that they’re doing the right thing. Huffily, she said that by that logic, all atheists like Stalin.

Yeah, I have no idea how she made that connection. The old “atheism led to the Holocaust/gulags/whatever” fallacy has been debunked ad nauseam, but in this case it’s not even applicable. I wasn’t saying that her personal faith was responsible for crimes against humanity, or that she’s in any way connected to these, I was asking how she knows that she really happens to believe in the right version of christianity, when there’s so many of them. Perhaps I phrased the question poorly, though. I am, after all, only human. Unfortunately she rushed off afterwards, panting “I have to get home to my handicapped child!” (she referred to her daughter often, and it irked me. Clearly she thinks she’s special because her daughter has a mental handicap. I have nothing but contempt for people who use their handicapped children as arguments in a debate, it’s so obviously fishing for sympathy), so there wasn’t time to resolve the matter.

Other than this, nothing out of the ordinary was said. Ortmark failed to answer a question from a christian about objective morality, probably because he as a Humanist doesn’t believe in any such thing and hence didn’t even understand the question. Sandlund repeated the old fallacy that Swedish ethics = Christian ethics, and failed to answer all the questions that normally lead people to reject god, such as the problem of theodicy, and complacently stated that she’s happy to hand over those problems to God, and that in fact, she feels it strengthens her faith that she doesn’t know everything. A lovely bit of rationalising - “This is a problem that might dent my faith. Therefore, I must believe it strengthens my faith.”

In short, the message to take home was that even nice, intelligent christians are still, well, christians. They still have an imaginary friend and they still believe in miracles, contrary to all evidence.

christianity, humanism, åke ortmark

People are accusing the story of being a sloppy bit of - well, either science, or science journalism, or both. They seem entirely incapable of separating the original study from the dumbed-down media version. Someone said that the stupid scientists should’ve moved away from their ivory towers universities and instead gone to the countryside to do the study, as apparently in the countryside there’s no pollution at all. Someone else snorted derisively about the scientists magical ability to sort out pollution from car exhausts from all the other kinds of pollution (planes, factories, what have you) - as if it cannot possibly have crossed the minds of the scientists to find out exactly what these different pollutants actually are and how much they contribute to average pollution.

In short, many commenters display an absolutely baffling lack of respect for these working scientists, seemingly assuming they’re paid off by liberal politicians who want to make people feel guilty about driving cars. When all the scientists have really done, as far as I can tell, is figure out that scent molecules from flowers are easily degraded by pollution. They claim there is “no separation between science and politics”, which is clearly a case of projection, as they themselves are unable to look past their denialist agenda to consider the actual science behind the story.

Pollution in various forms is affecting the world around us. One study isn’t going to tell us exactly to what extent. But to discount the effect of pollutants on flower scents entirely just because you can smell the roses (the people who said this must have missed that the flowers haven’t stopped producing scents, the scent just doesn’t reach as far as it used to - you’ll still be able to feel it if you’re standing in the damn rose garden!) … I don’t know whether to blame this on scientific illiteracy or just plain stupidity.

flowers, bees, science journalism, pollution, global warming

Of course, humans are obviously much more complex than fish

We are? Which part of us, apart from the brain? I’m honestly confused. There’s no qualifying statement, no explanation as to how they measure complexity. Not only is “humans are more complex than fish” a rather drastic statement to make, but the way they do it - as if it’s a widely known and accepted fact - takes me aback.

But perhaps I’m just a dullard who missed some essential point during my education. If some enlightened reader would like to explain to me how we’re more complex than fish and how this is obvious, I would be much obliged.

biology, fish, humans, complexity

The part that actually looks like a star was only a couple of millimeters across but had a fully functioning ambulacral system, complete with tiny flailing suckers that it used to crawl across the bottom of my petri dish.

sea star

The big shocker: Comb jellyfish — common and extremely fragile jellies with well-developed tissues — appear to have diverged from other animals even before the lowly sponge, which has no tissue to speak of. This finding calls into question the very root of the animal tree of life, which traditionally placed sponges at the base.

