All Those Wasted Years

All around that dull, gray world,

From Moscow to Berlin,

People storm the barricades

Walls go tumbling in.

The counter-revolution,

People smiling though their tears,

Who can give them back their lives?

And all those wasted years...

--Heresy, by Neil Peart

I have been accused of 'whining about totalitarianism.' A comment to the blog I wrote a few days ago said:

"All your whining about totalitarianism completely ignores the fact that objective government would have a clear check and balance: the facts."

Now, I have been known to whine now and then, as I am sure we all have.

To me, 'whining' implies having a little pity-party about some minor inconvenience. I see it as complaining about a triviality, something that is not very important, which is why it grates.

So I was somewhat surprised that the term 'whining' was used to avoid actually countering an argument I was making that suggested that equating religious education of one's own children with child abuse, and making it illegal was step in the direction of totalitarian rule. What I actually said was this:

"As for your poll-test, it sounds a good deal like the forced "political education" that friends and relatives who survived the Nazis and the Soviet Totalitarian State have told me about. I think I'll pass. They escaped to America (ed.sp.) for a reason, and I will not waste their sacrifices for my freedom."

Whining? That's something you do when you hit all the red lights on the way home from work on a hot August night, and the air conditioning in the car is not working well.

Mourning. Weeping. Gnashing of teeth. That is what you do when you are dealing with the loss of tens of millions of lives and the destruction and deformation of millions more.

Now I have no clue who the commenter is, nor do I know how old he is. But either he is ignorant of the bloody history of totalitarian states in the 20th century, or he has no respect for the lives that were lost, destroyed or deformed in those places in those times.

So just in case our commenter is ignorant of the cold, hard facts, I thought I'd present a few, selected ones here.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 resulted in a civil war between the Bolsheviks ('reds') and Mensheviks ('whites') that lasted until 1921. In that time, between 7 and 9 million people were killed, countless more suffered severe privation due to loss of property, interruption in the food supply, disease and injury. As we know, the Bolsheviks won this war, and began ruling a Marxist-Leninist state, the Soviet Union, which was totalitarian in nature.

Soviet rulerJosef Stalin is known to be one of the world's most ruthless dictators. In 1932, a famine (Holodomor) was engineered by Stalin and the Soviet government in order to forcibly collectivize the farms of the free-holding Ukranian peasants. The death toll alone is estimated to have been between 2.6 million and 3.5 million people. Many more people suffered terrible privation, loss of opportunities, and loss of home and property.

Also under Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary Soviet 'citizens' were arrested and either killed outright, or imprisoned in labor camps--the famous Gulag--where the liklihood of death was very great. These were the Stalin era "purges" intended to enforce political orthodoxy, and destroy the social networks of the old Bolshevik elite, engineers and scientists, and the social and religious communities of ordinary Russians and Kulaks (free-holding peasants).

Moving elsewhere in Europe, consider the genocide conducted by the Nazi government of Germany between 1933 and 1945. It is estimated that between 15 and 21 million civilians were murdered by the Nazi totalitarian state. This number includes the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. All told, it is estimated that between 40,000,000 and 72,000,000 people died as the result of World War II; a war brought about by a totalitarian regime.

I have not even gotten to the middle of the 20th century, and the numbers of deaths brought about by totalitarian is already beyond imagination. We could add the deaths in China during the Cultural Revolution (27 to 72 million), and there is also North Korea, and Laos, and even Cuba--all totalitarian regimes. If we consistently take the lowest estimates from only the murderous totalitarian government-sponsored events listed thus far, we get: at least 77 million deaths, not including the Stalin era purges.

The number is hard to fathom. Each of these deaths represents the precious and irreplacible life of a human being. Someone with hopes, dreams, and talents; someone with mother and father, siblings, cousins, and friends. Someone who could have contributed something to this world, but that his life was ripped away.

The number are so great that even a lifetime is not long enough to remember them, to meditate on what was lost to us all.

"Wherever I go, I hear footsteps:

My brother on the road, in swamps, in the forests,

Swept along in darkness, tembling from cold,

Fugitives from flames and terrors.

Wherever I stand, I hear rattling:

My brothers in chains, in chambers of the stricken.

They pierce the walls and burst the silence.

Through the generations their echoes cry out,

In torture camps, in pits of the dead.

Wherever I lie, I hear voices:

My brothers, hearded to slaughter

Out of burning embers, out of ruins,

Out of cities and villages, altars for burnt offerings.

The groaning in their destruction haunts my nights.

My eyes will never stop seeing them

And my heart will never stop crying "outrage";

Every man will be called to account for their deaths.

The heavens will descend to mourn for them,

The world and all therein will be a monument on their graves."

--Shim Shalom

And that is only a partial toll of the dead.

Many more than we can count.

Murdered by totalitarian government.

There are those who survived, stunted. Lost. Sick and failing.

And there are those who lost everything. Lives. Families. Neighbors.

Precious keepsakes and ordinary, everyday utensils.

The things of life that say that a person exists here.

And there are those whose dreams were shattered and whose hopes were never realized.

Forbidden to get an education. Forbidden to work. Or made to work at slave labor for the benefit of nameless, faceless others. The opportunity costs are incalculable.

And then there are lost cities and irreplacible art. Monuments and temples. Mansions and small houses. Even the trees in the garden, the land, and the waters.

All of this and more destroyed at the behest of tyrants. Tyrants who had an objective plan to use the coercive force of the state to enforce their own ideas upon people who did not agree with them.

Whining? I don't think so.

Weeping. Wailing. Mourning losses that cannot be adequately mourned in a thousand years.

And this commenter, this one who called my objection to totalitarianism "whining" did not not make this statement in isolation.

He said: "...I consider religious education to be a serious form of child abuse."

And:

"Therefore it should be expressly against the law to teach children a curriculum that so blatantly and directly contradicts science–even and especially in private."

And:

"A case can also be made that to the extent home schooling attempts to undermine the principles of consensus science...it should also be expressly prohibited."

And:

"And I'd love to see all the creationist propaganda confiscated."

