Month: July 2009

Drug Extends Life Span in Mice

Technology Review has a story on the first drug demonstrated to expand the lifespan of a mammalian species. In this case, rapamycin was administered late in the life of mice and extend lifespan by an average of 9 percent in males and 13 percent in females.

According to TR, rapamycin is already approved in the United States for use as an immunosuppressive drug for organ transplant recipients and is being tested for its potential to treat cancer.

The drug may act as a chemical form of caloric restriction, the only other method known to significantly extend lifespan in mice,

Experts believe it’s possible that rapamycin may tap into one of the same biochemical pathways as calorie restriction, an intervention long known to make mice live longer. While the drug was not as effective as a limited diet initiated early in life, it was far more powerful than a limited diet begun at the same advanced age. In ongoing studies, the researchers are testing different doses across a range of starting ages; an optimal combination may ultimately prove more potent than calorie restriction.

That would certainly be nice.

Does Chris Mooney Even Know What Is In ‘Unscientific America’?

For the past few days, PZ Myers and Chris Mooney have been going at it on their respective blogs over Mooney’s new book Unscientific America. I haven’t read Mooney’s book, but apparently it includes a chapter that is uncharitable toward Myers and other so-called “New Atheists.” Myers argues that Mooney’s book is “useless”, while Mooney has decried Myers’ alleged distortions of his claims in Unscientific America.

So far the debate has been marked by Myers raising substantive objections to Unscientific America followed by Mooney either changing the subject or urging interested parties to go read the book. However, there was a telling exchange between Myers and Mooney over at Daily Kos which cast Mooney in an extremely unfavorable light.

In the comments section of a review of UA, a commenter accuses Mooney of distorting the views of Richard Dawkins. The commenter quotes Myers’ critique of UA,

Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

This would be a misrepresentation of Dawkins’ views. Dawkins has written that he thinks the existence of God is a scientific question, and while Dawkins thinks the existence of God is highly improbable, absolute certainty on the question is impossible. Not to worry, though, Mooney replies that this is just another one of those distortions of UA from Myers,

we use that phrase

although it is not attributed to dawkins.

i’ve read dawkins book in some detail, and our objection is to his making god’s existence a scientific question. i realize he does not ascribe full certainty to his atheistic conclusion–but he claims he can reason scientifically about god’s existence. we’re saying that a lot of theologians, philosophers, etc, would say that’s a category error.

i really have to ask that you read our book, rather than its misrepresentation in skewed reviews.

by Chris Mooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 07:05:48 AM PDT

Well that sucks — you’d hope Myers and the New Atheists wouldn’t go around distorting Mooney’s views. Except, well, they’re not as Myers notes in reply to Mooney,

Yes, you did (13+ / 0-)

Tsk, tsk, Chris. Here’s the quote in context.

But much like the anti-evolutionists do, the New Atheists often seek to collapse the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. In The God Delusion, for instance, Richard Dawkins makes the dubious claim that the existence of God is, as he puts it, “unequivocally a scientific question.” Quite a lot of philosophers — and scientists — would disagree. It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.

You unequivocally assign that view to Dawkins. He’s the only person you mention, twice, in that paragraph, and you are using him as your sole example of the attitude you are trying to illustrate.

Your comment is remarkable in that not only do you claim it is others that are misrepresenting your views, but right here you are misrepresenting what you actually said. My paragraph is a very accurate summation of what you wrote.

by pzmyers on Sun July 12, 2009 at 11:15:05 AM PDT

Mooney then concedes the point,

PZ,
I’ve looked at the passage again (should have been a lot more careful before), and you are right–and I made an error. It does clearly ascribe this view to Dawkins.

Now that I’ve read your criticism on your blog, I think “entirely preclude” states too strongly Dawkins’ position, and we should have been more nuanced here. However he does still try to claim that God’s existence is a scientific question.

Thanks for catching this.

by ChrisMooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 01:35:59 PM PDT

Wow. What a dunderhead.

And leaving aside Mooney’s confusion about his own damn book, for a book about scientific illiteracy to suggest that part of the solution is to simply wall off this or that particular problem as beyond scientific investigation is insane.

Google Finally Adds Creative Commons Image Search Option

Google finally added the ability to restrict image searches to only images that are tagged with a Creative Commons license.

This feature allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain.

Nice.

My Kind of Long Term Data Storage

Via the Long Now blog, I ran across this article describing researchers’ efforts to create a data storage system to last a thousand years or more. Rather than rely on optical or magnetic media, both of which can be corrupted fairly easily over decades — much less hundreds of years — of storage, Japanese researchers proposed a system of stacked wafers composed of mask ROM,

Thus, the researchers proposed the idea of saving data on the mask ROM with electron-beam direct-writing technology, stocking the wafers and packaging them with SiO2 to form a “slate.” When a wafer (reader) for reading data is attached to the slate, it becomes possible to supply power and communicate signals by wireless.

If four 15-inch wafers made by using 45nm CMOS technology are stacked, the memory capacity will be 2.5 Tbits.

As long as humidity levels are kept low, the proposed device would have a lifespan of hundreds of years.

The Long Now blog adds a nice twist on how to solve a problem inherent with any such device — a thousand years from now, how will our descendants know how to access the data?

If someone finds this disk 1,000 years from now, how will they know how to access the information?   We think a microetched instruction manual might do very nicely.

Nice. That’s how I plan to backup my World of Warcraft videos.