To clarify, comb jellies (Ctenophora) are not grouped with the other jellies, corals, anemones, hydras etc. (Cnidaria), and at least on the course I very recently took on systematic zoology, we were taught that Cnidaria is most likely the sister group of Bilateria (the rest of the animals), Ctenophora is the next group down, and then Porifera (sponges) sits at the very base of the animal tree. The question was whether either Ctenophora or Cnidaria were more closely related to Bilateria, or if they were a monophyletic group that itself was the sister group of Bilateria - but Porifera’s place at the base of the tree was never in question.

Although I have the original Letter to Nature I haven’t had the energy to actually read it yet, although I did look at the pretty pictures. The figures suggest that Cnidaria and Porifera compose a taxon that is the sister group of the rest of the animals, and Ctenophora is now the basal group.

I must say I instinctively feel very skeptical of this, but since I haven’t reviewed the evidence I’ll obviously reserve judgement. Sponges have no real tissues and can only barely be considered animals. Also they share a very interesting characteristic with some colonial organisms that might very well be the sister group of animals, the Choanoflagellates. Pharyngula recently blogged about this.

I’m hoping more accomplished scientist bloggers will pick up on this story as I’m interested what they have to say - if anyone sees a post about it, please don’t hesitate to point me in the right direction!

On a sidenote, ScienceDaily has illustrated their article with a picture of Cnidarians, apparently thinking that “comb jelly” means “any ol’ jellyfish”. [They’ve now changed the illustration - I suspect I wasn’t the only one who mailed them about it.] Comb jellies don’t swim by pumping clumsily like jellyfish - they’re the ones with the combs of beating cilia that refract light like rainbows.

biology, evolution, systematics, tree of life, animals, jellyfish, sponges

The debate takes place in Livets Ord’s home town, Uppsala, in fact in their own buildings, and there’s likely to be a lot of cult members there. Me and a few other Humanists will attend but we’re probably most definitely going to be a minority. Those of you who know Swedish can follow the debate live from Livets Ord’s webpage. It will also be aired on SVT2 on friday at 9:30 in the morning.

livets ord, ulf ekman, christer sturmark, humanism, christianity

HankFox.com: The Good Stuff - “I don’t know a single atheist, I’m not sure I’ve even MET one, who hated humanity, or wanted anything bad to happen to anybody.”
Also at HankFox.com: The Brassican Heresy and Atheist Questions.

The View from Here: Benny Hinn - What a Friend He Has in Jesus - “Despite the overwhelming evidence that Hinn is the lowest form of con man, exploiting the emotional and spiritual needs of the desperate, viewers, many of whom can ill afford it, will no doubt continue to donate millions of dollars annually in the hope of realizing some small improvement in their lives.”

The Barefoot Bum: Fine Tuning - “In short, the Fine Tuning argument is speculative, probabilistically meaningless, and, even if true, doesn’t establish anything interesting. I think it’s safe to say that, after Pascal’s Wager, it’s the second worst apologetic ever.”

Epsilon Clue: Where Are all the Reflective Christians? - “These people do believe in a magic man in the sky who helps them find their car keys /…/ So why aren’t the intelligent, reflective Christians telling them they’re full of shit?”

defryer.com: The Multiple Stages of Faith - “‘Faithlessness’ as a definition of the absence faith is really only used in a religious context since no one really knows or cares about our extent of faith in any other context. No one is ostracized (except possibly on a local level) for their lack of faith in government or purity of food or future direction of the stock market.”

Greta Christina: On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing - “If there is no God and no soul, and everything we are is comprised of physical things and the relationships between physical things… then when you change those physical things, the self changes as well. Our selves are not in our own hands nearly as much as we like to think.”
Also from Greta Christina: The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions

A Swedish American in Sweden: Sweden Separates the Church and State - “I don’t buy creationism, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a subject that should be taught in public schools. At the same time though skeptical of the complete banning of a subject or idea.”

