Serious, Uncanny, and Psychic: A post for the Oscars

Under normal circumstances it would be difficult to justify a post about the Oscars on a science & religion blog. But this year we have two movies in the best picture category that have themes that intersect with science & religion: A Serious Man and Avatar. I loved A Serious Man - unfortunately, it doesn't have much of a shot to win best picture (see earlier posts: A Serious Man and Physics and Accept the mystery - go see A Serious Man). It still has a decent chance for winning the best original screenplay - though Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds may pick up this one, but that's okay - as that was also brilliant.

To get you into the mood for tonight, here are three items for you:
a) Evolutionary origins of The Uncanny Valley:

This is a fascinating issue. Apparently, you can make a robot that looks realistic (human-like) only upto a point: 95%. If it is more realistic than that then people get creeped out - i.e. a 96% realistic makes it more like a human with something seriously wrong. This is termed as The Uncanny Valley and animators in Hollywood keep this in mind when animating films - or you get boxoffice bombs such as Final Fantasy (too realistic). Listen to the NPR story on this here (about 8 minutes long). As it turns out, monkeys fall into the Uncanny Valley as well:

To test their preference, researchers showed macaque monkeys real pictures, digital caricatures and realistic reconstructions of other monkey faces. To the latter, the macaques repeatedly averted their eyes.

“The visual behavior of the monkeys falls into the uncanny valley just the same as human visual behavior,” wrote Princeton University evolutionary biologists Shawn Steckinfinger and Asif Ghazanfar in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...

Many explanations have been suggested for the uncanny valley, which has also been blamed for the box-office failure of movies like Beowulf and Final Fantasy. Perhaps almost-real humans look a bit too much like corpses for our comfort; perhaps they’re so real that they engage our brains’ mate-recognition or disease-avoidance systems, which promptly identify poor partners or sick individuals.

The PNAS results don’t favor any one of these explanations, but do suggest that the uncanny valley has evolutionary origins deep in the primate psyche.

Read the full story here.

b) Some Serious Music:

Everything in a Coen brothers film is finely crafted and there no useless scenes. But their use of music is also extraordinary and they were at their best in A Serious Man (okay - O Brother may be even better). How did the music for the film come about - especially the brilliant use of Jefferson Airplane? Here is an interview with the film's composer, Carter Burwell:

The script had specific musical references: Jefferson Airplane, F Troop, Sidor Belarsky. Belarsky was a Jewish opera singer who also made some Yiddish records, and there's one Yiddish song that [the Coens] just loved. These songs were in the script, and that was basically what I had to go on at first. Joel and Ethan had no suggestion about what the score should be. They just said, "Well, this is what you've got. You've got Jefferson Airplane and F Troop and Sidor Belarsky."

Okay. But here is how the movie's theme of uncertainty between life and death all gets connected:

Before the Coens had even cut more than a reel, they called me to say that they'd like me to start working on a piece of music that comes out of a story told entirely in Yiddish in some unspecified old world and leads right up to the opening bar of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." The idea was that during this transition from the shtetl to the Jefferson Airplane, you're traveling through the ear canal of this boy in Hebrew school. It's a dark and mysterious tunnel, and when you finally get to the end it turns out that it's the earpiece of his portable radio through which he's listening to Jefferson Airplane.

That was the first piece of music I wrote for the film. But for me, the film is really about a person who is balanced somewhere between life and death. Throughout the whole movie, death is hovering on the periphery. The metaphor of the movie is the first lecture that the university professor, Larry Gopnik, who is our main character, gives about Schrödinger's cat, which is a thought experiment in which a cat is simultaneously dead and alive. It maintains that situation until you observe it to determine which it is.

I see Larry as being in that situation himself, so the question for me as the composer is what can I do musically to suggest that. I found it was useful to have a motif that would repeat endlessly, to suggest that no matter what goes on in the film, he's not really getting anywhere. He's blocked at every point in his personal, professional, and spiritual life. And there's something about the delicacy of the harp that I think on the one hand seems sympathetic to this character's travails, but on the other hand is a little bit funny, because in fact none of these characters reveals any delicacy whatsoever. In every way, they're indelicate. One thing I enjoy about this harp motif is that it's polyrhythmic: you can count it in three or you can count it in four. I personally enjoy that ambiguity. The piece is so repetitious, and yet you're not sure where the bar lines are, so it's kind of interesting.

Absolutely brilliant! Read the full interview here.

c) Of course, I couldn't leave you without some predictions by Maxine - the psychic, for today's Oscars (a big hat tip to Laura Sizer for this!). Actually, this covers not just the awards but also fashion. But my favorite part of the interview by Movieline:

So let’s start with the big one. You call Inglourious Basterds for Best Picture. Have you seen Inglourious Basterds?
Can we take the recording off for a minute?

Sure.
Off the record, I haven’t seen any of the movies. So I think that makes them all the more psychic. I wait for everything to come on Home Box and Showtime. I feel terrible.

I can’t put that in the interview? I kind of like that.
You know, you can use whatever you want.

I think it enhances the psychic element.
Thank you, I think so too. So I haven’t seen any of the movies, but these are my picks!

Ha! Hope you are in the mood for the Oscars now.

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Iron-age rituals in Africa

Here is an interesting discovery of pre-Islamic rituals in Ghana (from Science, Feb 26):

Last month, archaeologists working at a site in northern Ghana uncovered the most detailed evidence yet of a highly sophisticated and previously unknown Iron Age society. A team led by Benjamin Kankpeyeng of the University of Ghana in Legon excavated part of an earthen mound containing 92 whole and broken terra-cotta figurines of humans and mythical creatures. Radiocarbon dates from similar mounds in the region place the time between 600 C.E. and 1200 C.E.

