Lily Salter's Blog, page 1019
August 15, 2015
What stress does to your brain
Stress can be a dangerous enemy for the brain. In fact, it can have serious effects on your brain's ability to operate properly. While stress appears to have originated from our instinctual "fight or flight" response, which is the instinct that decides if an animal should fight something trying to kill it or run away, we don't have to deal with that much anymore in everyday life, so it has adapted in different ways. "Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out," Robert Sapolsky, a famous Stanford University neuroscientist, said during an interview in 2007. "But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick." The way stress affects the brain directly and how that changes over time is complicated, but there is a growing body of research aimed at understanding just that. A Yale study from 2012 found stress can shrink the brain in the areas that control emotions and metabolism. The researchers believe prolonged stress is actually more effective at causing this shrinking than specific traumatic events. They believe prolonged stress can cause a person's ability to avoid things like substance abuse and risky behavior to decrease. Another study from the University of California, Berkeley found that chronic stress, even at relatively low levels, can make a person prone to mental illness later in life. Specifically, stress damages the integrity of the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with memory and emotions. Hormones like cortisol and other biological reactions created by stress essentially disrupt the balance of how much white and grey matter the brain is creating, which affects how the brain operates. The hippocampus is believed to be strongly connected with emotional disorders and sometimes serious psychological problems. A lot of the stress people deal with today is completely different from stresses people dealt with in the past, which can make it difficult to keep up with how we're morphing our brains. Bruce McEwen, a leading neuroscientist at Rockefeller University, told ATTN: that "pace of life for some, 24/7 email ... financial concerns, job instability, worry about health and access to healthcare, being a caregiver [possibly] for an autistic child or an Alzheimer patient, commuting and jet lag, poor sleep, lack of physical activity, social isolation, social media (especially among young people) causing anxiety, sleep disruption, noise and pollution, [and] living in a dangerous neighborhood" can ALL be causes of serious stress in the modern world. He said it's important to note that there is a difference between a traumatic event and being consistently or very regularly stressed, as those two things affect the brain differently. Traumatic events can obviously cause forms of lifelong stress, and acute and/or chronic stress can negatively effect the brain, depending on what kind of stress it is. "The healthy brain can handle acute and chronic stress,"McEwen said. "There is positive stress, like going for a job interview or giving a talk with good outcomes, and tolerable stress—job loss, ending a relationship—where one has good self-esteem and a helpful social network and financial resources, and then there is 'toxic stress', where one lacks these things and cannot cope." Stress that has to do with things that are outside of your control and causes negative thinking, which, for an extended periods of time is typically not healthy. People can combat these harmful effects with various treatments, from meditation to therapy. That being said, there are also times when a little stress gets you motivated to do things you're unfamiliar with. More from Attn: How your partner's personallity affects your workplace success What negative thinking does to your brain Here's the reason you're always late 
Richard Dawkins’ moralizing atheism: Science, self-righteousness and militant belief — and disbelief
I have chosen to dally on this graveyard pathway by St Stephen’s Church on my way to the Chapelfield shopping centre, where I have business at the Apple Store. I reckon it is a good place to observe the reaction of passers-by confronted by reminders of mortality. But it’s not. They are oblivious, or if not, they are unfazed by the headstones, entirely focused on their mission of retail therapy. Unusually the church has all its doors flung wide. It is busy with excessively cheerful young men and women who purport to be running a cafe. It is a pilot project of an evangelical organization calling itself Norwich Youth for Christ. They plan to be there for a few days each week throughout the summer. It is a perfect pitch. They estimate that 50,000 people pass by in a week, 50,000 potential soldiers for Christ. They want me too. ‘I’m pretty much an atheist,’ I hear myself explaining, trying to inject the regretful tone that will tell them both that they are wasting their time and that I do not wish to be impolite. It sounds like an apology. Afterwards, I wonder why I did not simply say I am an atheist and leave it at that. I realize