Missing Shades of Grue

Jean-Paul Sartre endorses the Dodge Dart.

In my journey to the end of night, I must rely not only on dialectical paths of reason. I must have a good solid automobile, one that eschews the futile trappings of worldly ennui and asks only for basic maintenance. My Dodge Dart offers me this elemental solace, and as interior parts fall off I am struck by the realization of their pointlessness. I might not know if the window is up or down. It is of no consequence.

This is a joke, of course. Or is it? There is some debate over whether Tom or Ray at Car Talk seriously credit Sartre with this quotation. Does anyone know if Sartre owned a '61 Dodge Dart? Would it be of any consequence?
Right Reason: Philosophical Humor at its Best

From CNET this morning:

"This experimental 45-nanometer tri-gate transistor from Intel can pass more electrons from the source to the drain, thereby resulting in faster chips that leak less electricity."

Images: Chips of the future | CNET News.com

Lee Salisbury at Dissident Voice comments on the 2004 story of Melissa Ann Rowland, the Utah mother who was charged with first-degree murder when she delayed a recommended early C-section and one of her twins was subsequently stillborn. Her doctor had warned her eleven days earlier that an emergency C-section was required to save the life of the twin. An autopsy later revealed that the fetus would have survived had she acted immediately. A tragic and sad situation, but is it murder?

Jon Miller at Northwestern University measures scientific literacy. According to an article in the Toronto Star he's found that

[o]ne out of every three Americans thinks evolution is "definitely false" only about one out of seven is convinced it's true. In a ranking of 34 countries whose adults accept evolution, the United States stands 33rd. (Turkey is 34th.) Perhaps the most extraordinary claim made by Miller is that the United States is the only country in the world where a political party wants ID taught in schools.

The main point of the Star article is that intelligent design gets traction because of the exptreme scientific illiteracy in the US. Without solid scientific education, people rely on folk physic, folk biology and folk psychology--all of which can be used to reinforce the illusion of intelligent design.

TheStar.com - Intelligent design a difficult foe

A theodicy is an attempt to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a morally good, omniponent, and omniscient god. In some cases one attempts only to show that God's existence and the existence of evil are logically consistent. More powerful efforts aim at showing how one could reasonably believe in both. Leibniz, who may have introduced the term, famously attempted to show that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds--a claim that to many seems even more incredible than the claim that a benevolent god would permit some evil.

At EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse critically discusses William Dembski's recent attempt at a theodicy. Two main hurdles face anyone offering a theodicy: if evil is claimed to be the result of human sin (the Fall) and part of an effort to bring about redemption, why is there any natural evil and why is there so much evil? Though Dembski has a lot to say, his response seems to boil down to this passage (quoted in the Rosenhouse critique).

God's immediate response to the Fall is therefore not to create anew but to control the damage. In the Fall, humans rebelled against God and thereby invited evil into the world. The challenge God faces in controlling the damage resulting from this original sin is how to make humans realize the full extent of their sin so that, in the fullness of time, they can fully embrace the redemption in Christ and thus experience full release from sin. For this reason, God does not merely allow personal evils (the disordering of our souls and the sins we commit as consequence) to run their course subsequent to the Fall. In addition, God also brings about natural evils (e.g. death, predation, parasitism, disease, draught, famines, earthquakes and hurricanes), letting them run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself disorders the creation, making it defective on purpose God disorders the world not merely as a matter of justice (to bring judgment against human sin as required by God's holiness) but even more significantly as a matter of redemption (to bring humanity to its senses by making us realize the gravity of sin). (Page 39)

Like Rosenhouse, I find this completely unconvincing. God disorders the world to bring us to our senses? Notice that this says nothing about why the amount of evil is so disproportionate to--and why the kinds of existing evil are so irrelevant to--the "purpose" of evil. Rosenhouse suggests that a world with no natural evil preceding the Fall would have sent a better message: "Look at what you've lost!" God had the foresight to plan for the Fall, but with any hindsight he must now be regreting such a stupid strategy.

Pam Spaulding posted a note on Pendagon about a new website--Mapping Our Rights--that "ranks states on their level of respect for reproductive and sexual rights." The press release from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reads:

Complete with state-by-state rankings, Mapping Our Rights is an ideal tool for monitoring state policies. A resource that will help activists, journalists and researchers, it's also for people who want to know how their state -- or a state they may relocate to -- governs their bodies and relationships.

Kentucky ranks 45, Indiana 49, and Ohio 50 (tied with South Dakota for last place).

The clickable, online map uses more than 20 indicators to rank the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including:

- Public funding for family planning and abortion
- Whether health-care providers can deny medical services because of their beliefs
- Whether same-sex couples can adopt
- The use of abstinence-only curricula in schools
- Whether states have anti-discrimination clauses that explicitly protect gays

The map is hard to read and cluttered, but does make available some important information and permits some interesting comparisons.

The Task Force - Press Release

Cognews reports on a study that suggests that prosopagnosia is more widespread than previously thought.

Researchers at Harvard University and University College London have developed diagnostic tests for prosopagnosia, a socially disabling inability to recognize or distinguish faces. They've already used the new test and a related web site (www.faceblind.org) to identify hundreds of "face-blind" individuals, far more than scientists had identified previously.

The researchers, led by Ken Nakayama and Richard Russell at Harvard and Bradley Duchaine at University College London, have found evidence that prosopagnosia, once thought to be exceedingly rare, may affect up to 2 percent of the population -- suggesting that millions of people may be face-blind.

Some additional articles on prospagnosia can be found at Cognitive Daily.

Over at Gene Expression Razib argues that the ~2% is too high.

...2% is just way too high for something that seems so clearly maladaptive. This is only a few steps short of finding out that 2% of the population was incapable of language, recognizing faces is a necessary precondition for much of human sociality.

Tests for face-blindness reveal disorder is surprisingly widespread