The mound, which miraculously escaped decades of heavy looting in the region, may have served as an ancient shrine. Team co-director Timothy Insoll of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom says the figurines have what appear to be libation holes to hold ritual drinks for a deity. There's also a ritually arranged human skull: "The jaw was removed, the skull was turned face-down, and the teeth were snapped out and placed nearby," Insoll says.

The finds open a major window on ritual life in West Africa before the Islamic era, says Christopher DeCorse, an archaeologist at Syracuse University in New York state: "It's analogous to the discovery of Upper Paleolithic rock art in Europe."

Very cool.

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Not so fast on Turkish science

Just this past Tuesday I had posted that Turkey is second only to the US in the number of papers published in the field of biofuels research. This is quite commendable. However, it seems that the Turkish government wants to balance out this positive with a dose of some negative. Well, last week's Nature carries an editorial that talks about a new Turkish law intended to regulate Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), may end up seriously restricting the country's bioscience research (tip Batu Erman):

When politicians respond to popular distrust of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), they sometimes fail to grasp how intricately molecular technologies infiltrate different areas of science. A case in point is now playing out in Turkey, where an attempt to regulate GMOs in agriculture has morphed into a draft law that could wipe out the country's biomedical research.

Most of Turkey's scientists learnt about the situation only a few weeks ago. Some responded immediately, organizing meetings and petitions, and lobbying parliamentarians to try to stage a last-minute reprieve. But as Nature goes to press, it seems likely that the law will be voted in by parliament this week without change. Ironically, it will go through at a time when many universities in Turkey are expanding their activities in biomedical research.

How did Turkey get into this mess?

The law was first drafted after Turkey signed up to the United Nations Environmental Programme's International Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in 2000. This requires signatories to create legislation to regulate the international trade, handling and use of any GMO that might have adverse effects on biodiversity or human health.

Turkey was at the same time trying to align much of its legislation with that of the European Union, which it aspires to join. The first draft was prepared with input from Turkey's research council, TÜBİTAK, and followed European regulations that separate deliberate release of GMOs into the environment — cultivation of GM crops, for example — and the contained use of GMOs for research.

Before this draft could be made law, the government changed and the mildly Islamic AK Party took office in 2002. Responsibility for the law transferred from the environment ministry to the agriculture ministry, which did not consult with molecular biologists. Over the years, the draft law's form changed. At the same time, popular opposition to genetic engineering in general, and GM food in particular, increased.

Okay this looks like the usual governmental screw-up. However, as a Nature editorial, they should have avoided the term "mildly Islamic" before the name of the party - as that is irrelevant for the news item at hand (at least from what is written here). I know this is a touchy issue in Turkey - but unless, the new regulations have roots in religion, lets not unnecessarily muddy up the water. It seems that the new regulations are more the result of incompetence and the state taking advantage of a politically popular sentiment. Unfortunately, bioscience will suffer as a result. Here is the problem with the new law:

The version now being voted on fails to distinguish between deliberate release and contained use. It includes an outright ban on the cultivation of all GM crops, even those whose safety has been assessed and approved by expert bodies. It also bans the generation of genetically manipulated animals and microorganisms.

The law does not forbid research using GMOs or products derived from genetic engineering, but it makes such research impracticable. Every individual procedure would have to be approved by an inter-ministerial committee headed by the agriculture ministry, which is allowed 90 days to consider each application with the help of experts.

The committee would be responsible for approving applications to import tonnes of GM soya beans for food — but also for every experiment involving even the use of a standard plasmid to transfer genes into cells. Work with universally used model organisms, from mice and zebrafish to fruitflies and bacteria, would be rendered impossible. Even if scientists could afford to wait three months for approval of the simplest experiment, the committee would be overwhelmed by the number of applications. One Turkish scientist who has examined the law estimates that his lab alone would need to submit 50 or so separate applications in a year.

Oh - so many creative ways to screw up research. Read the full editorial here (you may need subscription to access the article). Does anyone know the current status of the bill?

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Avatar as a political statement

The Oscars are around the corner and I'm rooting for The Hurt Locker. However, it is hard to avoid the talk of Avatar. I don't want to sound snooty, but I really did find the movie painful to watch - the acting and the story was just awful - and its amazing special special effects were not enough to mask its glaring shortcomings. However, here is a very clever use of Na'vi for political purposes by Palestinian protesters on the West Bank:

On February 12, at the now regular demonstrations and clashes in the town of Bilin, pro-Palestinian demonstrators appeared in blue body paint as the Na’vi—the film’s indigenous people who are threatened by the human corporate mining of “unobtainium.” Among those reenacting the parts of “Na’vi” were Palestinians, Israeli activists, and Europeans. As the Bilin demonstrations have been going on for almost five years and have attracted the attention of the international media, the photos of the blue-painted demonstrators were seen around the world.

The conflict at Bilin revolves around disputes over the West Bank separation barrier—what many Israelis call the ‘security fence’ and what Palestinians refer to as the ‘racial segregation wall.’ The section of the barrier that runs through Bilin separates the villagers from their farming land. The town’s villagers and their political supporters took their case through the Israeli court system and organized demonstrations, often involving hundreds of protesters.

In 2007 the Israeli Supreme Court decided that the path of the barrier had to be changed to accommodate the villagers’ needs, though the court’s will has yet to be carried out. But the media message of the Avatar-style protest was highly successful: the Palestinians were understood to be the innocent Na’vi while the Israeli settlers were the outsiders, interlopers. As the West Bank Settlers (and the large number of Israeli supporters) understand themselves to be the true ‘indigenous population’—the descendants of the ancient Israelites to whom the Land was promised—this media critique cut to the bone.

