RainDog
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Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 28,784
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 28,784
Journal Archives
Vancouver Sun op-ed: Canadians decide it's time to legalize marijuana
Posted by RainDog | Sat Jan 21, 2012, 01:56 PM (4 replies)
Good Science Always Has Political Ramifications (Scientific American)
Posted by RainDog | Sat Jan 21, 2012, 12:04 PM (5 replies)
Religious belief interferes with people's understanding of evolution (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/01/18/145338804/why-do-so-many-have-trouble-with-evolution?sc=fb&cc=fp
21 percent of people with a high school education or less believed in evolution. That number rose to 41 percent for people with some college attendance, 53 percent for college graduates, and 74 percent for people with a postgraduate education.
Another variable investigated by the same poll was how belief in evolution correlates with church attendance. Of those who believe in evolution, 24 percent go to church weekly, 30 percent go nearly weekly/monthly, and 55 percent seldom or never go The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. It's in the fossil record, carefully dated using radioactivity, the release of particles from radioactive isotopic decay, which works like a very precise clock. Rocks from volcanic eruptions (igneous rocks) buried near a fossil carry certain amounts of radioactive material, unstable atomic nuclei that emit different kinds of radiation, like tiny bullets. The most common is Uranium-235, which decays into Lead-207. Analyzing the ratio of Uranium-235 to Lead-207 in a sample, and knowing how frequently Uranium-235 emits particles (its half-life is 704 million years, the amount half a sample decays into Lead), scientists can get a very accurate measure of the age of a fossil. But evidence for evolution is also much more palpable, for example in the risks of overprescribing antibiotics: the more we (and farm animals) take antibiotics, the higher the chance that a microbe will mutate into one resistant to the drug. This is in-your-face evolution, species mutating at the genetic level and adapting to a new environment (in this case, an environment contaminated with antibiotics). The proof of this can be easily achieved in the laboratory (see link above), by comparing original strands of bacteria with those subjected to different doses of antibiotics. It's simple and conclusive, since the changes in the genetic code of the resistant mutant can be identified and studied. From this article I learned that creationists deny microbial mutation!!! I didn't know they went this far out into the realms of utter stupidity, but they do! Of course, the person making this claim has NO EVIDENCE to back up her hypothesis - just a desire to maintain an unsupportable belief. And this reality - the denial of reality, my fellow DUers, is why we can't have good govt. Support for evolution based upon religious body 
edit to add this graph - which is only Christian religious groups, not others mentioned - but others are minorities. 
and a graph of the 2008 presidential election - corrected 
Importance of religion by state 
The percentages of high school graduates. Political Ideology and Religion: 
Income level and religious belief: 
(Edited to add other graphs/info in this thread) Acceptance of Evolutionary Theory by Nation 
This link comes from this interesting article excerpted below: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html The nations that think religion has a positive impact are also the nations with the most people who do not accept evolutionary theory in the original link in this post - I don't think Indonesia was included, however, but the U.S., South Korea, South Africa, Brazil and India are all nations with the most people who deny evolution is real. 
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE? ...there are cultural factors that need to be explained. Americans are not more resistant to science in general. For instance, 1 in 5 American adults believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, which is somewhat shocking—but the same proportion holds for Germany and Great Britain. But Americans really are special when it comes to certain scientific ideas—and, in particular, with regard to evolutionary theory. The relevant data are shown below, from a 2006 survey published in Science. What explains this culture-specific resistance to evolution?