it is because it might seem confrontational, aggressive, dogmatic. Would an adjective have softened the blow? It would not have occurred to me to say, as some do, that I am a ‘committed atheist’. I have experienced no process of committal. I just am an atheist, and that’s all. It’s part of me that doesn’t take up much space.There is no ongoing dedication on my part. It’s not that I am wavering; I am committed. It’s just that I’m not committed in the way that Richard Dawkins is committed, in terms of devoting vast amounts of energy to an atheist project. I don’t believe in God or a god. Yet I am uncomfortable with declared atheism. Why is this? Am I in fact agnostic – that weasel word of English compromise for someone who isn’t sure? Am I? No: I actually disbelieve. Round here, I am not alone. The national census of England and Wales conducted in 2011 showed Norwich to be, as newspapers gleefully reported a few days before Christmas, the most godless city in the country. Norwich Youth against Christ, anybody? Just 44.9 per cent of people in the local authority area put Christian as their religion, while 42.5 per cent ticked the box for ‘No religion’. The national averages were 59.3 per cent and 25.2 per cent respectively. Nationally, the number of people giving Christianity as their religion fell by more than 10 per cent from the previous census in 2001 (the first time it was thought interesting to include a question on religion). The numbers saying they have no religion rose by a similar percentage. Inevitably called upon for his comment, the Bishop of Norwich suggested that the census made it easier to say no than yes to the religion question (‘No religion’ was the first option on the checklist), and complained, oddly, I thought, for a faith leader, that there was no provision for people to position themselves where they felt they belonged on a spectrum of interest in religion. I have other atheist credentials, too. Scientists and science writers are some of the most militant atheists around. From time to time, members of science academies are polled about their religious beliefs. According to one recent American study, about a third claim some form of belief in a higher power. A 1998 study published in Nature, cited by Richard Dawkins, found that the proportion of believers is dramatically less among more senior scientists. Among those elected to the National Academy of Sciences, only 7 per cent believed in a personal god. Though he might wonder about God’s bottom – ‘we are ignorant of the backparts, or lower side of his Divinity’ – Browne knows that scientific enquiry must have a stop. ‘How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to beleeve onely possibilities, is not faith, but meere Philosophy; many things are true in Divinity, which are neither inducible by reason, nor confirmable by sense.’ The popular perception that science and religion are at war is as old as modernity, but it was given its present character by the Oxford evolution debate in 1860, a few months after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. On this now famous occasion, Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, took on ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, Thomas Huxley. Was it from his grandfather or his grandmother that Huxley claimed his descent from an ape, the bishop wanted to know. Huxley struggled to be heard amid the hilarity and it seems that Wilberforce had the best of it on the night. The debate is back in the spotlight more than a century later, prompted by who knows what – the advent of space travel, the ecological crisis, sectarian conflicts, a rise in Christian fundamentalism? This time it seems the boot is on the other foot, with religion finding no coherent answer to the trenchant arguments of scientific atheists such as Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins. To follow their logic, it would seem that there should be neither religious scientists nor believers who value the principles of science. In fact, the ‘war’ is greatly exaggerated. Scientists and religionists seldom cross paths, let alone swords. Many believers are also scientific rationalists and many scientists are also believers. But it will not rest there. For some scientists who are also atheists, other scientists who have a religious belief are something that needs to be explained. When these scientists investigate religion, they do so, naturally, in their usual scientific way, approaching religion as a social construct (although they seldom concede that science is also one). They may discover, through magnetic resonance imaging scans, for example, that there is nothing to be seen in a believing subject’s brain that is any different from ordinary human emotion. Or they may argue that religious belief needs to be understood in terms of evolutionary biology. These endeavours might one day lay bare religious belief in terms of biology, and therefore ultimately in the materialist terms of chemistry and physics. But what would we really understand the better for having gone down this road? You get more