Moonage Spacedream

Finding that pesky gay gene

DePaul University has recruited a whole bunch of gay brothers to try to find a gay gene.  This follows up on the multitude of attempts to find this gay gene in the past.  The new research is going about it from a different perspective, I think it has a real chance.

For some inexplicable reason, Fox chose to include naysayers to the research such as Stanton Jones, an evangelical Christian.  He thinks the problem is not biological ( remember, sodomy is a sin, not a condition per most church teachings ).  He claims he’s converted several gays to become normal well-adjusted Christians.  I think he’s convinced a few guys to fantasize about dudes while poking the missus in order to not be ostracized by their family and community.  That darned gay gene is still there regardless of what they’re poking at this particular point in time.

Joel Ginsberg of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association is just as paranoid in the opposite direction.  He, and according to the article, “many gays” fear that parents will abort or somehow discriminate against the fetus.  I feel differently.  Obviously.  As a parent, you want the best possible life for your child.  As a parent, you know the wonder of bringing a child into this world, and, you know the joys of raising that child.  You want that for your child.  Just because it MIGHT be gay doesn’t mean you’d abort that child.  But, if you know you can safely prevent a life of discrimination, or fear of discrimination, never conceiving and watching the miracles of pregnancy, and raising that child as you did, you’d take that chance in a heartbeat as a parent.  If you didn’t, then having a gay child would never have bothered you in the first place.  So, I think this abortion paranoia is a tad bit overblown.  If not contrived.

Now, IMO, there are two aspects to gay acts.  One is instinct, one is experiment.  Society as a whole has never made any effort to distringuish the difference.  If it’s instinct, there is no real choice in partners.  If it’s thrill and excitement, there’s all kinds of choices.  Given the aspect of finding the “gay gene”, and nixing it before birth, that leaves the kid-to-be facing the life of all kinds of choices.  Being gay or not would become purely a choice.  Given Jones and Ginsberg’s preferences, there would be no choice in the matter.  You either are or you are not.

I kinda like the idea of leaving that type of decision open to individual choice.  And I guarantee you this, you eliminate the “gay gene”, there will still be gays.

People online get messages, those who are not, don’t

That is the amazing conclusion the Pew Internet Project came to.  I just have to wonder who thought for one second the inverse of their hypothesis could possibly be true, that teenagers not online could possibly get more contacts via the internet than those that are online?

My experience with parenting a very online fourteen year old girl is the younger you acclimate them to being online the more comfortable they are in dealing with online advances.  It’s an annoyance to the kids I know.  Kinda like the old geezer in a long raincoat in a park, they know instinctively to stay away, he’s no fun.  So, rather than expecting my kids to live in a shell, I expect them to know what’s right and what’s not.  And, I keep a close eye on who they are talking to and why.  When they know you are doing that, the rest gets a lot easier.

Now, in my opinion, researching WHO is contacting teens they don’t know is more important than spending time and resources to figure out that people online get more text contacts than people not online.  Someone send me some money so I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that people with telephones get more phone calls than people without telephones.  OK?

Why People Have Sex

WebMD tackles the oldest question known to mankind. Why do people have sex? Now, the other relevant questions would be “Why do people breathe” and “Why do people eat food”. The cause and effect of sex is that mankind continues to exist. So, to me, as with food, you don’t need a reason to have sex. If the mood strikes, you have sex. If someone then asks you why you had sex, depending on the circumstances, you will have different reasons why you had sex. So, I don’t really buy into their conclusion. That’s not a big issue though. WebMD states there are 237 reasons to have sex. Not being a woman, I think I’ll dismiss that side of the issue. However, being a man, I’ve got an issue with their “Top 10″. To wit:

1. I was attracted to the person.
2. It feels good.
3. I wanted to experience the physical pleasure.
4. It’s fun.
5. I wanted to show my affection to the person.
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.
7. I was “horny.”
8. I wanted to express my love for the person.
9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm.
10. I wanted to please my partner.

Namely, this. Let’s look a little closer at the responses:

1. I was attracted to the person. ( They made me horny. )
2. It feels good. ( I was horny. )
3. I wanted to experience the physical pleasure. ( I was horny. )
4. It’s fun. ( Being horny is fun. )
5. I wanted to show my affection to the person. ( I get very affectionate when I’m horny )
6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release. ( I was horny )
7. I was “horny.” ( I was horny )
8. I wanted to express my love for the person. ( I do that when I’m horny. )
9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm. ( I was horny )
10. I wanted to please my partner. ( I was horny, so they must have been too. )

Going about it that way, there’s only one REAL reason men have sex. They were horny. How many researchers does it take to figure that out? Another clue here too, google “affection”, then google “sex”. Wanna guess which one gets the most responses? You can’t quantify the single most prevailing urge of man. It’s everywhere, it’s all the time. So, no man is going to only do it when he wants to “please his partner”. He’s going to cover all 237 reasons if possible in his lifetime.

