Abstract: This article addresses questions in human geography and the geographies of sexuality by drawing upon one year of embedded in situ observations of dogs and their human companions at three public dog parks in Portland, Oregon. The purpose of this research is to uncover emerging themes in human and canine interactive behavioral patterns in urban dog parks to better understand human a-/moral decision-making in public spaces and uncover bias and emergent assumptions around gender, race, and sexuality. Specifically, and in order of priority, I examine the following questions: (1) How do human companions manage, contribute, and respond to violence in dogs? (2) What issues surround queer performativity and human reaction to homosexual sex between and among dogs? and (3) Read More ›

In the Eugene Wigner thread, frequent objector Sev argues to BA77: Sev, 23: >>Yes, the hard problem of consciousness is explaining what it is and how it arises from the physical brain and we don’t have such an explanation as yet. The evidence for consciousness arising from the brain lies in the strong correlation between the two, the observation that when the brain is destroyed the consciousness disappears permanently and the challenge of explaining why else would we commit such a large percentage of our physical resources to support such an organ unless it provided us with something of great value.>> This is, of course after decades of unfulfilled promises, and it neatly rhetorically side-steps J B S Haldane’s longstanding Read More ›

Bill Dembski posted the first post at UD on April 15, 2005.  Thirteen years later I post this, the 20,000th.  In addition to tens of thousands of posts, our readers and contributors have put up hundreds of thousands of comments in our comment threads (over 428,000 at last count). UD’s mission is to serve the Intelligent Design  community.  I think we are doing that, and I am proud of the work we’ve done. At this special time, I want to give special thanks to Denyse O’Leary for her tireless efforts at our news desk. I also want to thank Kairosfocus, StephenB, gpuccio, johnnyb, Upright Biped, William J. Murray and our many other authors for their fine contributions over the years.  Read More ›

Well, not exactly. From ScienceDaily: Steelhead trout, a member of the salmon family that live and grow in the Pacific Ocean, genetically adapted to the freshwater environment of Lake Michigan in less than 120 years. Steelhead were intentionally introduced into Lake Michigan in the late 1800s in order to bolster recreational and commercial fisheries. In their native range, which extends from California to Russia, steelhead hatch in freshwater rivers, migrate to the ocean, and return to freshwater to spawn. This migration allows steelhead to feed in the ocean, where they can grow larger and produce more eggs than if they remained in freshwater streams for their entire lives. The steelhead introduced into Lake Michigan continue to spawn in small freshwater Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Globular clusters could be up to 4 billion years younger than previously thought, new research led by the University of Warwick has found. Comprised of hundreds of thousands of stars densely packed into a tight ball, globular clusters had been thought to be almost as old as the Universe itself — but thanks to newly developed research models it has been shown that they could be as young as 9 billion years old rather than 13 billion. The discovery brings into question current theories on how galaxies, including the Milky Way, were formed — with between 150-180 clusters thought to exist in the Milky Way alone — as globular clusters had previously been thought to be almost as Read More ›

From Yale president Peter Salovey at Scientific American: We Should Teach All Students, in Every Discipline, to Think Like Scientists For many, knowledge about the natural world is superseded by personal beliefs. Wisdom across disciplinary and political divides is needed to help bridge this gap. This is where institutions of higher education can provide vital support. Educating global citizens is one of the most important charges to universities, and the best way we can transcend ideology is to teach our students, regardless of their majors, to think like scientists. From American history to urban studies, we have an obligation to challenge them to be inquisitive about the world, to weigh the quality and objectivity of data presented to them, and Read More ›

To all of our materialist friends who say that morality is subjective and determined by society: John Davidson brings this to our attention: A post at Get Religion caught my eye yesterday with the title, “Should Amazon tribes be allowed to kill their young? Foreign Policy editors aren’t sure.” It linked to a story in Foreign Policy magazine from April 9 about a handful of indigenous tribes in Brazil that engage in the ritual killing of infants and children—namely, those with a disability, twins, and the children of single mothers, all of whom are considered to be a bad omen—and the legal efforts underway to end the practice. Now, our subjectivist friends have argued repeatedly that morality is determined by society.  These tribes have determined that killing innocent Read More ›