Since parents, even parents of schooled children, teach their kids their own values in their own homes, this is a program for the censorship of citizens in the private sphere. No matter how much one may disagree with what a parent might choose to teach a child in the home, one may not dictate to private citizens what they may speak in public or private. One may not force upon others one's own ideas, no matter how reasonable or "objective" they may appear. One may not do this in a free society, even should one be able to prove that this would be good for those people whose rights are being violated, and further prove how good it would be for society to violate those rights, one may not. For to do so, is to violate the Constitution and make the law discriminate among persons. A person who is a Christian, a person who wants to pass his religious beliefs to his children, a person who questions "consensus" in science, all would be treated differently under the law than others.

This commenter, on his own blog, has used the concept of a social contract. The social contract that citizens of the United States have is defined by the Constitution. The Constitution expressly limits the use of force by the servant government to that needed to protect the rights of the individual citizens. Everything that this person has said above (and much more) indicates that he is in favor of removing those rights from people who do not bow to his ideas about religion and science. Even scientists who do not accept the "consensus" of the government, but who wish to deal with the empirical evidence, would be censored.

In order to enforce all of this, a totalitarian state, one that spies on citizens in their private lives, and requires the use of informers, would be required. There would be no other way to make this "objective" Utopia happen.

And of course, those who disagree with this fascistic plan, as I do, are said to be "whining" and worse.

Whining about totalitarianism. The cause for more human deaths, more destruction of lives and property in the past century than can be enumerated.

I said at the beginning that this person must either be ignorant of those facts listed above, or he has no respect for the lives and property of the people he must trample over to get his way and "save our democracy" by using the force of law to coerce others into his "objective" Dystopia. Even if this particular Anointed One were educated in the public schools, it is hard to believe that he is ignorant of the bloody, destructive record of totalitarian states.

Reading between the lines of his comments, it is possible to surmise that he may believe that only theocracies are capable of such bloody terror. But if he claimed this directly, that would also be hard to believe, since the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao, were both militantly atheistic states.

Finally given some of the confusion inherent in his comments, one could also posit that he made this grand statement about forbidding American citizens from religiously educating their children in private without consideration of the consequences that would likely devolve on every citizen with respect to their natural rights. From his comment I gleaned that:

1. He has a plan that should be followed but that he doesn't know how to solve the problem.

2. That he wants the government to forbid religious education of children and at the same time, he wants to strengthen the separation of church and state.

3. He respects the Constitution but he wants to have the government confiscate creationist literature--a clear violation of the First Amendment.

I would think this last assessment of his motives is most likely, except for the "whining about totalitarianism" remark. That indicates a callous disregard on the intellectual level (at least) for the lives, liberty, and property of millions of human beings. Their lives, their happiness appear to be only a means to his end of an "objective" state ruled by science.

I am a scientist. I am proud of the many and varied ways that science has brought to humanity greater understanding of the universe, and has also bettered human lives. And there are times when I have been deeply ashamed of the evil uses to which scientists have put their scientific expertise. This happens because we are prone to forgetting that science generates no ethics and no politics. It is simply an empirical examination of the physical world. Nature does not have morality and cannot do evil. Humans beings do and can. When scientists have forgotten this, and impose upon others their own desires in the name of science, and then use it to coerce others, they have done great and lasting harm. Think about the roles of scientists in the Nazi destruction of European Jewry, and in the manufacturing of drug-resistant anthrax for biological warfare during the Cold War...and the list continues.

Whining about totalitarianism?

All I can do is weep for all those wasted years.

"All around this great big world,

All the crap we had to take:

Bombs and basement fall-out shelters,

All our lives at stake.

The bloody revolution,

All the warheads in its wake,

All the fear and suffering,

All a big mistake.

All those wasted years,

All those precious wasted years,

Who will pay?"

--Heresy, by Neil Peart

Note: I have embedded a You-Tube Video called the Cold War, in which the song Heresy is used with stills of the major events of the cold war. There was quite a lot there that I remember, being somewhere around 30 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. You can also click here for the link.

Note: I have edited this piece for the following reasons:
1) to fix spelling typos
2) to change a mistake in reporting of numbers. The number of people estimated to have been killed in WWII is 40 - 72 million, not 40 - 72 thousand.
3) to change the capitalization on the word objective from upper case to lower case.
The claim made by the troll is for an "objective" government, not an "Objectivist" government. Objectivism (capital "O")is a philosophy that would repudiate the use of force by government to control the minds of citizens in any way. For more information, see Rational Jenn's note. She is an Objectivist and an expert on the issue. I am not.

Update: Road Construction

April, and warmer, dry weather has arrived. Although in the spirit of complete disclosure, I must add that the March winds have not yet figured out that is is time to "Go, already!"


And among other activities at the Los Pecos Homeschool, we have been watching as the pace of the Building of the New Road had increased.


Fans of John Deere, Komatsu, and Caterpiller, rejoice!


The trench along our road is now 3 feet deep, as two feet of dirt was laid atop the electrical and fiberoptic phone lines, and water pipes were laid atop of them.

N., in his ongoing conversations with the workers, set me straight on this issue. The giant mains laid last fall were for the fire hydrants only. A completely separate system will supply the houses. This is so that in the event of a wildfire or housefire, pressure to the houses will not be disturbed, nor will "household use interfere with fire fighting capability." Is it just me, or is N. beginning to sound like a young civil engineer?

Here we see three water lines bundled near the property lines to two lots. We are not sure what the third line is for. It could be for a lot that lies behind these two, and contacts the road around the bend. Or it could be something else. N. is happy to have another question to ask when "the guys" show up on Monday.






Familiar heavy equipment has been brought down from the fenced storage area up on the ridge by the water tank. Even as the water lines are being laid, rock is being moved, and the road is being flattened and prepared for the underbed materials, layers of rock and gravel that will be covered with asphalt.

N. gets a big kick out of our developer, who is from Canada, and pronounces it "ashphalt." N. is starting to enjoy and appreciate regional differences in idiom, usage, and pronounciation. This is one those great steps forward for an AS kid who is obsessed with rules.


We are all impressed with how 'gianormous'... (Yes, usage Yekkes, I am aware that this is not a "real" word--but I like it anyway). Ahem! ...but as I was saying, how gianormous these machines really are.

N. and my dear Engineering Geek both confess that the immensity of machines makes their hearts go pitter-patter shepping naches* at what human beings are capable of making.

shepping naches: Yiddish for rejoicing the accomplishment of another.