Bring the check, please

Some very intrepid researchers in Norway came to this startling conclusion:

Restaurant-goers are a picky crowd, requiring more than just tasty fare to satisfy them. A new study finds that dirty menus and waiting for the check could be just as critical to a diner’s overall experience.

Now, Livescience found some freaks in New York City who complained they get their ticket too fast.  New York’s just right in the head at times, so I’ll dismiss them.  The bottom line is that for most people, especially those with small children, when it’s time for the check, the meal is over and it’s time to leave.  Quite often, when a waiter/waitress asks you if you need anything else, if you say no, they’re gone pretty much forever.  Those are the times when waiting for a check completely ruins the meal.  The beauty of the buffet/cow trough style restaurant is that the last memory the diner has is a pleasant one of simply standing up and leaving.  That irritation of a forgetful/slow waitress bringing the check is eliminated.  Now, as a former restauranteur myself, I get more critical than I should with bad service.  I do know that if the last memory a person has is a bad one, it often trumps all the good that came before it.  Now, there is a very simple way to avoid both complaints, even including the New Yorkers wishing to spend an evening sitting in a restaurant.  Just ask if they’re ready for their check.  If they say yes, go get it.  Don’t ask and then go bus a table or check to see if others need more water, just go get the check.  The faster it’s delivered, the happier the customer, the bigger the tip. It’s a simple rule and it works every time.

And while I’m whining about restaurant service:

• For Pete’s sake people, if you have a waiting line and some guy comes in toting small kids, MOVE THEM TO THE FRONT.  The people waiting in line won’t care that much since it gets those kids out of their hair, and, the faster you seat those kids, the happier the dad will be.  90% of the time, he’s the one footing the bill and therefore deciding the tip.  Works every time.  If someone else complains about the small kids bumping line, tell them you’ll be more than happy to give them the next table immediately next to that kid.  Or, they can continue waiting for a much better table.  Doesn’t work every time, but will more often than not.
• If they have kids, section off a part of your restaurant just for kids.  When bad kids see good kids acting appropriate, the peer pressure has a chance of working.  If they all freak out, no one is bothered because the parents are simply comparing which kids are freaking out worse.  That’s a lot better mix than putting some antsy kids next to say, a romantic couple and making the parent feel like crap ( read no tip ).  Works every time.  Trust me.
• If a family comes in with small kids, dote on the kids.  You keep the kids happy, the father will tip HUGE.  The rest of the patrons will worship you.  Works every time.
• If parents are obviously struggling with their kids and all the  food has been served, get that check to them ASAP.  When a parent is struggling with their kid in a public place, useless delays that lengthen that struggle will push a parent over the edge in a heartbeat.  Get them that check.  Works every time.
• Don’t seat kids near a bar.  Depending on where you’re at, when people drink, they LOVE to smoke.  Some people are self-conscious about smoking around kids.  That’s a good thing.  What’s a bad thing is making them feel self-conscious in the first place and thereby ruining their relaxation.  Even if it’s a non-smoking bar, when people drink they like to think about things such as sex and behaving badly a lot moreso than babysitting some stranger’s kids.  Keep em separated.  Works every time.

Just a few little suggestions to make the world a better place for all of mankind.

Especially for parents.

Full Moons Make Us Crazy?

It’s that time of the month again. We’ve got a big, bright, full moon floating in the sky. For a long, long, long time, man has considered the full moon a sign of craziness.

According to Mythic Realm, Werewolves have been around throughout most of mankind’s written history. Probably the first account of a shapeshifting was from the book Metamorphoses , written in 8 BC.  In this story, man is changed to an ass, setting the stage for the scarier Werewolves we know now later.  So, to put it simply, the werewolve idea has been around longer than Jesus.  The original werewolves didn’t have anything to do with the Moon.  That came later on during the 17th century or so.  So, the assumption the Moon has anything to do with people morphing into blood eating animals is not supported by legend.

The common argument, and one that I heard today on Fox, is that since the Moon’s gravity controls the tides, and we’re about 60% water, it therefore controls us.  That’s just silly as all get-out and hardly worth “debunking”.  The Moon’s no closer or farther away just because it’s not obscured by the Earth interfering with the Sun’s light.