Over recent days, there has been an exchange at UD on the objectivity vs subjectivity of mathematical knowledge. This is relevant to our understanding of knowledge, and to our recognition of the credibility of Mathematical findings on debated matters. This instantly means that the specific concern and the penumbra of generalised perceptions of Mathematics, Science and objectivity of knowledge are relevant to the ID debate. So, it is appropriate to clip from the discussion in the axioms of math thread. First, BO’H and his suggestion that he and I actually in the end agree: BO’H, 34: >>[to:] EricMH – I believe that mathematics, in different respects, is both subjective and objective. [to:] kf – yes, some parts of mathematics are Read More ›

From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations, With the ramping up of investigations in various parts of the world into the mechanics of biology, I’ve decided to post my conversation with Institut Curie biophysicist Emmanuel Farge on the role of mechanics in reprogramming the embryo [2010], relating to his work first published in the scientific literature in 2003, which was well received by the science establishment. … Emmanuel Farge:Exactly. Because you need the gene expression to have the germ-band extension. Then after you need the germ-band extension to have the expression of Twist at the anterior pole, which is mechanically induced. What I’m saying is that you always are in a situation where you cannot say that mechanics is more important than genetics Read More ›

. . . which was decisive, not only for the Second World War but for the Cold War.  For a dominant, totalitarian state in control of Mackinder’s Heartland and ranging to the Atlantic would have sobering global geostrategic consequences. D-Day Beaches vid. Summary of the thesis:  “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;    who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;    who rules the World-Island commands the world.”    (Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 150)    “The Geographical Pivot of History” was an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society that advanced his “Heartland Theory” Let us never forget the sacrifice that restored a bastion of freedom in Western Europe, which ultimately Read More ›

What’s hot.what’s not. And what’s rot. From David Klinghoffer at ENST: — The Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence will focus on the profound concerns stirred by the mystery of minds. Join us in Seattle on Wednesday, July 11, as we launch the Bradley Center with a special public conversation at Seattle’s William Allen Theater at the Museum of Flight. It’s FREE, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. We require that you register here to save your place. The topic for the evening: “Will the Machines Take Over? Human Uniqueness in the Age of Smart Machines.” Computers vastly outperform humans in executing calculations. But in any meaningful sense, can they host minds? Has technology revealed the emptiness of the Read More ›

And Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, can just suck it up. From IAS director Robbert Dijkgraaf at Quanta: Scientists seek a single description of reality. But modern physics allows for many different descriptions, many equivalent to one another, connected through a vast landscape of mathematical possibility. The current Standard Model of particle physics is indeed a tightly constructed mechanism with only a handful of ingredients. Yet instead of being unique, the universe seems to be one of an infinitude of possible worlds. We have no clue why this particular combination of particles and forces underlies nature’s structure. Why are there six “flavors” of quarks, three “generations” of neutrinos, and one Higgs particle? Furthermore, the Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: … She worries about the fact that some prominent atheists are attracted to the intellectual dark web, “an alliance of heretics” making “an end run around the mainstream conversation” (New York Times). The dark web includes figures like Jordan B. Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Bret Weinstein,) who want to discuss research findings and contemporary events without the muzzle of political correctness. New atheist Sam Harris, a dark webber, has recently been accused of “pseudoscientific racialist speculation” by assorted progressives. Why? Having finally read sociologist Charles Murray’s controversial book on IQ, The Bell Curve (1994), Harris doesn’t think it is mere “racist trash” but an argument from a body of data that a scientist like himself Read More ›

From geologist Julie Hollis at Massive: Sexual dimorphism is a result of males and females diverging down different evolutionary paths through selection processes, such as competition to reproduce. These processes happen for a variety of reasons. In some cases, strong colors in male birds are a sign of health. The elephant seal’s bulbous nose allows him to roar loudly to defend his territory – and his harem. And the moose’s antlers are used to intimidate or fight other males. Sexual dimorphism is the end result of choices made by mating partners and can increase the likelihood of reproduction: I would bet on the moose with the biggest antlers, wouldn’t you? But what about the long run? What’s the impact on Read More ›

From AI researcher Filip Piekniewski at VentureBeat: Deep learning has been at the forefront of the so-called AI revolution for years now, and many people believed that it would take us to the world of the technological singularity. Many companies talked big in 2014, 2015, and 2016 when technologies such as Alpha Go were pushing new boundaries. For example, Tesla announced that its fully self-driving cars were very close, even selling that option to customers — to be enabled later via a software update. We are now in the middle of 2018 and things have changed. Not on the surface yet — the NIPS conference is still oversold, corporate PR still has AI all over its press releases, Elon Musk Read More ›