Whatever the politics and whatever you think of the movie, this is a fantastic use of a cultural phenomenon. The article is actually quite good and places the the use of Na'vi with other cultural reference in the conflict, including that of David and Goliath. Read the full article here.

But don't let the clever use of Na'vi fool you from the inanity of the movie itself. Here is a fantastic Avatar-Pocahontas mash-up (tip Emily West):

CFV 426 - Avatar/Pocahontas Mashup FINAL VERSION from Randy Szuch on Vimeo.

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Capricology: Week 5 - Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming

Here is the continuation of the dialogue over science, technology, and the sacred in the television series Caprica:

Week 5 discussion: Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming

Tamara, the girl who is dead but doesn't know it, who exists only within the "magic circle" of a virtual game, takes center stage in this week's episode, and in our commentary.

Check out earlier episode discussions here.

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Iranian physicist denied visa to attend a physics meeting

Oh the irony. Iranian physicist, Farhad Ardalan, was recently named a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) - partly for his efforts to strengthen the bond between Iran and the United States. But then the US consular office denied him a visa - apparently for a mistaken identity. This is so insane! The US needs to forge collaborations with people like Farhad. Instead, they end up only ticking them off:

Iranian physicist Farhad Ardalan has spent enough time in the United States to regard it as his second home. But a case of apparent mistaken identity may prevent him from ever visiting his adopted country again.

Last fall, Ardalan was named a fellow of the American Physical Society, in part because of his efforts to connect Iran to the global scientific community and strengthen bonds between Iran and the United States. The new class of fellows will be honored at the society's meeting next month in Portland, Oregon. But U.S. consular officials have derailed Ardalan's application for a visa after telling him that U.S. government records show he was arrested in the United States in 1983 for an unspecified offense. They also say that he may have been involved in deportation proceedings 20 years earlier.

Ardalan denies both charges, and his U.S. colleagues say that the State Department is making a big mistake. "He is precisely the kind of person who should be welcomed to the U.S.," says Stanford University physicist Herman Winick about Ardalan, a string theorist at the Institute for the Study of Fundamental Sciences in Tehran.

And just in case, you are wondering about his past in the US:

Ardalan first came to the United States in 1958 and attended Columbia University, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees. After earning his Ph.D. in 1970, he returned to Iran to teach at Sharif University, where he helped create the first Iranian doctoral program in physics.

Ardalan spent sabbatical years at Yale and Stony Brook universities in 1974 and 1977 and made a short visit to the United States in 1986. He claims that, like most Iranians, he wasn't allowed to leave the country for several years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution. "I simply could not have been in the U.S. in 1983," he says about the government's charge, which he first learned about when he appeared for his visa interview on 29 January at the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. (Iranians must go abroad for a U.S. visa.)

When Ardalan disputed the charge, he says, the official told him that his name and fingerprints matched the record of the arrest and that he would have to come back for another appointment to give officials time to look into the case. "I said, ‘Forget it.’ And I left," says Ardalan.

But it seems that there is a doppelgänger - but this is not a valid excuse:

Ardalan guesses that the problem is a doppelgänger. "There was a person with the same name who was a leader of the Kurdish guerrilla movement; as a result, for years I was routinely stopped and interrogated at the Tehran airport," Ardalan says. It took a meeting with the head of airport security to clear his name. Ardalan says he deserves an apology for how he has been treated, and he refuses to go back to the embassy or reapply for a visa. State Department officials did not return calls for comment. The department has been criticized for botching visa applications of prominent scientists, including Goverdhan Mehta, an Indian chemist whose visa application was denied in 2006 (Science, 17 February 2006, p. 933).

Read the full story here (you may need subscription to access the article). This story appeared two weeks ago. I don't know if this issue has been resolved or not by now. If anyone knows about the latest status, let me know. The APS meeting runs from March 15 to 19.

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Turkey - Riding high in biofuels research!

Just this past month, Science had an article (you may need subscription to read it) about Brazil's growing research program in biofuels. It included a table that showed top nations in biofuels research according to the number of papers published between 1998 and April, 2008 (see the table below). Brazil is 11th with 80 papers on the topic. But what caught my attention was Turkey: 158 papers and 2nd in ranking, behind only the US. This is all the more striking considering the low contribution of science research papers from the Muslims states. I don't know why Turkey has such a strong program in biofuels, but this is encouraging for science in the region.

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One day we will take Pluto back...

Don't let anyone tell you that Pluto is not a planet. Yes, we are just waiting for the right moment. And then one day we will have a re-vote over Pluto at one of the annual International Astronomical Union (IAU) meetings - and hopefully, a group of about 600 members present will reverse the earlier decision and restore Pluto's planetary status for all of humanity. Plus, we have Jon Stewart on our side. Here is his interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Neil deGrasse Tyson
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Two more quick items. Here is a post by Starts with a Bang about the 80th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto, just two weeks ago (Feb 18th).

You may have seen this one before, but it is still funny: Astronomers declare February no longer a month:

Emboldened by their success in declaring Pluto not a planet, the International Astronomical Union determined this week by a close vote that February is too short to be considered a true month. It has, however, been granted the newly created status of "dwarf month." It shares this dubious distinction with several other calendar time spans, including Labor Day Weekend, Christmas Vacation, and the Time Between When You Were Supposed to Get Your Oil Changed and When You Actually Did.

"It only seems fair," said IAU President Ron Eckers. "February reaches a peak size of 29 days, averaging only 28 days for 75 percent of the time. Recent research has shown that other periods, such as the Time Between When You Were Supposed to Get Your Oil Changed and When You Actually Did, often exceed this meager time frame. In fact, this erratic behavior only strengthens our case that February does not belong in the same classification as the eleven 'true' months."

Eckers also warned that the crop of 30-day "so-called" months should be careful to maintain their number of days. "They're already cutting it pretty close in my book."