straightforward answers if you simply ask the scientists themselves. Some turn to religion because they believe science has shown the universe – through the numerical values of the fundamental constants of physics, the position of our planet, and so on – to be ideally suited for our existence. More interesting are those scientists, who often start out as religious sceptics, but who find that science offers no adequate explanation of phenomena such as beauty, truth and love. Theirs is not a choice for faith, against reason, but an attempt to reconcile the two. For influential figures such as the Hungarian chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi or John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist later ordained as an Anglican priest, science and religion reveal different facets of the same reality. What we know is inevitably personal to us, they argue. This is the case even for scientific theories and mathematical axioms, since our conviction that they are true because they are seen to work is also personally apprehended. Scientific belief therefore finds itself on level terms with religious belief. The Islamic fundamentalist attacks of 11 September 2001 helped to create a new audience for atheism. Books by Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens as well as Dawkins (they have been dubbed the ‘four horsemen of the non-apocalypse’) argued that religious faith could or should be brought to an end. Dawkins made himself the cheerleader of the ‘new atheists’ when he set up the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science to hasten the day. His book The God Delusion makes the argument at length, but it is his frequent sulphurous outbursts on Twitter that better illustrate the furious tenor to which the spat (at this level it certainly cannot be called a debate) between religion and science has risen. Sample Tweet: ‘If one person claimed that a wafer was literally the body of a 1st century Jew,you’d certify him.That’s what Catholics officially believe.’ First of all, if a person claimed this, you wouldn’t actually certify him (or her) for this harmless delusion under any reasonable mental health legislation; which means this is a gratuitous insult. Second, it’s not quite what Catholics believe in any case: the bread and wine remain bread and wine (if one were rude enough to interpose a chemical analysis, say), but in the act of consecration their substance is changed into the substance of the body of Christ; according to the Catechism, it is a mode of His presence. Scientists may well have trouble with this, but semioticians will have less. Third, if it is what Catholics believe, then it is what they truly believe, not what they ‘officially believe’, a phrase that unreasonably projects Dawkins’s own distrust into the minds of these believers. Because of his combative language, and because his religiose scientism is so curiously like the fundamentalism he is attacking, Dawkins himself has become a target for abuse, although his supporters claim this is only because the believers can find no answer to his logic. Dawkins’s bracing asperities are now routinely met in kind: ‘Puffed up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant’ was one columnist’s string of adjectives for him. My problem is that I agree more often with Richard Dawkins than with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope, yet it is Dawkins who irritates me more. I am not looking for a middle ground – on the Bishop of Norwich’s spectrum of interest in religion I am still at the not-interested end – but I wonder if a more civil accommodation can be reached between religion and science. The signs are not good. Consider what happened when the geneticist Steve Jones published his recent book The Serpent’s Promise: The Bible Retold as Science. Jones dares to look at the Bible as a kind of record of early attempts to understand the world, in other words as a work of science, in which Genesis is a story of the origin of the universe and Leviticus reflects sensible dietary precaution. For this, he was treated to some vituperative criticism from Christians unhappy at seeing stories they were used to regarding as allegory or metaphor treated as if they might actually have had a basis in physical fact. At the end of his trek through ‘Dawkins’s Canyon’ – his name for the chasm between science and religion – Jones was forced to the odd conclusion that he in fact believes more of the Bible than many Christians do. * Thomas Browne’s footprints also run through Dawkins’s Canyon, for in Religio Medici and Pseudodoxia Epidemica he similarly considers possible natural origins of many biblical phenomena. Unlike Jones, Browne usually leans in the end towards the standard supernatural interpretation, even though he is fully aware of a plausible physical explanation. For example, he entertains the notion that the fire that consumes the altar of Elijah (i Kings 18) might be a geological eruption of flammable naphtha or bitumen, which he has seen used in experiments. But he swiftly rejects the idea as the suggestion of the devil, and affirms the Bible story conclusion. Thomas Browne’s best-known statement of his faith is made at the very beginning of Religio Medici:
