I *highly* recommend this article on hunting by Michael Pollan, from the NYTimes magazine of March 26. It explores the practical, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of being a carnivore and killing what you eat, and advocates that at the very least, we should be more intimately involved in producing our food.

You can also look through readers' questions for the author, and his responses.

Several years ago, Pollan wrote about his experience following a steer from birth to slaughter; this article is also worth reading.

ah! look how hated I am! everyone hates atheists!

"Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry." phew.

"seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American
public"

this one kills me: "Many of the study's respondents associated atheism with an
array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant
materialism and cultural elitism."

fuck that. why don't we go down a list of the centuries most heinous criminals
and see whether or not they believe in god, or worse yet, committed their crimes
in the NAME of god. and rampant materialism? oh, yea, christians don't fall
for that. I'm sure everyone who bought a yacht in the last year swore off god
when they layed down that bucket of cash.

this makes me want to stand behind atheism even more. no more of that pansy
agnosticism! don't wimp out! civil rights for atheists!

requiring proof
examining belief

Of all places, The American Conservative has an interview with an academic (Robert Pape) who studies patterns of "suicide terrorism" as part of his focus on International Security Affairs. Pape's conclusion is that:

The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

And he goes on to lay out a variety of reasonable, data-driven arguments. Here's another exchange from the interview:

Slashdot linked yesterday to this fascinating report in the New Scientist about European programers who are creating a colony of artificially intelligent sims. The sims are fairly sophisticated, able to learn, requiring "food" and "shelter", and having the ability to communicate. The researchers hope that they will learn to cooperate, develop a languange, etc.

The idea of this really stirs my imagination. It brings up something that I've sort of felt for a while, which is that we can already create very sophisticated AI, so why not just create them with strong abilities to interact with each other and their environment, put a bunch of them together, and just let it go and see what happens. This is basically exactly what they're doing. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they will suprise us. I for one am really looking forward to seeing what they end up doing.

It also brings up the old question of the moral responsibility to artificially created life. When are these creatures that we create alive enough that we have a responsibility for their well being? The article doesn't mention it, but do they feel pain? They must if they feel desires or needs. I for one hope the researchers feel a little bit of hesitation if and when they go to turn the simulation off.

Yesterday's nytimes ran a provocative article about the brain, perception, and social conformity. It raises questions about group pressure, individual choice and conscience, and the processes by which a "reality" can be made or altered. I am intrigued, also, by the way they design these experiments and interpret the data--certainly open to debate. Recent advances in our ability to see the brain functioning are impressive and exciting, and the information we gather may be correlated to the experience of these functions, to the feeling of conscious thought and being--but that's the hard part.

Some fun links from yesterday's NYTimes:

• Is Time Travel Possible?
• Reality influenced by others?
• Best of web art

I learned today about this rather unusual situation where a baby was born with two heads. Oddly enough this was featured on an Oprah episode.

Apparantley this baby was the result of conjoined twins with one developing incompletely only as a head, attached at the base of each of their skulls. Amazingly it was able to survive parasitically receiving all of its blood/oxygen/nutrients from the fully formed body of its twin.

As the fully developed twin was medically compromised by the parasitical twin, the decision was made to remove the attached head in order to allow for the other to survive.

a recent article in the BMJ talks about ethics of sterilization of young adults.

Of more generalized interest, the article talks about which wishes medical professionals (and presumably other people in a position of power or control) should be more willing to heed:

We might first distinguish between those wishes that are relatively autonomous and those that are less so. And we could plausibly suggest that wishes that are well informed and directed at the long term are more autonomous than those that are badly informed and subject to the seductions of the short term view.

So joelee, his mom, and i watched Sound and Fury, a really interesting documentary about the debate over cochlear implants. We've discussed this before, but seeing the documentary was really worth it. i recommend it.

There's more info about the film on-line here, and in particular, i recommend the deaf voices section. Very challenging, provoking stuff.

Discussion also turned to Laurent, South Dakota, which was featured in a recent NYT article (i think -- don't have the link handy): it's a town designed around ASL being the primary language.