Written by Michael Haber.

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Einstein's God in NYC

If you live in NYC, here is a fantastic event at The New York Public Library on March 3rd at 7pm. I teach on Wednesdays - so I can't make the 3-hour trip. If you have time, you should check it out. Here are the details (website here):

Krista Tippett & Andrew Solomon
Einstein's God: Conversations about Science
Instigated by Paul Holdengräber

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum (Map and directions)
Fully accessible to wheelchairs
March 3, 2010 7:00 PM EST
$25 General Admission, $15 library donors, seniors + students with valid ID

GET TICKETS

Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God. And his famous quip that “God does not play dice with the universe” was a statement about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did leave behind a fascinating, largely forgotten legacy of musings and writings – some serious, some whimsical - about the relationship between science and religion and his own inquisitive reverence for the “order deeply hidden behind everything."

Einstein’s self-described “cosmic religious sense” is intriguingly compatible with 21st Century sensibilities and will be the starting point for a discussion between Krista Tippett and Andrew Solomon, instigated by Paul Holdengräber.

Andrew Solomon has argued that science and humanism are two different vocabularies for a single set of phenomena, and that understanding order through the laws of mathematics and understanding order through faith in life's underlying purpose are really an identical exercise.
Solomon is one of the thinkers in Tippett’s book, Einstein's God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, which draws on her radio conversations to explore an emerging interface of inquiry – if not answers - between many fields of science, medicine, theology, and philosophy.

Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award-winning broadcaster and author. As the creator and host of Speaking of Faith at American Public Media, she has innovated a new model of intelligent, in-depth journalism about religion and spiritual ethics in every aspect of human endeavor. The program is heard on over 200 public radio stations across the U.S. and globally via podcast and Internet. She is the author of a memoir and reflection on religion in 21st Century life, Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk about it. Tippett's most recent book, Einstein's God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit is centered around her conversations with scientists both religious and non-religious, including Freeman Dyson, Janna Levin, Mehmet Oz, Sherwin Nuland and others.

For more information, check out this website.

Also see these related posts:
Einstein and Religion - A letter from 1954
Einstein's God

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Guest Post: Critiquing I'jaz - the claim of "scientific miracles in the Qu'ran"

This is a guest post by Nidhal Guessoum (see his earlier posts here, here, here and here). Nidhal is an astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at American University of Sharjah.

Critiquing I'jaz - the claim of "scientific miracles in the Qu'ran"

A few months ago, I received an invitation to a conference in Algiers (my original home town) on “Islam and the Rational Sciences, past and present”. It is being organized by the (highly official) High Islamic Council from March 29 to 31, 2010. I decided to accept, even though it falls at a bad time in my spring schedule.

As the conference covers the past and the present, I could not decide on the best topic to tackle. Indeed, the field of “Islamic Science”, an expression that I consider problematic, but that is very widely used in the literature, refers to one of three (very different) topics: (a) the science that was produced during the Islamic Civilization’s “golden era” (see Salman’s talk on Feb. 25 on “Medieval Islamic Astronomy”); (b) applications of science (mostly astronomy) to Islamic life issues (prayer times, fasting month, Islamic calendar); (c) conceptual/philosophical issues, e.g. evolution, natural law, divine action, miracles, etc.

Unfortunately, and as if the above three (huge) fields were not enough, the “Islamic Science” discourse has been snowed over by a mountain of literature, videos, conferences, and whatnot, that are nowadays devoted to what is known as I`jaz, which is short for “miraculous scientific content of the Qur’an”. In a nutshell, if you haven’t heard about this before, there are now numerous and widespread claims of Qur’anic verses presumably containing modern scientific established facts and theories, ranging from black holes and pulsars to embryology and genetics, not to mention lasers and the precise value of the speed of light…

So I submitted two abstracts to the organizers, and I asked them to choose between the two: (1) a critical review of this I`jaz “theory”; and (2) a rebuttal of the claim that Copernicus’s heliocentric theory had actually been developed by Muslim astronomers centuries earlier… And to my surprise (to some extent), the organizers, reading clearly my intent and thesis in the abstract I submitted, chose the critical review of I`jaz. I know that the public, and probably most of the participating scholars, will be fully supportive of the I`jaz theory (despite its ridiculous methodology, it is unbelievably popular in this region), so this promises to be an interesting “showdown”. I’ll let you know how that goes.

But I assume you would like to know a bit more about this “theory”… So, first there is (and has been for about 15 years now) an “International Commission on Scientific Signs in Qur’an and Sunna” (Sunna refers to the Prophet Muhammad’s Tradition, i.e. statements and acts). Among other things, it organizes international conferences; there have so far been 9 of them (in places like Kuwait, Islamabad, Dubai, Dakar, Indonesia – one even in Moscow!), with the next one taking place in 2011 in Istanbul. And I’m no longer counting the smaller, local or regional workshops this International Commission has organized on the topic, including some “training workshops” on how to do such “research” (how to dissect verses and prophetic statements for scientific content). Likewise, it would be impossible to list all the books published by this Commission and other such institutions. As to websites, especially in Arabic, it would be an interminable exercise to try to find them all, or even the main ones. (You can find quite a bit of interesting content in English here , here, and here… and, for our friends in Quebec and the rest of the French-speaking world, some French content here).