Together, they make a blessing: "Blessed are you, Eternal One, Creator of space-time, who has endowed the human being with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding." This is the same blessing I make when the airplane takes off. I mean, really, how safe can G-d make me if the engineers didn't do their calculations correctly?

Some interesting geology has been temporarily revealed in the trench-cuts. Geologists gravitate toward road cuts, railway cuts, and construction excavations like flies towards you-know-what.

Here you can see a weathered layer of sand and gravel that lies atop a much more consolidated clay layer, under which a gray caliche stripe runs. The caliche shows us an older ground surface, as caliche is formed from mineral rich water evaporating out of the soil surface under the intense New Mexico sun. It leaves behind calcium salts originally dissolved in the water, which forms a hard natural cement, the bane of gardeners across the southwest. The more poorly consolidated rock and gravel above the clay indicate local stream flooding in the near past, and above that the completely mixed top is due to the construction disturbance.

In this picture, there is the construction distubance on top, a pitted layer of surface clay mixed with sand and gravel, and below that a lens of poorly consolidated sand and gravel. That lens is an old stream bed, and the size and angularity of the exposed rocks indicates relatively recent arroyo-type flooding, probably due to summer monsoon flash-flooding. The geomorphology at the surface indicates that this is still an area of run-off, confirming what the rocks are telling us.

This spontaneous, informal Road Construction Unit has also been extremely useful for teaching N. a little bit of geological reasoning. He goes outside and makes his inferences, and then he checks them out by using my old college Introductory Geology text, The Earth's Dynamic Systems.

When he's not talking like a Civil Engineer, he sounds like this. "Hey, mom, would you say that old arroyo activity is Holocene? Or might it go back to the last pluvial? (Pluvial means the lake period associated with the Wisconsin Glaciation. That would be very latest Pleistocene). I think I can detect that those rocks saltated (rolled and jumped) due to the force of the water."

I refuse to speculate, and instead I haul out the Geological Map of New Mexico.

Who knew that (un)school could be this fun?

Don't Call It Science!

I happened upon a discussion precipitated by a blog entry over at Day by Day Discoveries. I found the blog post through this post over at Doc's Sunrise Rants.


The discussion was began due to Dawn's ( of Day by Day Discoveries) reaction to a new homeschooling blog opposing the teaching of the theory of evolution by homeschoolers. The discussion involved proper and improper definitions of a scientific theory and law, and also discussion of the controversy about teaching alternative viewpoints in science class.

I wrote a short comment on this entry at Day by Day on Thursday, just before going to give a presentation on some interesting new results in the neurophysiology of ADHD at the university. In this post I want to expand my comment a bit in order to present my view about this whole issue.

To begin with, my credentials as a scientist, with a background in evolutionary biology, ought to make it clear what I think about this issue. To put it quite plainly, I oppose the presentation of 'alternative viewpoints' in science class. People taking classes in science expect to be taught science, and are paying to be taught science, and deserve to have this expectation met. Neither so-called 'creation science' nor the new take on it--intelligent design--are scientific theories and therefore should not be taught in science classes.


To understand why these ideas do not meet the criteria for science, we must first understand what science is and what it is not. A simple and accurate definition of science is that it is the investigation of the physical world using the scientific method. By 'physical world' we mean the observable world of matter and energy. Observations can be made with the senses or with extensions of the senses, through instruments that allow us to see the very small, the very large, and the very far away; instruments such as microscopes and telescopes. Other extensions of the senses would include the instruments through which we ascertain the properties of the physical world. These would be instruments of measurement.


The scientific method, invented during the enlightenment, is a procedure through which observations can be systematically qualified and/or quantified to make predictions about what we would expect of nature. Not all observations count as scientific observations. Only those gathered for the purpose of hypothesis testing count. For example, Van Gogh made some very detailed observations of nature when he painted his beautiful Sunflowers still-life. But even though his observations were very accurate and beautifully rendered, we would not his work science. He was certainly observing the physical world with his senses, but he was not using the scientific method. He was using the sensitivity and tools of an artist and not those of a scientist. He was doing art, not science. And I think the great Impressionistic artist would be insulted if we called his work 'science.'



Science is, after all, only one way of human knowing. It is limited to making obervations about the physical world through use of the scientific method. Scientists, when they work as scientists must limit themselves to these objectives as well, although as human beings, they can enjoy a range of human endeavors different than science, and see that they all have value. I enjoy and recognize the value of great art and literature, and I appreciate the usefulness of rational human endeavors such as philosophy and ethics. None of these is science, however, and the world would be poorer if we tried to shoehorn them into being what they are not.



Creationism, and the new expression of it called Intelligent Design are not science, either. Creationism posits apriori that species originated by a singular act of a supernatural being. In so doing, Creationism puts itself outside the realm of science by an appeal to the supernatural, which by definition exists outside the physical world. Such an appeal cannot be tested by any means within the scientific method, nor can it be observed by the senses or extensions thereof. It is, in the language of the philosophy of science, unfalsifiable. Therefore, although the concept of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), as is expounded in the first creation story in Genesis chapter 1, is really intriguing as a priestly story to explain the goodness of the physical world, and the goodness of embodied being, it does not meet the criteria for science. It does make a mythic statement and a moral implication. But it does not make a scientific statement.



Religious statements about origins from a supernatural being cannot be tested. They must be taken on faith and so are not falsifiable. This is why one can talk about 'belief' in creationism. Scientific theories must be built from evidence that has been tested by the scientific method. This, by the way, is why it is wrong to say that one 'believes' in evolution. Such a faith statement only confuses the issue. Rather, one should say that the evidence supports the theory of evolution of species by natural selection. (And there is a plethora of such evidence coming from such scientific fields as geology, biochemistry, genetics, and physics, to name but a few).



The statements and implications of Genesis (and that is what we are really talking about as the so-called 'scientific creationists' do not make arguments against evolutionary theory for the sake of the Cosmic Egg story) are all well and good, and quite interesting to discuss, as a religious statement about the world that comes from a particular world view and challenges another ancient world view. I could happily discuss these ideas with other knowledgable people all day, as religion.