Rational Apologetics: God is Evil - “God doesn’t care if we’re good or not — he only cares if we stroke his ego.”
Also at Rational Apologetics: The Elijah Challenge

The Skwib: The Lost PowerPoint Slides (Wacky Ancient Greek Atheist Edition) - “soul is just an exceedingly fine and spherical kind of atom - or perhaps superstition - in any case, it’s not that different from a goat.”

Surgeonsblog: Funnyman - “The mind reels. It’s like walking into a crime scene, wading through body parts, and, because the perpetrator wrote “Hah hah” in blood on the wall, saying he must have a humorous streak.”

Wild Philosophy: My Favorite Moral Bible Passages - “To summarize, morality requires that we beat our children, control our women, or burn, stone, or sell them, execute homosexuals, cast the sick out of our society to fend for themselves, and completely and utterly destroy any society with which we are at war (except for their virgin girl children, whom we are free to rape). Truly, God is great, and will reward us with many slaves if we keep His ways!”

Free Thinking Joy: Religion is mental horror vacui - “Whereas religions must fill the mental vacuum at any price, using gods and other stuffing material, science just tries to construct useful theories that grow into the empty space, but never filling it completely.”

Alexander the Atheist: Zeus Endorsement - “Rather than engage in voter fraud to ensure a win for Zeus I have decided, instead, to officially endorse him as my candidate of choice for the Coolest Fabricated Deity in an attempt to stem the tide of this Odin fanaticism.”
Also from Alexander: End Times: 2,000 Years and Counting

Skeptic’s Play: The moutnain theologians - “Soon he realizes that the mountain goes much higher, but the path is poorly marked and obscured in fog. He points it out to the theologians, but they cannot see the markings.”

Fannie’s Room: Blasphemy! (Part I) - “I think the idea that God is some sort of male being is a quaint man-made idea.”

ShakaOfEarth: ‘Earth Worship’ on the rise among evangelical youth - “Wouldn’t a smart parent allow their child to explore all the different faiths? Oh wait, Evangelical like to brainwash their kids and hate anything that even looks like it might allow their offspring to learn about reality.”

Bay of Fundie: Fundie Atheists - “For all practical purposes, God does not exist. If there is not now nor has there ever been any evidence for a god, then in practical, real-world terms, it is identical to making the statement that a god does not exist.”

Atheist Revolution: “In God We Trust” Must Go - “How do you suppose American Christians would feel about using currency on which “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) was printed? How about “We Believe in Evolution,” “Secular Democracy,” or a similar slogan?”

Rational Responders: How to Respond to a Superlicious Christian - “As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, if you believe something without sufficient evidence, you are irrational.”

Atheist Ethicist: Hope - “Actually, I do grow warm and fuzzy in a blanket of science. Well, warm, at least.”

Homo Academicus: This Atheist - “…she is always asking me about my opinions or beliefs on all sorts of things, trying to see how far my atheism goes. I thought I’d save some time and just compile it all here.”

Long Live the Village Green: Upon the rack of this tough world… - “Before he died, I thanked my dad for being the best dad I could ever hope for. I told him how much I appreciated all the gifts he gave me: love for theatre and all the arts, for science and philosophy, for literature and history, for books and book collecting, and for Shakespeare!”

The Gaytheist Agenda: “Why do Atheists Hate America” - “…without faith and Christianity “America as we know it” would cease to exist. Of course to an extent that second part is true. Just imagine how much bigotry and oppression we could dispense with by eradicating Christianity alone.”

And finally, my own entry here at LBD: On Happiness: “The difference between atheists and religious people is that atheists are aware that our personal happiness is entirely up to ourselves and not some imaginary friend.”

carnival of the godless, atheism, religion, science

A sorus is in fact composed of many small sporangia, where the spores are formed. The sporangia, when mature, flick the spores away from the mother plant. Here’s a close-up of some sporangia, where you can see the individual spores inside them:

I took the pictures simply by holding my digital camera up to the eyepiece (or one of them) of the microscope. Modern technology, eh?

ferns, botany