Even the normally moderate and reasonable (and widely read) Islamic portal IslamOnline has a section on “Scientific Miracles in the Qur'an” (under Health & Science, in the subsection on Faith & the Sciences), where one can read articles on the following topics:

• Scientific Facts Revealed In The Qur'an by Zaghlool R. M. El-Naggar, citing many verses as referring to scientific facts : “verses that refer to the shape of the earth (13:3; 15:19; 26:28; 39:5; 50:7; 55:17; 65:12; 67; 70:40, 41); its motions (21:33; 36:40; 27:88; 12:3; 91: 1-4; 92:1,; 10:67; 77:10, 11; 27:71-73; 2:27; 29:61; 31:29; 35:13; 57:6; 36:37; 2:164; 3:190; 10:6; 23:80; 55:5; 14:33;) and its origin (21:30)… the vastly distant positions of stars (56: 75, 76), the expanding nature of the universe (51:47), the smoky nature of the early sky (universe) (41:11, 12), the existence of the interstellar matter (20:6; 21:16; 25:59; 30:8; 32:4; 37:5; 38:10, 27, 66) and the concentric nature of both the heavens and the earth (the universe) (67:3); (71:15) and (65:12)… the celestial (extraterrestrial) origin of iron in our planet (57:25)…” and many more.
• Rain by Design by Harun Yahya, based on Q 43: 11 and Q 50: 9

• The Big Crunch by Zaghlool El-Naggar , based on Q 21:104, 21:30; 41:11; 51:47; and 14:48.

• Mountains as Stabilizers for the Earth by Zaghlool El-Naggar , based on Q 78:6-7 and 79:32-33

• The Celestial Origin of Iron by Zaghlool El-Naggar , based on Q 57:25

• Fossils in the Holy Qur’an by Health & Science Staff, based on Q 21:30 and 24:45

• The Origin of Life in The Holy Qur’an by A. I. Makki, based on Q 7:11-18.

Oh, I forgot to mention something important: many of the practitioners of this field are scientists and academics, including the above writer, Zaghlool El-Naggar, a retired university professor of geology, who has published numerous papers, articles, and books, and has supervised students. (Check out his CV here. For another example, see Dr. Husam Hassan Abulula’ CV here.)

Make no doubt about it, this is the biggest trend in the cultural landscape of the Muslim world nowadays, as astonishing as this may be! Few voices are countering this “theory”; I’ll let you know how my talk and discussion go in next month’s conference. Stay tuned.

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No games, so lets bomb Iran

There is a bizarre op-ed piece in the NYT today. It is written by Efraim Karsh of King's College London. It starts off fine, making the claim that Islamic world is not a single bloc. It uses the boycott by Arab countries of Islamic games held in Iran as the starting point:

A mundane achievement, perhaps, but it’s one that’s beyond the grasp of the Islamic world. The Islamic Solidarity Games, the Olympics of the Muslim world, which were to be held in Iran in April, have been called off by the Arab states because Tehran inscribed “Persian Gulf” on the tournament’s official logo and medals.

It’s a small but telling controversy. It puts the lie to the idea of the Islamic world as a bloc united by religious values that are hostile to the West.

Yes, the boycott over "Persian Gulf" is quite idiotic, but the point about diversity of point-of-views is appreciated. For our research project on understanding Muslims responses to biological evolution, we have also been stressing on the diversity of countries - and the fact that there is no single Islamic viewpoint on the matter. So I completely appreciate this part of the article. Then Efraim picks on several historical examples to make his point. For example:

Even during the Crusades, the supposed height of the “clash of civilizations,” Christian and Muslim rulers freely collaborated across the religious divide, often finding themselves aligned with members of the rival religion against their co-religionists. While the legendary Saladin himself was busy eradicating the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, for example, he was closely aligned with the Byzantine Empire, the foremost representative of Christendom’s claim to universalism.

Unless one has been fed a black & white history, it is not really news that wars form strange alliances, where political and economical factors often outweigh any ideological components. In fact, the example of the Crusades is far more appropriate for the Christian world - after all the call for the Crusades was given by a Pope. [Or for that matter, in the Thirty Years' War between Protestants and Catholics, France - a predominantly Catholic country, sided with the Protestants...]. So fine - there is no Islamic bloc. But what is Efraim's main point?

So, if the Muslim bloc is just as fractious as any other group of seemingly aligned nations, what does it mean for United States policy in the Islamic world?

For one, it should give us more impetus to take a harder line with Iran. Just as the Muslim governments couldn’t muster the minimum sense of commonality for holding an all-Islamic sports tournament, so they would be unlikely to rush to Iran’s aid in the event of sanctions, or even a military strike.

Huh?! Really. So this makes it okay for a military strike against Iran?? (by the way, who is "us" here in the paragraph above? Isn't he in London? As far as I can tell, Efraim is not a US citizen). Not that I'm a fan of the current Iranian regime, but this is utter nonsense. Even after setting all the moral, ethical issues and the impracticality of strikes disabling Iran's nuclear program aside (all of which this idiotic article fails to mention), most analysts talk about Iranian retaliation against American interests in Iraq, where Iran has substantial influence, and worldwide. This is in addition to a reaction by Hezbullah and Hamas. The reaction of Arab states has never been a serious factor. However, an attack on Iran will bolster the view that the US is going after Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran). And remember, Iran has not attacked the US.

And what does he say about the Israel-Palestinian issue:

As for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the idea that bringing peace between the two parties will bring about a flowering of cooperation in the region and take away one of Al Qaeda’s primary gripes against the West totally misreads history and present-day politics. Muslim states threaten Israel’s existence not so much out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam.

Wait a minute. Suddenly the whole Muslim world has become an "Islamic bloc" again! What about Israel's relations with Egypt and Turkey - some key players in the Muslim world? But don't these examples support the first part of his article? Ah - but it is so much easier to ignore counter-examples. While we are at it, I don't know what Malaysia or Indonesia think about Israel? Or for that matter, Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan? These are also Muslim states. By the way, a criticism of this Efraim article does not mean that those Muslim states that do not recognize Israel are correct (and are outright moronic when they call for the destruction of Israel). Yes, two sides can both be idiotic at the same time.