Creationism's pedigree comes to us through religion and theology. Advocates of scientific creationism go further by making the false claim of a scientific pedigree for their religious belief. Pseudoscience is the false claim of scientific origins for an idea that has none. So this claim that creationism, which appeals to the supernatural origin of the material universe, is pseudoscience.



Now my view is this: this is a free country. If people want to take the Genesis Creation stories (there are two such stories in Genesis) literally, that is their right. And if they want to believe that the world was created as the result of a cosmic battle of gods and goddesses, in which the body of Tiamat the Dragon Goddess was split in half to make the heavens and the earth, that is also their right. And I have no argument with it, so long as I am not asked to believe in Tiamat. And I also respect a person's right to teach his/her children those beliefs. Again, as long as I may teach my own children my take on B'reshit (which is what Jews call the book of Genesis), and as long as I am free to teach my children science, I have no problem with such people. Mind you, I think they are wrong about it, but it's a free country. I have no argument with them.

But I do have a problem and an argument with those who go beyond an honest belief in a religious idea, to a claim that creationism has a scientific pedigree when it does not. This kind of claim is false, and it also dishonest. Such a person is going beyond his/her own freedom to believe as they think is right to an attempt to foist unscientific ideas upon others who are paying for and expecting to learn what science teaches.



Everyone in the United States, even the Evangelical Christians, have a right to adhere to and teach their children their own religious world view. Just be honest about it. Call it what it is: religion. Don't call it science.



PS: The Cartoons were forwarded to me from a Biochemistry Discussion List with a great but suggestive title along the lines of: If Helicase Can Part DNA, Can I Unzip Your Genes? The other pictures are from Wiki Commons.

Road Construction: A Real Life Learning Experience

Contractors have been working most of the past month to complete a new road that will access the new phase of our development in the high meadow. The road is an extension of our road, Los Pecos Trail. It runs south of our house, where it will join a new road, Los Pecos Loop, that will access the hillside east of the end of Los Pecos, and the meadow west and south of it. N. and I have decided to make the best of the noise, dust and inconvenience in order to learn about how developments are planned and roads are built.



Neither N. nor I have seen a road completely built, and since our developer is a civil engineer of great skill, we are seeing a road built RIGHT.

Last fall, before the snow, the worker cleared the right-away of vegetation, and rocks, and created the road bed.

To do so in our area, they had to stabilize the clay soil by mixing it with lime.





In our mountains, the soil is a clay-loam neosol that sits on top of the Pennsylvanian Madera Formation limestone, which is faulted, cracked and pitted with solution basins. The soil on top of the Madera is full of expandible clay minerals that hold cations on the surface of each crystal. The anionic lime attracts and bonds with these cations and makes the clay less likely to expand in the presence of water. This is important to keep the road bed on top of it from cracking and slipping and slumping.



Another important part of building a road from scratch, is the job of bringing utilities along it and up to the property lines of the new lots.

According to the East Mountain Plan, all utilities must be brought in underground for added safety and to preserve views. So in the past two weeks or so, five-foot trenches have been dug along one side of the right-away, along the entire new road.
In this trench, you can see the conduits through which run electrical lines, and fiberoptic cable for telephone and internet service. Cable television is not available in this area, so if folks want luxury TV, they get satellite networks installed.

The water lines were installed separately last fall. We actually had a trench across our driveway for a little while for that job.

In most of the East Mountain communities, there are no sewer systems nor is there a municipal treatment system, because most of us do not live in municipalities. So each homeowner installs a septic system and leech field. Some communities do gray-water processing, and those residents put in a partial, black-water septic system. One community here has an organic waste processing system that recycles both gray and black-water. They use it to support a golf course.



Here in the high meadow, the utilities can be seen at the property lines. In the center, are conduits that contain electrical wires and fiberoptic cables. On either side, the white cylinders are protective casing for water line check-valves, that will eventually be hooked up to water meters. Here, our water is provided by a water co-operative, and each lot owner must buy a membership.

Yes, even here in the boonies, we have fire hydrants. They are required as part of the East Mountain Fire-Wise Plan. Each development must not only install hydrants, but also puts together a fire plan that includes rules about vegetation, and also an evacuation plan in case of wild fire.

In our neck of the woods, natural gas lines are also uncommon. Most of us have a propane tank leased from a proprane company, and many of us have alternative heating, such as passive solar and/or wood and pellet stoves.



We also learned a lot about drainage issues that come with the development of roads. Dirt roads drain more naturally, but become rutted and impassible during mudtime in the spring. And even the grade of dirt roads can block arroyos and small drainages.


Asfalt roads are more convenient but creat greater drainage problems because runoff is rapid. The head of the Sedillo Canyon drainage runs right through our development, and the new road crosses it. The drainage itself will be open space, so as not to impede the movement of water downstream. But the road needs a culvert, about 100 yards above the canyon proper. The upstream side is pictured.

This is the most serious culvert I have seen in our development. The pipes are about four feet in diameter. The rocks are placed on a liner in a sag-pond arrangement, that will slow down the flow across the culvert in times of heavy rain, rationing the water that runs into the canyon in order to preserve a more natural flow rate.



At other points along the road, small rock walls, small dams, and artificial rills have been created on the upstream side, in order to slow the flow of water onto the road. This will prevent pooling and flooding, and also will prevent mudslides onto the road. (Yes that is snow above the rock dam. It is taking a long time to melt even with the recent warm weather).

Mother nature destests unnatural flat zones on hillsides, and will use weathering to even out the slope again. So roads on hillsides require constant maintenance to keep them clear.

What is really cool about this project, is that no rocks have been brought in. All of the rock used for preparing the roadbed and for drainage was dug out of the hillsides to make way for the roadbed.

Unschooling means that we can take the opportunity to learn from what is happening right here and now. In fact, not only is N. studying numerous subjects in unconventional ways, but I am learning something new every day. Through our talks with the work crew and our study of the new road, we are learning about Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Civil Engineering, Physics, and more. Think of the social skills N. is practicing by asking intelligent questions of the work crews, and seeking to know about their lives and work. And he is learning about difference cultures and languages, too. Many of the workers speak excellent Spanish. I never thought I'd learn how to say 'front-end loader' in Spanish.

This is all, as N. puts it, "Way too cool!"