Where I think this all comes from is a lot simpler.  Only in VERY modern times, and I mean the 21st century being the only exclusive century, was man not the prey of other beasts.  Those beasts could see a LOT better during a full moon than a dark night.  In more modern times, robbers could see you a LOT better during a full Moon than a dark night.  Therefore, if you weren’t careful, and were traveling at night,  a brightly lit full Moon posed a threat.  It would probably be best to stay inside or things could get kinda crazy on you real easy during a full Moon.

Now, there are all kinds of reputed studies that connect the Moon to psychological problems.  But, there are just as many, probably more, that debunk that theory.

So, what I do during a full Moon is look up in the sky and think, “Wow!  What a beautiful Moon we’ve got tonight!”.  And go about my normal business.

Now, the only myth I will go along with is full Moon’s make you hornier.  My very scientific theory behind that is not that it tugs on your body’s water more or less, or gravity lighten the load of a man’s nuts thereby making them feel a little randier.  It’s a lot simpler than that.  The pale, pure white light of the Moon has a two-fold double-whammy effect.  It not only makes the object of your desire visible, it’s faint enough to hide their imperfections.   And, if you’re close enough to them when it’s that dark and the only light you’ve got is the Moon, you’re probably horny in the first place.

So, during this, and all the full Moons to come, don’t fret the bad stuff and most definitely enjoy the good.

Reefer Madness

Ever see that flickfrom the 30’s where otherwise normal people take a toke and go crazy? It’s been ridiculed for about the last 70 years or so. Well, what if it’s more true than not? Would it be that funny then? Come to find out:

New findings on marijuana’s damaging effect on the brain show the drug triggers temporary psychotic symptoms in some people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors say. British doctors took brain scans of 15 healthy volunteers given small doses of two of the active ingredients of cannabis, as well as a placebo.

One compound, cannabidiol, or CBD, made people more relaxed. But even small doses of another component, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, produced temporary psychotic symptoms in people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors said.

The results, to be presented at an international mental health conference in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, provides physical evidence of the drug’s damaging influence on the human brain.

“We’ve long suspected that cannabis is linked to psychoses, but we have never before had scans to show how the mechanism works,” said Dr. Philip McGuire, a professor of psychiatry at King’s College, London.

In analyzing MRI scans of the study’s subjects, McGuire and his colleagues found that THC interfered with activity in the inferior frontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with paranoia.

You know, I do believe this to be true. I think this also explains why the baby-boomers LOVE conspiracy theories.

Just to keep the laughs flowing, here’s a clip from that flick:

Richard McBeef

Skip it. All it proves is he’s as crazy as he obviously was. It’s bad. It’s boring. It’s horribly written. What it did prove was there was something obviously wrong with Cho. I don’t think you can draw the conclusion he was dangerous from it. But, he was obviously not right in the head at all.

I have never believed that creative writing gives any indication to how a person behaves. So, I’m not sold that because he wrote an obviously violent piece he should have been put in the psycho ward. That’s a dangerous argument to make.

Down with Darwin?

My buddy over at BadAstronomy just absolutely goes bonkers over the intelligent design argument.  Now, I know some scientists.  I don’t really know him, we just disagree on some things occasionally.  However, he seems to be handling this issue as most scientists would, especially those that try to mathematically calculate how far it is to something that existed millions of years ago and isn’t now what it was when they saw it.  In other words, they try to argue this issue logically.  Now, given the somewhat unfounded nature of intelligent design, it would take someone who believes a non-physical entity that has existed millions of years and is now what it was then even though no one has ever seen it to believe in it.  So, it kind of struck me as odd that astronomers particularly would be so down on it from the beginning.  However, apparently some others are seeing the issue as I have figured it for a long time.  Quit fighting with them.  That’s what they want.  By fighting with them, you boost their perception that you are taking them seriously.  Alan Boyle nails what I have felt for a long time.  The best part is quoting Eugenie Scott:

“We will never solve this problem by throwing science at it. Science is necessary but not sufficient to solve this problem. We have to look at this problem of evolution and creationism in this country from a very broad perspective.

No, you won’t.  You may win in court occasionally, and at the polls occasionally, but it will forever be a distraction to real science if you keep validating their argument by trying to throw FACTS at it.  Here’s one solution that’s kind of floating around:

So what’s the remedy? “My recommendation is simply … to no longer talk about ‘Darwinism,’” Kutschera said. “You could say that Darwinism is one man’s outdated ideology of the 19th century. And Darwinism sounds like Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism … that’s a problem. The second point is that it must be made clear that the modern theory of evolution is in part anti-Darwin. Darwin did not, for instance, take into account the principle of evolution by cooperation.”