Okay, Mr Efraim. Bring it home. Reiterate your key point:

In these circumstances, one can only welcome the latest changes in the Obama administration’s Middle Eastern policy, which combine a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear subterfuge with a less imperious approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s two-track plan — discussion with Tehran while at the same time lining up meaningful sanctions — is fine as far as it goes. But a military strike must remain a serious option: there is no peaceful way to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, stemming as they do from its imperialist brand of national-Islamism.

Read this idiotic article here. For a much saner view on Iran's nuclear program, check out these two articles by Roger Cohen - also writing in the NYT: An Ordinary Israel and The US-Iranian Triangle.

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Chimps/bonobos and humans: Primate relations on Radiolab

Thanks to a snow storm, I'm stuck at the airport in Erie, PA. Its a small airport - but at least they provide free wi-fi. So on this snowy day, check out this riveting and touching episode of Radiolab titled, Lucy. Although much of the focus is on our primate cousins, I was struck by the incredible efforts of some of the homosapiens involved here (just to be sure, the most disappointing component is also associated with this species of upright apes). Also, there is an interesting depiction of Lucy as being stranded in between species. Absolutely wonderful episode - though be prepared to also shed a tear or two. There are three parts to the episode, and all are very good. Here are the details:

Lucy

Our hour begins with a tale from Dr. Barbara Smuts. She recounts a classic bully story, but with a twist: her bully was a chimp.

Next up: the haunting epic of Lucy the chimpanzee. When Lucy was only two days old, she was adopted by psychologist Dr. Maurice K. Temerlin and his wife Jane. The Temerlins wondered, if given the right environment, how human could Lucy become? We hear from Lucy's language tutor, Dr. Roger Fouts, Lucy's caretaker and eventual friend, Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, and Mr. Temerlin himself... or his words anyway, read by radio host David Garland. And writer Charles Siebert helps us to make sense of Lucy's story. Check out this slideshow of Lucy's life, including the photo snapped as Janis and Lucy hugged in Gambia:

Lucy from Radiolab on Vimeo.

Lucy, the epilogue

After the experiments and after the press, what happened to Lucy? Janis Carter tells us firsthand how it ended.

Kanzi

Though the Lucy experiment would largely be called a failure, could there be a way to re-do it... but better? Producer Soren Wheeler visits The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, to meet Kanzi the bonobo. Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh uses lessons learned from her time with Lucy in her current research with great apes, and Bill Fields explains the basics of bonobo-human communication, and ruminates on the differences between bonobo culture and our own, as illustrated by a swift and painful bite to his hand.

Okay - I'm a bit skeptical of bonobo English - nevertheless this is tantalizing. Furthermore, it is incredible that Kanzi apologized after 8 months!

On the other side, the story of Lucy also reminded me of the case of pet chimpanzee who mauled a woman in Stamford, Connecticut last year. Also check out here about the trauma of officer who shot the chimp.

While we are looking at chimp communication, also check out this sci-fi story by Robert Silverberg, The Pope of the Chimps (I had also linked to it a few years ago for another post: Chimps can count).

Okay, I couldn't resist. I had to find a reason to put this parody of Werner Herzog (you will appreciate it more if you have seen Werner Herzog documentaries, such as the brilliant film from 2005, Grizzly Man). Here is Werner Herzog reads Curious George:

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Capricology: Week 4 - Extra-terrestrial kitsch

Here is the continuation of the dialogue over science, technology, and the sacred in the television series, Caprica at ReligionDispatches. Check out earlier episode discussions here.

Below is a teaser for the Week 4 discussion (I did not participate in the discussion this week). I'm fascinated by the details picked by the panelists - especially the discussion over a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron's car. However, like Anthea's comment below, my favorite part was the dance scene between Zoe and her "admirer". The expression on her face getting lost in music was priceless - and does more than anything else to establish the humanity of the Cylon precursor and a disjunction with its menacing exterior.

Capricology: Week 4 - Extra-terrestrial Kitsch

Among other clues to this sci-fi opera, our Caprica watchers took particular note of a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron killer. What can we learn from the possibility that Capricans can be as kitsch-obsessed, cigarette-addicted, and as reckless with civil liberties as earthlings can be?

Henry Jenkins:

Caprica seems to walk a thin line between trying to deal with the alienness of its various cultures in a matter-of-fact way—dropping casual references to the legalization of drugs, the corporate ownership of the Internet, the Tauron’s moral obligation to seek revenge, or the sleeping and sexual habits of polyamorous couples—and touching on hot button issues which are very much of our time and place, such as the recurring exploration of how societies respond to the persistent threat of terrorism, the tendency to blame social problems on teens’ relations to new technology and popular culture, or the media strategies by which public figures seek to extract themselves from scandals (hard to watch those scenes without comparing them with Tiger Woods’ press conference this week).

The first invites us to read science fiction as speculative fiction—asking what if questions, considering alternative social norms and cultural practices, and imagining how these differences would impact other aspects of our everyday lives. The second invites us to read science fiction as allegory—with the characters and situations reflecting more or less directly our culture and its values. The first teaches us what it would be like to live in another world while the second can teach us something about what it is like to live in our own. The temptation is to overstate one side or the other: to go for radical difference which is not recognizable to a contemporary Terran viewer or to go for such clear match-ups between characters and their real world referents that it becomes a kind of agit-prop. So far, Caprica is walking that line pretty well.

My favorite background detail this week was the bobble-headed bull which sits on the dashboard of Uncle Sam’s car—which seems like such a banal marker of cultural identity compared to the mystique being created week by week around his tattoos. Here, I am reminded of Erica Rand’s The Ellis Island Snow Globe, which describes the commodification of history of immigration to the United States.