"Dieting Is For The Birds...

...if you don't like birds."

--Ancel Benjamin Keys (of K-rations fame).



Sandy, over at Junkfood Science has a great post with the details of the Minnesota Starvation Study, done during World War II.



The study was undertaken in order to learn as much about the effects of starvation and refeeding, which was a pressing concern, given the starvation of victims of the war in Europe. The study de-bunked everything that we've 'known' about eating, obesity, and dieting ever since Galen.



Sandy writes:

"...This past week while the country went into a furor over that discriminatory legislation targeting obese people — and countless interests proposed their own solutions for eradicating obesity, from banning all-you-can eat buffets, fast food or sodas; to mandating vegan or macrobiotic diets or compulsory exercise; to more funding for diets or bariatric surgeries — very few people got just how scientifically insupportable any of it really was."



If you read nothing else about the "science" of weight loss, this is the summary to read.



And enjoy--really enjoy--your dinner tonight.

It's Always the End of the World As We Know It: A Review of The Little Ice Age

Today is the last day of the winter term break at UNM, and tomorrow I begin the spring term studies. My time to read what I want will become more limited as my spring semester studies begin in earnest by the end of this week. So over the weekend just past, I completed a book I had begun shortly after the secular new year.

Tomorrow is also Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year of Trees, which is the Jewish Arbor Day, and has become a time to consider our dependence on Earth's ecology. It is therefore doubly fitting that I finished reading Brian Fagan's The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850. (Basic Books, New York, 2000) just this morning.

In honor of Tu B'Shevat, then, as well as a commemoration of 5 weeks in which I got a lot of miscellaneous reading done, I thought I'd discuss this book today on my blog.

I first heard about a climatic event called 'the little ice age' when I was working on a BS in Geology in Illinois in the early '80's. It was discussed briefly in the Historical Geology course I was taking, as well as later, in an Astronomy class that I took for fun. I knew it as a period of colder climate that affected primarily the northern hemisphere during the early modern period, that it was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period and followed by the Modern Warm Period, in which the earth's average temperature once again is stable, high and climbing. There was some speculation at the time that changes in ocean currents in the north Atlantic Ocean may have been a cause of the colder period that followed the Medieval Warm Period. Later, when I was studying Paleoclimatology under Dr. Roger Andersen at UNM, I heard more about how changes in water salinity in the north Atlantic could have stopped the warm Gulf Stream from crossing east south of Greenland, thus affecting the climate of Europe during the little ice age. So when I saw Fagan's book toward the bottom of the stack on weather at our little East Mountain Branch library, I thought I might find out more about this interesting period in European and Earth history.

I read the preface at the library, while waiting for N. to finish his selections. I tend to do this in order to decide which books that I have taken off the shelves are really worth checking out and lugging home. What really intrigued me was that Fagan promised the reader that he would not only discuss the little ice age in terms of the science we have now, but also the impact it likely had on European history, as well as how ongoing climate change might continue to affect us. Fagan wrote:

"Humanity has been at the mercy of climate change for its entire existence. Infinitely ingenious, we have lived through at least eight, perhaps nine, glacial episodes in the past 730,000 years. Our ancestors adapted to the universal but irregular global warming since the end of the Ice Age with dazzling opportunism. They developed strategies for surviving harsh drought cycles, decades of heavy rainfall or unaccustomed cold...(but t)he price of sudden climate change in famine, disease and suffering, was often high." (Preface p. xii).

Fagan then discussed the current state of the science of reconstructing the climatic fluctuations and what that means for what we know, saying: "...the Little Ice Age was far from a deep freeze. Think instead of an irregular see-saw of rapid climatic shifts, driven by complex and still little-understood interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean...the Little Ice Age was an endless zigzag of climatic shifts, few lasting more than a quarter century. Today's prolonged warming is an anomaly." (Preface, p. xiii).

I was hooked! This was going to be really interesting, especially given all of the controversy about global climate change in our discussion of the politics of the day. So often, as I have discussed here, we tend to think of the past climate as if it was one long now, with change only happening in the future, and we think in very short periods of time.

Fagan structured the book in four parts, each about a particular time period related to the subject, and each part is divided into chapters that discuss the the climatic shifts, the science behind their causes as we know them, and the related historical events and social changes that were affected, at least in part, by the climate. Part I, Warmth and Its Aftermath, gives information about the Medieval Warm Period and the social and agricultural activities that it affected, such as the Norse exploration of Iceland, Greenland, and North America (Vinland), and the increasing agricultural use of lands northwards and at high elevations in Europe. He then discusses the North Atlantic Oscillation (the NAO, similar to the ENSO cycle of the Pacific) and how the stability of the NAO contributed to the warm period and how the predictability of the climate encouraged the medieval European social structure called "the Full World" by the French. He then discusses how, by the end of the Medieval Warm Period, the NAO was weaker and more unpredictable, leading to the Great Famine of 1315 - 1321 signaled the beginning of the instability of the Little Ice Age.

Part II, The Cooling Begins, starts with a discussion of the 'climatic see-saw' that characterized the Little Ice Age. Here Fagan outlines the evidence for changes in climate found in tree rings and ice cores, and ties this information to events such as volcanic eruptions, and descriptions of storms and bad weather. He then outlines how these climatic changes first affected trade in the North Sea and with Iceland and Greenland, the breaking of the Hanseatic League monopoly on cod fisheries, and the abandonment of the Greenland Western Colonies. He also discusses the development of ships better able to withstand storms and ice, as well as the economics behind these changes and how they were precipitated, in part, by the climate see-saw.