For my Religion, though there be severall circumstances that might perswade the world that I have none at all, as the generall scandall of my profession, the naturall course of my studies, the indifferency of my behaviour, and discourse in matters of Religion, neither violently defending one, nor with that common ardour and contention opposing another; yet in despight hereof I dare, without usurpation, assume the honorable stile of a Christian.It is a superb sentence first of all, with each phrase patiently shaped and placed in sequence in such a way as to postpone the end so that, when it comes, it has the requisite drama of confession. We are given the time to admire the way each part is carved, to feel how it weighs against the next part, before we draw back and gain the depth of perspective to see it assembled as a whole composition. Yet Browne’s construction is still more artful than this. The sentence has not in fact been assembled in this way, for no part can now be removed without causing the whole thing to collapse. It has instead been organically hewn. Perhaps we experience something of the same disbelief before a wood carving by Grinling Gibbons when we realize that each exquisite detail has not been made separately and then added in, but rather its negative has been painstakingly chipped away to leave us with the final illusion of piled-up riches. It is in Religio Medici, according to Rose Macaulay, that Browne made ‘in the most exquisite and splendid prose of the century, the best and most agreeable confession of the Anglican religion ever, before or since, published’. In this affirmation, it is perhaps surprising that Browne considers it is not only his medicine – seen as suspect long before the seventeenth century began anatomizing the soul – but also his scientific hobby (‘the naturall course of my studies’) that leaves him open to charges of atheism. For the pursuit of scientific knowledge, to Browne, has the moral force almost of an article of faith. Browne does not immediately say what form of Christianity he follows – a crucial matter for a young man widely travelled in Europe, and recently returned to an England where the king had asserted divine right and was fighting Catholic rebellion in Ireland and Presbyterian resistance in Scotland. But a few pages later he daringly comes out with this: ‘I borrow not the rules of my Religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.’ For this, Religio Medici soon found itself on the papal index.* In short, his faith was supple as it had to be, firmly based in a conservative Anglicanism, yet adaptable to the requirements of the Commonwealth. It is impossible to doubt his basic loyalty to the Church of England when he deadpans that he has submitted all Churches to reasonable analysis and has found this is the one that comes out on top. * The first book of Pseudodoxia Epidemica itemizes the many sources of error that lead people to believe foolish things. The final cause Browne gives – after unreliable authors and credulous auditors – is the devil himself, who niggles at our mental weakness in numerous ways: ‘he would make us believe, That there is no God, That there are many, That he himself is God, That he is less then angels or Men, That he is nothing at all’. Satan is not only the direct progenitor of error, but also the automatic supporter of those who promote errors of their own. Pseudoscience is the devil’s work for Browne far more literally than it is for Dawkins or Simon Singh, today’s scourge of homoeopaths and chiropractors. And God and science find themselves allies. Elsewhere, Browne’s Christian faith leads him towards a moral philosophy that would surely be acceptable to persons of any religion – or none. Christian Morals, a late work not published until long after Browne’s death, might be expected to be a summation of his religion. And in a way it is, as the Christian message quickly gives way to a characteristic humanism, mingled with advice on how to go about things if, as it happens, you are a person a bit like Browne. The first few of seventy-nine numbered paragraphs begin with admonishments against the seven deadly sins – ‘Let Age not Envy draw wrinkles on thy cheeks’ for example. But soon, Browne is blandly recommending moderation in all things and telling us how to handle wealth and flattery. Much of it is completely secular advice on how to live that anybody might wish to follow: be your own master, be generous, try to see the good in everybody, don’t listen to gossip, be grateful for small mercies. It is all highly uncontroversial, an anodyne bookend to the protean Religio Medici. For a modern equivalent, I recommend the philosophical works of Alain de Botton and his School of Life. A few of the aphorisms contained in Christian Morals have a startling modern air: one might now be paraphrased as ‘respect difference’; another as ‘be yourself ’. But of course Browne says it all uncommonly well. He offers the tritest of marriage advice – don’t go to bed angry – as follows: ‘Let not the Sun in Capricorn go down upon thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in Ashes. Draw the Curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up in the Tower of Oblivion and let them be as though they had not been.’ He counsels us not to blame the stars; to study history, not predictions; and to act our age. One especially fine paragraph exhorts us not to waste time:
Since thou hast an Alarum in thy Breast, which tells thee thou hast a Living Spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour; dull not away thy Days in sloathful supinity & the tediousness of doing nothing.To strenuous Minds there is an inquietude in overquietness, and no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a Snail, or the heavy measures of the Lazy of Brazilia [the sloth], were a most tiring Pennance, and worse than a Race of some furlongs at the Olympicks.And in the midst of all, he throws in some invaluable advice to scholars and writers: avoid academicism; don’t be too harsh on other people’s mistakes; risk being wrong for the sake of bringing new knowledge to the world; don’t sweat the small stuff, or rather: ‘if the substantial subject be well forged out, we need not examine the sparks, which irregularly fly from it’. With his humanistic ethics and his dangerous medicine and science, would Browne be an atheist today? He offers the occasional hint that it is not inconceivable. He sometimes writes of Christians with a critical distance, as if he is not one himself. He writes about those ‘such as hope to rise again’, implying perhaps that he does not expect a Christian resurrection for himself. He even confesses in Urne-Buriall to a sneaking admiration for men ‘such as consider none hereafter’; for these – whether believers in other religions, pre-Christians or non-believers – ‘it must be more than death to dye, which makes us amazed at those audacities, that durst be nothing, and return into their Chaos again’. But when he tackles the matter directly, he says there can be no such thing as atheism, or at least there can be no ‘positive atheists’. For some philosophers who might be thought atheists, Browne goes to some lengths to find a reason why they were not. Epicurus was no atheist when he denied there was a beneficent god, for example; it is simply that the God of Christians was ‘too sublime’ to make himself known to him. The Stoics were also subject, without their knowing it, to God’s will, and so are no atheists either. Besides, it is the devil, as we have seen, who plants atheistic thoughts. It is hard now to recreate a sense of the almost complete impossibility of not being a religious believer in seventeenth-century England. But as I enter the Apple Store, symmetrically laid out with its central entrance door and an attractively illuminated high table at the far end, a parallel comes to mind. Digital technology seems to fill a large part of the mental space we reserve for faith. (Art, which is often put up as a candidate, is the opium only of a minority.) We depend on technology for the smooth running of our daily lives, if not for our salvation. We make obeisance to it, we feel obliged to buy into the whole package, rather than selecting and rejecting individual technologies. There is the familiar choice between minutely differentiated sects (Apple or Microsoft), but all must share the same basic creed. Upgrades are like revisions of dogma in which we have no say, but which we are bound to go along with anyway. To reject the technological is to declare oneself a heretic, a position as inconceivable now as declaring oneself an atheist in the 1600s. To be an atheist now seems almost too easy. I have nothing against church architecture or decent sacred music. The aesthetic is fine. My problem with the Christian faith comes when my ear snags on something the preacher has just said, and I make the mistake of thinking about what it might actually mean. On the radio, I take exception to the simpering neediness of English vicars (‘O Lord, make speed to save us’ – Yes, Lord, look sharp). ‘Thought for the Day’ on the radio morning news is usually a good moment to run a bit more hot water into the bath. Knowing how I feel, my wife gave me Dawkins’s The God Delusion for Christmas when it came out in 2006, but it soon found its way to the bedside table where it languishes still (like a hotel-room Gideon’s Bible?). A marker indicates that I got as far as page seventy-eight. I have not felt the urge to attend the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, a Christmas-time theatrical event hosted by the comedian Robin Ince, and organized by New Humanist magazine. Nor the Sunday Assembly, ‘a godless congregation that celebrates life’, a strange initiative apparently desperate to keep all the non-liturgical bits of church services – the getting together, enjoying a singalong, hearing some words to make you think, everything, in fact, except actual belief in a god. The Sunday Assembly’s slogan is warm and vague: ‘live better, help often, wonder more’. Of course, it sounds a bit religious. But the sentiments are secular, too. Who does not want to live better? And why should the religious have the monopoly when it comes to being charitable (a monopoly some believers are keen to retain, to judge by recent reports of atheists being barred from helping in food banks)? What about ‘wonder more’? What is wonder? Is it admiration of the intricacy and complexity of nature, and the potential for it to be understood; or is it throwing in the towel, admitting there are things that cannot be understood at which we can only wonder? What bothers me most, though, is the air of superiority hanging about the slogan. I can imagine that people who self-consciously go around living better, helping often and wondering more might be just as self-righteous as the worst sort of Christian moralist. Excerpted from "In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the 17th Century's Most Inquiring Mind" by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Published by W.W. Norton & Co. Copyright © 2015 by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
The religious right isn’t going away: Why proclamations of its decline are a dangerous myth
Because non-politicians like Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson have garnered the most attention during the GOP presidential primary thus far, another distinctive feature of this cycle's batch of candidates has gone relatively unnoticed. For all the talk and hype about the GOP modernizing and learning the lessons of the George W. Bush era — and for all the breathless speculation about the millennial generation and how it demands of politicians a different approach — the religious right's presence within the party remains formidable. The aforementioned Carson, for example, is in the habit of crediting God as inspiration for his tax reform proposals. And if he's not explaining public policy through religion, competitors like Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee can be relied on to step in for him. The unbroken influence of the religious right over one of America's two major political parties is just one of the many reasons why "God & Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom of Conscience," the latest book from the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is so valuable. For a quarter-decade, Lynn has been struggling with the forces that propel figures like Huckabee to the national stage and allow them to come so close to the reins of power. And while the recent, epochal successes of the gay rights movement, as well as the continued ascendance of pop feminism, may lead you to think that Mike Huckabee's America is coming to an end, Lynn reminds us that keeping religious fundamentalism out of public policy requires constant vigilance. Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Lynn about his work, the recent Supreme Court rulings on religious liberty and marriage equality, and why it's a mistake to laugh off people like Santorum and Huckabee, regardless of how silly they may seem. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length. In the book's introduction, you say you're optimistic about the country's future regarding the separation of church and state. But you also say vigilance will be required to make sure the gains of the last two generations or so are not lost. What would it mean to "lose" in this sense? One of the way you lose is if you're not vigilant about the issues that are essentially over as a matter of judicial inquiry. Prayer in schools, for example, is virtually on no one's radar anymore — except we find case after case where individual schools or school districts are trying to evade what is essentially settled law. Similarly, creationism and its white-coated friend "intelligent design" have been to court over and over again, even though it's pretty much a resolved legal question. The other way we could lose big is if certain practices that are completely inconsistent with the separation of church and state become seen as routine or normative. Such as? Funding ministries, for example, used to be unthinkable; even in the 1930s and '40s, governments did not believe they should pay for religious schools or hunger programs held in churches. But today, seven years into the Obama administration — and with two full terms of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" — we find it routine for organizations that are religious to believe they deserve government funding and that they deserve to have taxpayers pay for all of the things that they can't convince their own members to support voluntarily. Another that's become routine is the endorsement of candidates from the pulpit. Even the late Jerry Falwell used to say, Do not talk about politics from the pulpit. Then, of course, Jerry got a better offer — to run the Moral Majority — and he became obsessed with the idea of gaining political power. But now, thanks to the inaction of the Obama administration, there are no complaints being followed up about deliberate and