Diane Winston:

Henry: I saw that bobble-headed bull too. I saw it and stared, surprised (disappointed? relieved?) that Capricans liked kitsch as much as 21st-century earthlings do. Watching “Gravedancing,” I also wondered why so many Capricans smoke. Is one of the twelve colonies a tobacco plantation? What about the health risks? (Or do they puff on something different than we do?) And when can we see the cigarette packaging? Caprica must have its own Mad Men designing all those great looking signs, ads, and interiors.
...
We’ve touched on Caprica’s mash-up of sci-fi and soap opera—which speaks to Henry’s observations about worlds we can learn from versus the world we live in—but I like that about the series. I like being disoriented by the bobble-headed bull, first because it comes from my world and then because it means something different on Caprica. I felt similarly when Baxter chided the “destructo God” in the sky. The distance/no-distance between Caprica’s God and our own gave me pause.

Anthea Butler:

This week, the most titillation I received from Caprica was the foursome at Sister’s house waking up in the morning and flipping over to switch to other partners! That was my last moment of fun, unfortunately. I’m tempted to quote a phrase from BSG: “Everything has happened before and will happen again.” Why? Because I’ve have seen this show in composites of other shows. I am not quite sure about the “film noir” feel of Caprica. It’s a cross between a 1930s pre-code movie and Metropolis. The cops, the smoking, the old-fashioned cars; I thought Caprica was supposed to be technologically savvy, not a cross between the future and the past. What does this say about its inhabitants—and the show’s creator?

I agree with Diane, this week seems to be a placeholder for something to come, but in the process, I did not learn much. To be fair though, this week’s plot revolved around moral themes: love, unforgiveness, and forgiveness. What struck me as especially poignant was the scene with Zoe and her “admirer” having a dance together. The idea of her seeing herself as lithe and rhythmic, and the juxtaposition of the Robot doing moves that looked a bit like Tai Chi were funny and touching. The scene for me evoked the unsettledness of seeing Zoe as a tripartite being, one that is very engaging as a human, but as a robot, unwieldy and foreign.

Read the full discussion here.

Related Posts:
Capricology: Week 3 - Apotheosis Anyone?
Capricology: Week 2 - The Soul of a Robot
Capricology: The Pilot Episode - Television, Tech, and the Sacred

also:
The Purple Interview: Faith, Hope, Science, and Caprica

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Anti-evolution nonsense - this time in Israel

Israel didn't want to be left behind in the department of creationism and global warming denialism (yes - the two often go hand-in-hand in the West. For example, see the rantings of the Disco. Institute and Uncommon Descent). It joined the anti-science party with a splash:

The Education Ministry's chief scientist sparked a furor among environmental activists and scholars Saturday with remarks questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming theory. The comments from Dr. Gavriel Avital, the latest in a series of written and oral statements casting doubts on the fundamental tenets of modern science, led several environmentalists to call for his dismissal.

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct," Avital said yesterday.

"There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula," he said. "If they keep writing in textbooks that the Earth is growing warmer because of carbon dioxide emissions, I'll insist that isn't the case."

And of course, there is nothing new in his motivations for rejecting evolution:

Prior to his appointment, Avital said in a video interview with Machon Meir, a religious-Zionist Jewish studies institute, "Another scientific field that is problematic is biology, or life and environmental sciences. When your doctrine is based on Darwin's theory of evolution and its implications, you are standing on unreliable foundations - that is, there is no God, there was only something primeval, and then there are certain random developments which led to the apex of all creation, the human being.

"Today I am pleased that more and more scientists engaged in pure science, rather than being employed in the name of an ideology, are reaching the conclusion that the world must have a master. Nothing is given to chance," he said. "These are my opinions and I won't deny them just because I was appointed to an Education Ministry position."

Perhaps Avitel's anti-evolution rantings may lead to a widespread acceptance of evolution in the Muslim wold :) . But I'm curious if this anti-evolution and anti-global warming nexus will also form amongst Muslim conservatives. If this happens, Fox News will probably get stuck in a loop - deciding how to deal with Muslims who share the crazy ideals of the various commentators on the Fox News. Now that will definitely make Glenn Beck cry. However, so far, I have not heard any climate change denialism in the Muslim world - but it will be good to keep an eye on that.

Read the full article here.

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Medieval Islamic Astronomy: A public talk at Penn State Erie

I will be giving a public talk on Medieval Islamic Astronomy at Penn State Erie at 7:30pm on Thursday, February 25th. If you are in the area and are interested in the topic, come on over. This is part of Astronomy Open House organized by the School of Science. Weather permitting, they usually have public observing after the lecture at the Mehalso Observatory. See here for more information.

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Ignore the Toblerone: The Reasonable British reponse to UFO claims

Here is a NYT article about the recently released British Ministry of Defense's (MoD) response to claims of UFO sightings. What is odd is that the article is almost taking a mocking tone regarding the fact that MoD pretty much ignored such claims. There is a better article in the Guardian that reserves its mocking for the claims - and not the MoD reaction. Hmm...I'm perplexed by the tone of the article. But it will provide a good discussion material for the Alien class I'm teaching this semester: Aliens - Close Encounters of a Multi-Disciplinary Kind (syllabus here - pdf). In any case, here are some bits from the article:

If you’ve ever been kidnapped by aliens from outer space, don’t complain to the British Ministry of Defense.

“Abduction is a criminal offense and as such is a matter for the civil police to handle,” the ministry advised a constituent from Lancashire. “The police can only investigate allegations of abduction if there is evidence to suggest that such a crime has taken place. As to date, the M.O.D. is not aware of any evidence which might substantiate the existence of extraterrestrial life forms, the matter of abduction by ‘aliens’ remains a nonissue as far as the M.O.D. is concerned.”

