Ahh, science

I always love when scientific discussions of morality and religion stray away from simplistic and familiar territory. I also always love Blogging Heads' weekly Science Saturday. This last week's was an ass-kickingly awesome discussion* between Joshua Knobe and Paul Bloom about morality.

Young babies apparently show preference for 'helping' behavior over 'neutral' behavior, and prefer 'neutral' over 'hindering' behavior. Kids are more likely to believe that things exist for a reason (lions exist there so that people can see them in the zoo and enjoy them). All good stuff, and there's tons more covered in the course of the discussion.

Even more satisfying is that the two Heads, whenever they come up with a disagreement, decide they should set up experiments to see which position is more accurate. No one ever does that in the political Bloggin Heads dialogues, and certainly no one ever does that in the general realm of moral or religious discussion.

*I have never and will never use the term 'diavlog.'

Bioethical Week in Review

It's been an odd week in the realm of bioethics. Balancing the weird class issues involved with the very real poverty endured by many involved make the whole thing a tangled mess of competing valid claims.

An LA Times piece (co-written by Egypt Today alum Noha El Hennawy discusses the practice of legal organ donation and brokering in Egypt. A prospective donor hoping to sell part of his liver to pay down his debts, a coffee-shop broker in human organs and an NDP parliamentarian are all interviewed.

Broadsheet tells us also that the practice of brokered surrogacy is on the rise in India, where a fertile woman can hope to gain from $7,500–13,500 for carrying another (often foreign) couple's baby to term. Interviewed are a homosexual Israeli couple who cannot legally engage a surrogate in their home country, fertility doctors in Mumbai who perform the implantation procedure, a 'medical tourism' agent (for fuck's sake), and a woman who will use the money from her second surrogate pregnancy to pay for her biological kid's education. And fuck if they don't call it 'reproductive outsourcing.'

Also via Broadsheet, a CNN story about a couple who have finished the medical procedures — hysterectomy, removal of breasts and drugs — to ensure that their 10-year old, severely disabled daughter Ashley will never reach puberty or grow beyond her current 4'5".

Doing what it does best, the ever-productive Vaticann has created several new categories of sin — these of a more social nature than the more well known personal seven deadly sins. The list, according to the NY Times, ennumerates the following new types of sin: "'Bioethical' violations such as birth control; 'Morally dubious' experiments such as stem cell research; Drug abuse; Polluting the environment; Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor; Excessive wealth; Creating poverty." No word on whether it's still cool with the church leadership for Catholic bishops to tell people that condoms have tiny holes that allow the HIV virus to pass through.

So Long, Farewell

AVClub has a list of worst songs to play at a funeral up at the moment. Worth a look. For the record, you will all be mourning me to the tune of The Killers' Exitlude.

Oooh, look at me! Embedding!



You will also all have cut off all your hair and scarred your body upon hearing of my death. Some of you may have cut out your eyes, never wanting to see another sunrise without me to see it with you, but let me advise against that. You won't be able to look at pictures of me anymore.

Galileo Finally Gets His Due

Four centuries after trying him for heresy, the Catholic Church has decided to make things right with Galileo Galilei, the inventor of the telescope and father of modern astronomy, by erecting a statue of him at the Vatican. The statue will stand in the garden in front of the place where he was imprisoned.