obvious and over-the-line endorsements and opposition to candidates by religious institutions. Why do you think the Obama administration has been so hands-off? I think the administration is very nervous about religion, perhaps because of the large percentage of people who believe that a) Obama is secretly a Muslim; and b) that ought to matter. Also, I believe that he has been convinced by people on his staff as well as outside organizations that he cannot do anything that will be perceived as anti-religion. This president has been falsely accused of being anti-religion so many times that it's become a pattern; and were he to do one thing he promised to do during his first campaign — and has still not followed-up on — [which is to] stop permitting the hiring of people, with government money, in religiously related programs, on the basis of religion. That's currently ongoing? What the Catholic Conference and big charities like World Vision have essentially said is, We must be able to hire people like ourselves to do this work. Well, some of us think that if it's so important for that thing to happen, why don't [these groups] use their own money to find people who are just like yourself? Comfort level is not a constitutional criterion. We have heard this over and over again: We don't mind eating with African-Americans, said white people in the South in the '50s, but we just don't feel comfortable if they're next to us at the lunch counter. When there was an effort to bring men on as flight attendants in the '70s, there were airlines who said, Men, our principal business travelers, feel more comfortable being served by women in skirts. All that kind of thinking should be rejected when it comes to hiring, with government money, for religious institutions. Would you extend your criticism of the administration's timidity to the progressive community in general? I think the progressive community cares about the separation of church and state. But sometimes progressives look at religion too narrowly. I have to say, though, that in the last couple of years, they've been seeing it in a broader context. And not only regarding reproductive justice or the Hobby Lobby ruling. Speaking of Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court, which ruling do you think will be seen as more significant? That one or Obgerfell? Well, the most significant in a positive way was, of course, the marriage equality ruling because it finally announced as a fundamental right that people have a right to be married to the person they love, even if that person is of the same gender. Hobby Lobby, to me, was a disgraceful case. One of the worst rulings in modern history. Because to define as exercise of religion the kind of conduct that Hobby Lobby was engaged in — and therefore to consider that it was "protected" religious activity under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — was unthinkable during the discussion [surrounding] the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. How so? I played a role in writing [that bill] and never, never was there a discussion during that whole debate about whether corporations would be covered. It was never mentioned. People on the right, like Sen. Orrin Hatch, and people on the left, like Sen. Edward Kennedy, would never have agreed to co-sponsor a bill — and have all this marvelous, "Kumbaya" combination of [left-wing and right-wing] organizations — if people had ... mentioned anything outside of Muslim firefighters being allowed to grow a beard, prisoners being allowed to grow their hair longer than some states insist because he's Native American, etc. So [the ruling] was a big stretch into a principle that remains problematic, and that is, if you claim a religious objection to a law you don't like, even if you're a corporation, you have a colorable claim that you will be exempt from the law as it applies to everyone else. Do you worry that the Hobby Lobby ruling wasn't a big, long-sought victory for the religious right so much as the start of a more sweeping effort? Yeah. The only things we learned from Hobby Lobby that you can't use the practice of religion as an excuse for are: race discrimination and not paying your taxes. And, believe me, in the past, religious arguments were made against both. But in regard to any LGBTQ issues or other matters, Hobby Lobby was silent. As I noted at the beginning of our chat, you say in the book that you're optimistic about the future. Does that optimism extend to the future of the Republican Party? What I mean is, some observers think the power of the religious right within the GOP is waning. Do you? No, I don't. I think the religious right is just about as strong now as it was during Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. In polling, it looks like about 21 percent of the electorate considers itself to be part of the religious right; that's bad news; that's the biggest pressure group in the country. It dwarfs union votes or the votes of any other identifiable group. The good news is, when you break [those numbers] down further, the beliefs