Darwin also did not take into account what is rapidly becoming an even more famous “Darwinism”, the very popular “Darwin Award”.  An example:

Youtube has about 78 movies in this genre, there are LOTS of others out there.

Now, intelligent design can NOT explain things like this.  However, the person in this video did not die.  Therefore, “Darwin’s Law” does NOT occur, and the incredibly stupid are allowed to pro-create.  In other words, people don’t have a clue what Darwin’s Theory even was any more.  This can’t be blamed on Republicans in Kansas.  The roots of this multi-definition of what Darwin theorized goes back to about 1879 or so with a fella named Oscar Schmidt in “Popular Science”.  So, arguing “Darwinism” with people who don’t have a clue what you’re talking about is somewhat moot.  Now, what these new people are suggesting is to keep Darwin completely out of the subject.  Call it something else, like “natural progression”.  Now, since all the “Intelligent Design” people have been “trained” to shoot down Darwin, this totally fubars the entire debate for probably another 100 years or so.  And, “natural progression” sounds so lame, no one’s gonna get too fired up about it.  And, it totally eliminates the confusion people have now that man, by defying “natural selection” via social services, is rapidly turning into apes.  Which I think is what really has the “intelligent design” people so scared.  There is a lot more evidence to support the turning into apes now argument, thanks to the internet, than there has ever been supporting that we were apes in the first place argument.  Which is what makes the “intelligent design” argument so appealing to those that have already become “that way”.

And, now a word from my “sponsors”:

Coincedence?

The Dawn of Religion?

It had commonly been believed that rituals, ie religion, dated back about 40,000.  However, a new discovery is pushing it back a bit:

….inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archeologists found the stone snake [image] that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet long.

“You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python,” said Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo. “The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving.”

“Stone age people took these colorful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there,” Coulson said today. “Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site.”

The scientists found a secret chamber behind the python carving. Worn areas indicate it’s been used over the years.

“The shaman, who is still a very important person in San culture, could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber,” Coulson explained. “He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect.”

The shaman could also have made himself disappear from the chamber by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft, the scientists found.

Paintings in the cave appear to support part of modern San mythology.

Now, I just did a piece on Elton John wanting to ban organized religions.  I think the problem he will face is that pretty much as soon as man learned to think, he learned to manipulate others.  One of the first tricks of manipulation was to present something representing a higher level of being for those he wished to manipulate to answer to.

In the subsequent 70,000 years, nothing has changed.  Altough people mightier than Sir Elton have tried.

The Myth of Immortality

Every now and then I learn something that actually makes a lot of sense.  Check this out:

….In order to explore really stupid behavior, they have asked what seem to be really stupid questions: Is it a good thing to set your hair on fire? Drink Drano? Go swimming where sharks swim?

The results are fascinating, and unsettling. While teenagers are just as likely as adults to get the answer right (the correct answer is “No”), teens actually have to mull the question over momentarily before they answer. As summarized by psychologists Valerie Reyna of Cornell and Frank Farley of Temple in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, teenagers take a split second longer than adults to reject such patently inane behaviors. And more of the teenage brain lights up, suggesting that they are actually going through some kind of deliberative calculation before concluding what the rest of us assume is obvious.

Now, I’ll confess, I’ve been a member of the “Myth of Immortality” club.  Still am to some degree.  However, this does make a lot of sense to me.  Please read the whole article before following my thoughts here.

Done that?  OK.  What this article suggests is teens actually weigh the ramifications of doing something whereas adults are pretty much pre-programmed.  As an adult, I know choking myself does not get me high and could very likely kill me.  No thought process needed.  A teen doesn’t necessarily know this for a fact.  They’re going to weigh the pro’s and con’s of choking themself and then make a decision based on the “evidence”.  More often than not they come to the same conclusion the adult would.  But, in some cases, not.  Now, you toss in a pre-determining factor like the same teen kid has made the calculated decision to get high, and you can see where that decision making process gets even MORE muddled.

The conclusion the researcher that led to this article comes to is LESS education and more concrete answers regarding issues that can harm our teens is something I agree with, but had done so for a slightly different reason.  Rhetoric almost always trumps logic.  The more complicated the issue becomes, the more muddled the answer becomes.  Rather than attempting to over-educate young minds to ALL of the consequences of playing the choking game or unprotected sex, it needs to be kept simple.  Like, “choke and you die” type messages.  “Have sex and feed the baby” type messages.  If they want to explore the issue more, they can.  Everyone’s got the internet.  But, when it comes time to make those decisions, eliminate the sense of doubt and allow them to remember the very clear responses to those actions.

That’s all you have to do.

However, they’ll still find incredibly stupid ways to harm themselves even if you eliminate the obvious.