On Thursday, the British National Archives released thousands of pages of the government’s classically understated responses to sightings of flying saucers and other unidentified flying objects (which, a summary explains, some experts prefer to call “unidentified aerial phenomena” which “does not imply the existence of an ‘object’ of extraterrestrial origin”).

In one case, when local farmers reported seeing a mysterious disc-shaped object on the grounds of an electronic signals monitoring base operated jointly with the United States, the ministry issued this unequivocal and straight-faced denial: “No U.F.O./flying saucer has landed in the vicinity of Menwith Hill and the base had no connection with U.F.O. research.”

In the records, there is also a letter written by Sagan in 1996 asking the government to declassify its records regarding crop circles. Anyone who has read The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark would know that Sagan is not coming from believer's perspective, rather that it would help debunk the crop circle phenomenon. But the NYT article sandwiches the Sagan line in between two UFO stories:

That has not stopped people from reporting them. A Birmingham man saw a triangular one (they generally range in shape from traditional saucers to elongated cigars and Toblerone chocolate bars) hovering over his backyard. It left a “silky white substance,” which he collected in a jar, on his tree tops.

In 1996, the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote a letter asking whether the government was involved in a cover-up of crop circles.

Strange rotating red, blue, green and white flashing lights seen by police officers in the English towns of Boston and Skegness and also detected on radar turned out to be nothing more unusual than bright stars and “a ‘permanent echo’ created by a tall church spire in the Lincolnshire Wolds.”

Read the NYT article here.

The Guardian article takes a more appropriate starting point:

Reports of flying Toblerones, close encounters of the second kind, and ­attempted alien abductions in the latest batch of UFO files released today by the Ministry of Defence demonstrate that the British public's appetite for matters extraterrestrial shows no sign of abating.

More than 650 reports of UFO sightings reached the MoD last year – the highest for 31 years – before it took the decision to close its UFO desk, known as Air Secretariat 2A1, in December.

The latest files released at the National Archives cover the period from 1994 to 2000 when sightings were running at 200 to 300 a year. The MoD intends to make public the files for the last 10 years by the end of 2011.

The files show that most reports are filed by "overzealous ufologists", and for the first time officials have released files based on reports from those they call "persistent correspondents".

And they also mention Sagan's letter:

However the files also include a 1996 letter from the cosmologist Carl Sagan to the MoD asking for official comment on the then widespread conspiracy theories about their alleged role in debunking the crop circles phenonemon.

Alongside the ufologists, many of the reports are simple sightings by members of the public. A West Lothian electrician said he had spotted a "Toblerone shaped" UFO hovering over a field and included a quick on-the-spot sketch.

A UFO sighted by the Boston and Skegness police was captured on film and reported to the coastguard, who alerted ships in the North Sea, where a crew saw more UFOs. The investigation which followed suggested the lights were the planet Venus rising.

Damn you, planet Venus! Why do you have to be so bright??

Okay, so here is an even more amusing story of the formation of crop circles from last year:

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.

She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Case closed. And the Wallabies are also happy. Read the full story here.

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An article on morality and atheism in a Pakistani newspaper

This is more in the category of kudos: it is not that often that we see an article (more accurately an oped piece by a regular columnist) in a Pakistani newspaper mentioning atheism in a positive light (or at least not in a negative language). True, this mention is in Dawn - an English language daily with relatively liberal tendencies, but still its great to see such a perspective even brought up. Also, he may be ignoring some of the nuances in using religiosity and corruption indices for the whole countries, nevertheless I'm glad that he is making this point. [For a more detailed analysis of why some countries are more religious than others, check out this post and this article by our friend Tom Rees at Epiphenom].

Here is Irfan Hussain in yesterday's Dawn, Morality and Atheism:

Many have condemned modern Western civilization for its ‘godless’ ways, pointing to widespread cohabitation between men and women, men and men, and women and women. Alcoholism, nudity and drug-abuse are also frequently cited.

All these lifestyle choices are mentioned in arguments over the superiority of Eastern religions and societies. Yet the firm belief in religion and an afterlife in our part of the world do not necessarily translate into better societies.

In the Transparency International table for global perceptions of corruption for 2009, there is not a single Muslim country in the twenty most honest states. However, seven Muslim countries figure among the ten most corrupt states.

Interestingly, Sweden, the most godless state in Europe, comes in at joint third with Singapore as the least corrupt country in the world.

There is an argument that corruption is a function of poverty, and once societies have acquired a measure of economic well-being, they tend to become more honest and accountable. While there is some truth to this assertion, how to explain the fact that Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, is listed as 63rd by TI?

And Kuwait comes in at 68. Clearly, then, there is little direct linkage between religion and morality.

Nevertheless, billions around the world continue to believe deeply in the faith they have grown up in. They derive comfort from following the belief system of their forefathers, and most of them have never felt the need to question it.

Indeed, the poor obtain solace for their wretched condition with the promise of compensation in the afterlife. And the rich in our part of the world try and assuage their guilt by giving alms generously, thereby hoping to buy a place in heaven. If only they would pay their taxes with the same zeal, we might be able to make a better world in this life.

In religiously inclined societies like Pakistan, we are fond of criticising Western materialism, while holding up our supposed spirituality as being superior.

Even the millions of Muslims who have chosen to migrate to the West make the same assertion. However, I have not noticed any of these people denying themselves the conveniences and the advantages of these same ‘materialistic’ societies. And frankly, I do not see too much evidence of our vaunted ‘spirituality’ in our behaviour or attitudes.

Read the full article here. As far as the arguments for morality without religion, check out Marc Hauser and Peter Singer here (pdf), Frans de Waal here, and Theodore Schick Jr. here. You can also check out this short segment (less than 4 minutes) from a Marc Hauser talk:

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