In Part III, the End of the 'Full World,' Fagan turns to the organization of European agriculture at the end of the Medieval Warm Period, and the changes brought on by the onset of an unpredictable climate. He begins this part with a description of subsistence agriculture and what it means: farmers grow enough to feed a small number of people for that year, and they may harvest enough to survive one bad year, but no more. Fagan then goes on to explain how the rapid climatic shifts and many bad years during the Little Ice Age resulted in an agricultural revolution in Europe, but not all at once and not for everyone. Political structures and custom, as well as the varying impact of the unpredictable NAO on different regions, had much to do with which parts of Europe developed more intensive commercial agriculture and when. The Low Countries and England, both politically more innovative, did so first, and France, with its entrenched nobility and top-down decision making was dead last. The Little Ice Age, Fagan says, did not in itself cause the violence of the French Revolution, but climatic shifts resulting in a series of bad harvests had a hand in the timing of it. To me this part was the most compelling in the book, because in it, Fagan related events to a much more precise understanding of the climate at the time, for in discussions of more recent events, records using modern measurements of temperature and precipitation were available. This part ends with descriptions of two catastrophic events that came near the end of the Little Ice Age: the Year without a Summer brought on by the eruption of Tambora, and the 'Great Hunger' of the Irish Potato Famine, brought on by a combination of climate, oppressive political rule and indifference of the English, and the establishment of monocultural subsistence farming in Ireland.

Fagan concludes the book in Part IV, The Modern Warm Period, with a discussion of what we do and do not know about the causes of the current global warming. Currently, he says, the data show that we are experiencing warming equivalent to the Medieval Warm period, and thus can expect to see vineyards in Britain, and the movement of arable land northward and to high elevations. But is this the result of the cycle of warming and cooling that the earth has experienced since the end of the last glacial period, or does human activity (increasing greenhouse effect due to the burning of hydrocarbons) play a major role now? The answer, Fagan says, will not be definitively know for possibly 30 more years, although the evidence points to an increased role for human activity. This is because we are only now beginning to understand the role of solar activity (sunspot cycles--minimums and maximums, as well as changes in solar radiation) in producing earth's climatic cycles. (You can find more about this topic here). I found this little discussion compelling, and I want to share it with you:

"What form will this (new era of climate change) take? One school of thought...is serenely unfazed by global warming. Gradual climate change will bring more benign temperatures...milder winters and more predictable weather--much like earth in the time of the dinosaurs. Humanity will adjust effortlessly to its new circumstances, just as it has adjusted to more extreme changes in ancient times.

"The record of history shows that this is an illusion. Climate change is almost always abrupt, shifting rapidly within decades, even years, and entirely capricious. The Little Ice Age was remarkable for its rapid changes...(and) the same pattern of sudden change extends back to the Great Ice Age of 15,000 years ago, and probably to the very beginnings of geolocical time." (p. 213).

The very last paragraphs of the book describe how glacial melt-water flowing into the North Atlantic 11,000 years ago completely shut down the warm oceanic conveyor currents, and stopped an earlier warming period "in its tracks." This created the Younger Dryas, a 1,000 year long cold period that brought Europe to near-glacial conditions. It happened rapidly, within a decade or two, and was a complete climatic shift.

Fagan says: "Even if the present warming is entirely of natural origin...we and our descendents are navigating uncharted climatic waters. In that respect we are no different than medieval farmers or eighteenth-century peasants, who took the weather as it came. Today we can forcast the weather and model climatic change, but globally we are still as vulnerable to climate as were those who endured the famine of 1315 or the storms of the Spanish Armada...The vicissitudes of the Little Ice Age remind us of our vulnerability again and again..." (p. 217).

It will take me some time to really chew over the lessons of the Little Ice Age, its impact on history, its warnings for the future. But I can say now that one thing that made this book so fascinating and so compelling to my thought, was that Fagan did not, in the end, attempt to give a definitive answer about global climate change and its trajectory and causes. Nor was he overly prescriptive in what we ought to do, if anything, to meet its challenges. Rather, he shows us through eyewitness descriptions, science, literature and art, how suddenly, how irrevocably the world as we know it can change, and has changed. Indeed, when we face an unknown future, it's always "the end of the world as we know it."

The State of the Snow

This morning's walk and the very cold weather we've had in the past week brought up a very good question.

We got five inches of snow last week. And the temperature has not got above freezing since then. But the snow looks now like less than five inches, and it is ragged and crunchy where the sun shines on it. But if the temperature has continued well below freezing, then what happened to the snow?

It's a very good question. I really like it when N. asks questions like that. Technically, N. is doing science through his Kamana II studies, which is mainly the ecology of the Sandia Mountains, as well as related natural phenomena. But weather and climate are part of the local ecology.

In the picture to the left and the picture above, you can see that there is no longer a uniform covering of five inches of snow on the ground. Where did it go, indeed!

The answer is not magic, it is sublimation. On earth, matter exists primarily in three states: solid, liquid, and gas, listed here in order of increasing energy. A fourth, and very energetic state of matter, plasma, is not so common on earth, but is very common in the universe.

Normally, we think of snow--a solid state of water--as being removed by melting to become liquid water, which happens when the temperature gets above 32 F (0 C), which is the freezing point for water.

So what is happening in the picture on the right, where there is no water--and, in fact, the temperature was 8 degrees F, which is well below the freezing point? Shouldn't the snow just hang around as a solid until the temperature gets high enough for a phase transition from solid to liquid?

In two words, not always.

Sometimes, when the vapor pressure at the surface of the solid is lower than the triple point for that substance, the whole liquid state is skipped. The state transits directly from a solid to a gas. This kind of phase change is called "sublimation."

Here, in our desert mountains, we lose a lot of snow to sublimation because the air is not capable of holding very much moisture due to altitude. Nor does it retain heat well, because of how dry it is.

This means that on a sunny, very cold day when there is snow on the ground, the sun hits the surface of the snow and as it reflects back, it warms the air above it. This lowers the vapor pressure at the surface of the snow, so that sublimation occurs. Sometimes, when the light is right, you can actually see the waves of water vapor coming off the snow. As sublimation occurs, the snow becomes pitted and crunchy, not from melting and refreezing, but from sublimation.

In the picture, you may notice that the dirt now visible due to loss of snow from sublimation is frozen, and quite dry.

This continued very cold and clear weather due to a high pressure parked over the Four Corners region means that we will not get a lot of mud from melting of this snow cover.

And the 'shoe yekke' in me likes that. This means reduced vacuuming and mopping and washing of rugs.

On the other hand, this very common way for the snowcover to disappear also means that we do not retain as much water in the soil, perpetuating the dryness of our desert mountains.

Science:It's everywhere!

Even on our morning walk.

