Scratch a rich Christian, watch them ooze corruption

Hoo boy. It’s scandal time in Evangelica again. Richard Roberts, son of the infamous Oral, and his wife Lindsay, seem to have been skimming the cream off their university budget (and in her case, perhaps, off young male students).

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

Roberts’ defense? God is now giving him legal advice.

In his weekly chapel address today, Mr. Roberts said God had spoken to him this morning and advised him to respond to the lawsuit. “Here’s what he told me to say to you,” Mr. Roberts told the students and professors gathered at the service, according to the Associated Press. “‘We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not.’

“‘This lawsuit … is not about wrongful termination,’” Mr. Roberts said God added. “‘It is about intimidation, blackmail, and extortion,’” he said, according to the wire service.

I don’t know, I’m a little disappointed. The Great Lord of All the Universe has been awfully quiet for a long, long time, and now he breaks his silence to tell the world that there is an excess of lawsuits, and defend a sybaritic pair of spoiled, overprivileged con artists? Doesn’t he have more important things to do? How come he never gives us any useful insights?

Lua muses on…

Adult neurogenesis

The creation of new neurons, known as neurogenesis, is an important process. It is by this process that the brain forms, and most of it occurs during pre-natal development. An early theory proposed by neuroanatomists that has recently been refuted by experimental evidence is that adult neurogenesis does not occur. In adult neurogenesis, it has been observed that most of the new neurons die shortly after their formation, while only a few become integrated into the functioning structure of the brain. So what is the significance of adult neurogenesis?

While the functioning of this process is not known, it has been speculated that it is important for memory and learning processes, and is linked to stress. Stress causes a lot of people a lot of harm, and has been linked to many disorders, such as depression. Depression is a condition that is regulated by antidepressants. Know what other activity is regulated by the activity of antidepressants? You guessed it, NEUROGENESIS! A recent study showed that the brain responds to stress-relieving situations, such as those that build learning and memory, with increased neurogenesis. Stressful situations, such as those that induce physiological or psychological stress, are marked by decreased neurogenesis. A decrease in neurogenesis has been indicated to be a key factor in the progression of depression.

[Read more…]

Letter to a non-atheist New Atheist

Dear Sam,

I read your presentation to the Atheist Alliance. You were eminently successful in being a controversial contrarian, so your intent was well executed. Good work!

However, I do have to disagree with your argument (oh, right — you were trying to stir up dissent. Again, good work!). You say that using the term “atheism” is a mistake, and that “Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities” … and that atheism is entirely negative. You say that accepting that label means we are agreeing to be “viewed as a cranky sub-culture”.

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Gender Bias and Anne Conway

In discussing Soul Made Flesh this past Wednesday morning in PZ’s neurobiology class, I brought up what I thought to be an interesting, though somewhat tangential, point. Zimmer mentioned Anne Conway and how ambitious she was in her studies despite not being allowed to attend a university. The fact that females were not given the same opportunities throughout history is something I remember learning about in grade school. But where did the ideology that females are inferior to males begin?

One of my fellow students argued that because females give birth they were probably not expected to hunt and gather food while they were pregnant. I thought about this and although I don’t know for sure, in early civilizations females probably tended fields and gathered crop until while pregnant until they were no longer physically able to, returning to the fields as soon as they recovered from the stress of giving birth. Males, meanwhile, tended to be stronger and did not have to give birth to maintain their population.

Another thought that I had on this topic was that male aggression and anger tendencies probably have something to with the ambition to control their domain. Considering male influence in government, it would be interesting to see the effects of a female United States president. There have been several queens as well as kings in European countries over the last thousand years. Is there a difference in how a country operates that is dependent on the gender of its leader?

Things seem to be much different today than they were a hundred years ago. Females driving, voting, becoming doctors, and all these things that would have been unheard of. Are males falling behind and if they do will females dominate males? Is society moving toward a codominance of gender? There is plenty of debate on this topic and I’m sure it won’t be resolved anytime soon.

References:
Zimmer, Carl. 2004. Soul Made Flesh. Free Press, New York, NY.

She’s slowly moving up in my estimation

Hillary Clinton, that is. She’s made some concrete statements about what she’d do for science as president: take steps to depoliticize science agencies, lift limits on stem cell research, invest in alternative energy and global warming research, subordinate manned space missions to earth science research (not entirely happy news there, but at least she’s being realisitic), and she’s pro-evolution! (That last is utterly shocking, I know.) She’s also going to push to have congress restore the Office of Technology Assessment.

Of course, she also threw in a sop to the deluded: “I believe that our founders had faith in reason and they also had faith in God, and one of our gifts from God is the ability to reason.” I will excuse her useless pieties as long as they don’t interfere with her practical efforts to support good science. I’ll also rub the noses of the trolls in that every time they whine about coupling evolution and godlessness, since our politicians seem to have no qualms about coupling evolution and superstition, so it will be rhetorically useful for my purposes.

Now, let’s see the other Democratic candidates follow suit and be as forthright in stating their support for science. That doesn’t mean they should compete with her to outdo the stupid god and faith part of her statement — I could well imagine that some might — but that they should outline their specific science proposals and state without reservation their support for basic science. And now that the media has broken the ice with Clinton, let’s see all of the other candidates probed on these same issues.

Tenure-track position in vertebrate biology

Are you trained in vertebrate systematics or natural history? Would you like to work at a liberal arts college with undergraduates? We have the perfect opportunity for you.

Tenure-Track Position in Biology
University of Minnesota, Morris

The University of Minnesota, Morris seeks an individual committed to excellence in undergraduate education, to fill a tenure-track position in vertebrate biology beginning August 18, 2008. Responsibilities include: teaching a two-year rotation of undergraduate biology courses including upper level electives in vertebrate systematics or natural history and sophomore level human physiology; contributing to the university’s general education program; curating and maintaining the discipline’s vertebrate collection; advising undergraduates; pursuing a research program that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program as well as the campus at-large.

Candidates must hold or expect to receive a Ph.D. in zoology or a closely related field by August 18, 2008. Two years experience teaching undergraduate biology is required. (Graduate TA experience is acceptable.)

The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) is a nationally-recognized, small, selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts campus of the University of Minnesota. It has an enrollment of about 1700 students with over 120 faculty members. The campus is located in west-central Minnesota, 160 miles from Minneapolis, in a rural community of 5000 people. The college is organized into four academic divisions, of which Science and Mathematics is one. Disciplines represented in the division are Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics. The college attracts excellent students many of whom go on to graduate or professional studies. Visit www.morris.umn.edu/positions/ to learn about other open positions at UMM.

This tenure-track position carries all of the privileges and responsibilities of University of Minnesota faculty appointments. A sound retirement plan, excellent fringe benefits and a collegial atmosphere are among the benefits that accompany the position. Appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level for those having the Ph.D. in hand and at the Instructor level for others. The standard teaching load is twenty credit hours per year.

Applications must include a letter of application, resume, transcripts, a teaching statement (in which teaching goals and methods are discussed), a research statement (proposing a research program that is viable at a small liberal arts college and accessible to undergraduates), and three letters of reference. Send applications to:

Biology Search Committee Chair
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota, Morris
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267-2128

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins January 7, 2008. Inquiries can be made to Tracey Anderson, Search Committee Chair, at (320) 589-6324 or anderstm@@morris.umn.edu.

The University of Minnesota is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, or sexual orientation.