When faced with this kind of asserted information, one can occasionally evaluate its truth directly. But in some domains, including much of science, direct evaluation is difficult or impossible. Few of us are qualified to assess claims about the merits of string theory, the role in mercury in the etiology of autism, or the existence of repressed memories. So rather than evaluating the asserted claim itself, we instead evaluate the claim's source. If the source is deemed trustworthy, people will believe the claim, often without really understanding it. As our colleague Frank Keil has discussed, this sort of division of cognitive labor is essential in any complex society, where any single individuals will lack the resources to evaluate all the claims that he or she hears. This deference to authority isn't limited to science; the same process holds for certain religious, moral, and political beliefs as well. In an illustrative recent study, subjects were asked their opinion about a social welfare policy, which was described as being endorsed either by Democrats or by Republicans. Although the subjects sincerely believed that their responses were based on the objective merits of the policy, the major determinant of what they thought of the policy was in fact whether or not their favored political party was said to endorse it. More generally, many of the specific moral intuitions held by members of a society appear to be the consequence, not of personal moral contemplation, but of deference to the views of the community. Adults thus rely on the trustworthiness of the source when deciding which asserted claims to believe. Do children do the same? Recent studies suggest that they do; children, like adults, have at least some capacity to assess the trustworthiness of their information sources. Four- and five-year-olds, for instance, know that adults know things that other children do not (like the meaning of the word "hypochondriac"  , and when given conflicting information about a word's meaning from a child and from an adult, they prefer to learn from the adult. They know that adults have different areas of expertise, that doctors know about fixing broken arms and mechanics know about fixing flat tires. They prefer to learn from a knowledgeable speaker than from an ignorant one, and they prefer a confident source to a tentative one. Finally, when five year-olds hear about a competition whose outcome was unclear, they are more likely to believe a character who claimed that he had lost the race (a statement that goes against his self-interest) than a character who claimed that he had won the race (a statement that goes with his self-interest). In a limited sense, then, they are capable of cynicism. |
Posted by RainDog | Thu Jan 19, 2012, 08:02 AM (114 replies)
Canada’s Liberal Party backs legalization of marijuana
Posted by RainDog | Sun Jan 15, 2012, 11:13 PM (8 replies)
Cannapedia: a Cannabis wiki
| [div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]a wiki for cannabis information
here's a list of documentaries compiled on this wiki via the "culture" tab. If you click on the title at the wiki, there's a synopsis and a link to the documentary from an online source. http://cannapedia.me/Documentaries Documentaries A Norml Life AKA Tommy Chong Adventures In Cannabis Hemp American Drug War: The Last White Hope Aphrodisiac!: The Sexual Secret of Marijuana Biz Ivol, Drugs War Victim California's Cannabis Culture Cannabis Rising Cannabis: What's The Harm? Cash Crop Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis Emperor of Hemp Grandpa's Marijuana Handbook The Movie Grass Hemp Hemp Hooray The Growing Industrial Hemp Market Hemplands Conspiracy Hempster: Plant the Seed Hemp For Victory High: The True Tale of American Marijuana How Weed Won The West In Pot We Trust It's Not Just A Plant JOHN SINCLAIR Guide To Amsterdam Marijuana: A Chronic History Marijuana Inc. Inside America’s Pot Industry Marijuana: It's Time For A Conversation Medicinal Cannabis and its impact on Human Health Run From The Cure Science vs. Stigma Should I Smoke Dope Stoned in Suburbia Strain Hunters: Africa Expedition Strain Hunters: India Expedition Strain Hunters: Morocco Expedition Super high me The Call - Medicinal Cannabis Australia The Doper's Guide To Amsterdam The Fight To Be Well The Green Rush The Hemp Revolution The Life and Crimes of Citizen Ming The Magic Weed: History Of Marijuana The Nature of Things - Reefer Madness 2 The Pot Republic The Prince Of Pot Marc Emery The Principle Of Pot The Union: The Business Behind Getting High Totally Baked: A Pot-U-Mentary Vitamin Cannabis Waiting to Inhale What If Cannabis Cured Cancer When We Grow Busted: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters |
Posted by RainDog | Sat Jan 14, 2012, 10:17 PM (0 replies)
Romney Meets Dying Medical Marijuana Patient
Posted by RainDog | Sat Jan 14, 2012, 02:16 AM (1 replies)
O’Shaughnessy’s News Service: The Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice
Posted by RainDog | Fri Jan 13, 2012, 02:34 PM (0 replies)