It's Not Another Shot in the Ritalin Wars

A few weeks ago a neuroimaging study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Normally, many such studies are published in various journals in science and medicine without a whole lot of fanfare. But this one had a magic phrase in the title. The phrase was one that gets ideologues everywhere very excited. The title of the study is:

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation

The magic phrase? Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
In the weeks since the study was published, the press and blog worlds have been having a great deal of fun making the conclusions into another shot in the ideological "Ritalin Wars."
Some writers have claimed that AD/HD does not exist. Others have used it to claim that AD/HD is an artifact of poor diet, bad parenting, and/or curriculum reform in the public schools. Some have actually come to the conclusion that the title might suggest, that AD/HD is definitively a form of developmental delay. As we shall see, though, despite the way you might read the title, that is not the conclusion of the study.

Being a scientist myself, I decided that I would not weigh in on the conclusions until I had the chance to actually read the study. Today, as I procrastinate on a research paper I am writing, seemed like the ideal time to do so. So I went to the NY Times article from a few weeks ago and got the journal title for the article, as well as the name of the first author. Then I connected to my university library system -the joys of technology are without number!--and in five minutes I had used the e-journal finder to navigate to Highwire Press and download a pdf file copy of the study.

You can try this at home, but you may have to pay a fee to download the study. Most journals are made available to students and researchers via institutional subscriptions to publishers and databases. The article was published earlier this month in the PNAS. It is in the current issue.
The citation is:
Shaw, P. et. al. (2007). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is characterized by a delay in cortical maturation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (49) 19649 - 19654.

It is a very good study. The methodology was good, the number of subjects was impressive--446 human subjects--and the conclusions made matched the data that was published. This study overall is an excellent advance in tracking brain anatomy differences between subjects that carry the diagnosis of AD/HD and those that do not.

In the abstract the researchers say:
There is controversy over the nature of the disturbance in brain development that underpins attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In particular, it is unclear whether the disorder results from a delay in brain maturation or whether it represents a complete deviation from the template of typical development.
They are telling us the purpose of the study: to get evidence that might solve the controversy in the field. But pay attention to the wording. The controversy is not whether or not the disorder results from a delay in brain maturation, but whether or not it "represents a complete deviation from the template of typical development." The question they is whether or not AD/HD can result partly from a delay in brain maturation.

The authors repeat this in different words in the introductory paragraph:
Since its earliest descriptions, there has been debate as to whether the disorder is a consequence partly of delay in brain maturation or as a complete deviation from the template of typical development.

As I have said above, the data from their work does support their hypothesis that AD/HD is "a consequence partly of delay in brain maturation." That means they have done a good study. But one study does not an etiology make. It is important for the non-scientist to get it that one does not prove or disprove a hypothesis from one study, even one so well constructed as this one. Good scientists know this, and in the discussion section of any well-written scientific report, they will report caveats and weaknesses and any possible confounding variables. This is so that, when future studies are done, they (or others) can try to fill in the gaps for the study. That's usually done by fiddling with the methodology.

This study was a well-written study by good scientists and they do point out weaknesses that might be fixed in future work. In the very beginning they point out that many studies using physiological data (this study uses anatomical data)--that is how the brain is actually working--support their hypothesis, but there are also many other studies that find "a quantitatively distinct neurophysiology, with unique architecture of the (EEG) and some highly anomylous findings in functional imaging studies, more in keeping with ADHD as a deviation from typical development." This is interesting. When I first heard of the study and heard that it was done using anatomical imaging, I wondered about what functional imaging would show. If I want, I can check it out.

Geek Alert! A question I now have is this: fMRI studies require the use of fluorescent dyes or other ways of getting the signal above ground. These are not usually done on children (for obvious reasons). So I wonder if these confounding studies are targeting an adult population with ADHD? If so, it could be that we are dealing with two very different populations. After all, adults with ADHD would be the children who did not grow out of it.

Another issue: The study was done using anatomical imaging and not functional imaging. The researchers used very good techniques to get at the maturational rate of various parts of the brain, but ultimately they were still measuing gray matter (neuron cell bodies) cortical thickness. Two questions: Are there differences between the two populations in the percentage of gray matter v. white matter (glia and myelenation)? And what about physiological differences? Do the brains work differently? I saw an fMRI study just this morning that showed differences in activation in the pre-frontal cortex (Brodman 9) for adults with ADHD (little to no activation) and typical adults.

In other words, anatomy is not the whole story here.
And to be fair, it was not the authors who claimed that it was.
That would be the press and pundits and ideologues. In other words, those who either did not bother to read the study carefully or those who have an axe to grind when it comes to issues about AD/HD.

So what did we find out from this study? We found out that part of the difference between kids with a diagnosis of ADHD and those without, is in the rate of brain maturation. Kids with AD/HD diagnoses (it was a mixed group of kids with primarily hyperactive, primarily inattentive and combined types) have brains in which the cortices mature more slowly, delayed by approximately 3 years, with a very significant p value. And we found out that in these kids, the brain development trajectory was the same for kids with and without ADHD.

But the researchers also analyzed the data for specific brain areas. And these tests showed that the trajectory of the brain development for all cortical areas was not identical. The kids with ADHD tended to have faster motor area maturation than those without. And they had slower executive function (frontal lobes!) maturation.
What does James Webb say of gifted kids? Farrari motor and dune buggy driver! It looks like the same developmental pattern is true for kids with ADHD.

This is very useful information. It is particularly useful for people who treat kids with ADHD as well as for people who teach them. It is very helpful in planning interventions to help these kids learn academically and function socially to know that their executive function maturity may be more than three years behind the average kid. As a teacher, as a researcher, and as a parent, I find this information to be extremely helpful and very interesting.

But it is not another shot in the Ritalin wars.

The authors did not say that ADHD does not exist. In fact, in their first paragraph, they define it as a neurological disorder. They describe the delayed maturation of the cortices of the brain as a "characterizing" ADHD. It is, then, a characteristic that could be used to differentiate people who have ADHD and people with other psychiatric diagnoses.

They did not say that children with ADHD should not be treated with stimulants like Ritalin. In fact, one possible confounding variable they mention is that 80% of the clinical population in the study (clinical = those with ADHD diagnoses) were being treated with stimulant medication. They do say that stimulant medication can be an effective short-acting treatment.

Finally, by calling the maturational delay a characteristic, the authors imply that there is another, more ultimate cause. They discuss this further in the last part of the discussion. The differences cannot be attibuted to intelligence or sociocultural factors because these were controlled in the design of the study. There is definite evidence that the differences are partly due to genetics because brain growth and development is controlled by molecules called neurotrophins and "polymorphisms within the brain-derived neurotrophic factor and
nerve growth-factor 3 genes have already been tentatively linked with ADHD."
A polymorphism is a difference in DNA base sequences from one individual to another.

A claim that genetics is involved in causing a neurological disorder does not mean that environment does not play a role. It is likely that something as complicated as differences in brain development is controlled by quite a few genes, that is, it is polygenic. It is also likely that some of those genes effect a number of different systems, that is, they are pleiotrophic. And of course, environment does affect gene expression--that is what proteins the genes make and when they are activated.

So that's it, folks. It is a very good study. It was done well, and as in most well-done scientific studies, it raises more questions for future work.

And the findings do not provide fuel for the ideologues among us.

Physical Activity: A Necessary Component of Learning

On Saturday, when our 30-day trial was up, we made the decision to enroll N. in the Black Belt Club at his Taekwondo school, Blackman TKD. It was a no brainer really. There are numerous benefits to the club. First, we get nearly a 50% discount on what we would pay otherwise for a two-year membership. Secondly, N. will get discounts of sparring equipment, seminars, competitions and private lessons. Thirdly, N. is making a long-term commitment to work toward a goal. As we all know by now, self-concept and confidence is gotten from the disciplined work that leads to achievement. Despite the persistent messages we all heard from the recovery movement in the '80's and '90's, there is no shortcut to good self-concept to be gained by being praised just for breathing.

But there is another benefit to this kind of physical training that is not often discussed in this day and age of No Child Left on the Playground. Physical activity and training is extremely important for the health and development of the brain. In all of our discussions of school reform and school achievement from Sputnik to A Nation at Risk, this is one area that has been consistently forgotten. The politics and theories of education, especially K-12 education, often conceive of children as nothing more than disembodied brains into which we can pour a fund of knowledge made from a predetermined, standardized mix. This is kind of like the space-age futuristics of the 1960's, when we thought that we would get all our nutrients from pills and our Vitamin C from Tang. But here it is, already the 21st century, and we find that there are numerous health benefits to be gotten from actually eating!

Now we find ourselves in the age of No Child Left Untested and we still have the idea that we can somehow force children to learn the same stuff at the same rate if we just take away playground equipment and spend recess time remediating them with endless worksheets--a kind of drill-and-kill method of standardizing the minds of children. I suppose that this is to expected of a society that denies that there is such a thing as human nature as well as denying our evolutionary origins within nature.

But try as we might, we still have to deal with the pesky fact that the systems of our intellect require the use of the whole body to develop well. Motor skills are intimately involved with such amazing intellectual feats as "reading and 'riting and 'rithmatic." And motor coordination is developed by the use of the body. Essentially, it takes brains to develop coordinated movement and it takes coordinated movement to wire brains. After all, a disembodied brain would have no reason to function, since the whole point of the brain is to take in and process information of all kinds in order to make decisions about activities that will enhance the survival of the organism in which it resides!

In the past decade, even as we have busily put kids behind the flickering screen for hours, removing them from the physical world, the field of neuroscience has been busy discovering the biological basis for the importance of physical activity for intellectual development and, even more basically, mental health.

In 1997, a paper published in Nature described an experiment that demonstrated that neurogenesis (the formation of new, functional neurons) occurs in the adult human brain. This means that the brain continues to develop throughout the lifespan. The concept of neuroplasticity--which means that the brain changes based on how it is used--could now be demonstrated from the very basic level of the cell. Since that time, new information has been accumulated by neuroscientists that demonstrates that genetic and environmental factors both influence neurogenesis. What has been most thouroughly investigaged is the neural cell bodies in the hippocampus, an important part of the mammalian brain, which is the place where learning takes place and memories are formed. The kind of long-term electrical potentials that are required for learning are dependent upon a neurotransmitter called serotonin (5-HT). What is interesting is that we are learning that the neurogenesis of serotonergic neurons in the hippocampus can be upregulated by such environmental factors as physical activity, as well as an enriched environment, estrogen, and growth factors. There are other environmental factors that will do this as well, such as traumatic brain injury or ischemic events (oxygen deprivation from stroke or heart attack) and electroconvulsive shock therapy--but I don't think we want to go there!

Now consider the mental health problems that we know are correlated with low amounts of serotonin in the neural synapse: depression, anxiety, attention deficits, perseverations and so forth. Please note that I am not saying that it is the lack of serotonin in the synapses that cause all of these--in fact, what happens is an imbalance in a number of transmitters due to developmental differences in the brain's structure that make a person susceptible to these neurological problems--but we know from research and drug therapies that increased serotonin in the synapses greatly alleviate these problems and that environmental factors such as ongoing stress increases them. Furthermore, we know that many neurological syndromes such as ADHD, OCD, and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), share symptoms such as anxiety and depression and perseverations.

Essentially, physical activity is important for mental health for all of us. Yesterday, when I was reading abstracts from journals in order to formulate a review paper I am writing for Neurophysiology class about adult hippocampal neurogenesis of serotonergic neurons and depression, I counted at least ten papers published in the past year or two that discussed (at least in part) the benefits of physical activity on neurogenesis and the upregulation of serotonin. And it is really important for our children who have such neurological problems as ADHD or depression or ASD. Although physical activity is not a cure for these developmental problems, it is part of the treatment.

Our children need and deserve plenty of time playing outside in the physical environment. Among mammals, play is important work that develops strength, reflexes and ultimately, develops the brain and the intellect. This is not just leisure activity to be used to fill in the time when they are not learning. As John Holt used to say, we are "learning all the time."

So when your kids are playing outside, running, jumping, and climbing trees, they are learning. Or when they are playing catch in yard, swimming, or practicing their Taekwondo, they are learning. And when someone asks why they are not inside doing more worksheets, smile sweetly and tell the person that your kids are getting physical activity in an enriched environment and are thus growing serotonergic neurons in the hippocampus.

I promise that if you say this, when they are done checking their dictionaries, they'll never mess with you again!