of millennials — including evangelical millennials — you find that they have a very different view of these social issues and of church/state separation issues from their fathers' or their grandfathers'. But the millennial vote in 2014 was pathetic. So there's something fundamentally wrong — a disconnect that has to be corrected in order to gain the optimism that I guardedly have. But the fact that these [religious right] folks appear to be silly doesn't mean they have lost their power. And to those who think they have lost their power, I recommend that they go to one of the big religious right conferences (which I go to almost every year) and listen to what is being said and watch the reaction of those people — 21 percent of the electorate — when a Sen. Ted Cruz says he's going to bring prayer back to public schools. Your point about the silliness being a distraction reminds me of Mike Huckabee, who recently hinted that he'd use the FBI to shut down Planned Parenthood. People laughed; but he wasn't kidding. And he's a popular guy right now in the Republican Party. Mike Huckabee is a popular guy, and he's particularly dangerous because he has views like that and believes the civil law of the country can be trumped by religious doctrine, as he understands it. And he's not alone in that. If you had a debate between him and Rick Santorum, Santorum would say the same thing; he'd say, Law is one thing but God's law is more important — which we hear a lot from [radicals] in Islamic states as well. So they are silly statements, but that shouldn't delude people into thinking there isn't something behind them and there isn't a large number of people who don't think it's funny at all. They think it's the right answer finally being spoken by major political candidates. That's what's frightening.
August 14, 2015
The 10 best movies that take place in one day
What a difference a day makes. In 24 hours, someone’s entire life can change—either incrementally, or in extreme ways. While films often provide a crucible for examining human nature, there is something heightened when characters face incredible pressure under a same-day deadline. Films that unfold over the course of a single day can take viewers on an intense, emotional journey, but they can also be extremely funny; see “Tangerine," last month's much-buzzed-about film, or “Grandma” when it opens this month. Opening this weekend is the droll comedy “Fort Tilden.” One night, Harper (Bridey Elliott) and Allie (Clare McNulty) befriend two guys a party, and agree to meet at the titular beach the next day. While Allie should be preparing for her stint with the Peace Corps (she’s leaving for Liberia), she takes the day off because she “deserves one day of happiness before shitting malaria blood.” The resourceful BFFs plan to bike to Fort Tilden but their efforts are met with setbacks, like trying to get an iced coffee, and distractions ranging from shopping sales to finding abandoned kittens. Their so-called “insane journey” is full of deadpan humor stemming from the young women’s awkward encounters with friends and strangers to a truth-telling session that arises after a series of bad decisions. “Fort Tilden” benefits from the rapport of its two leads, who make their friendship and frustrations believable as their day makes them reconsider their goals in life. While there are many “real time” examples (like the recent “Locke” or the classic “Cleo from 5 to 7”), here are 10 great films that portray characters having extreme transformations as they deal with issues ranging from adultery, abortion and anxiety to murder, love, death and maturation, all over the course of a single day. 1. “Do the Right Thing” Spike Lee’s incisive, incendiary masterpiece, set in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the year, remains a landmark film for its cogent depiction of race relations. After establishing the rhythms of the neighborhood, the film culminates with shocking violence that turns into a riot. Sal’s Pizza Parlor, a white-owned establishment in an almost entirely African-American neighborhood, becomes the epicenter of an attack that leaves a man dead and a neighborhood in crisis after simmering tensions explode. The strength of Lee’s work is not just that viewers come to understand each character—from the righteous Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) to the racist Pino (John Turturro)—but also care about them. What happens that day deeply affects each of them, prompting the characters (and the viewer) to confront truths within themselves. “Do the Right Thing” remains as potent today as it was when it was made. 2. “Rope” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 “experiment” to shoot an entire movie in a single take yielded this nifty (albeit stagy) thriller that takes place on a single set on a single day. Two students (John Dahl and Farley Granger) murder their friend David (Dick Hogan) and hide his body in a chest that they use to serve dinner to the victim’s friends, family and their clever former headmaster (Jimmy Stewart). Using eight 10-minute rolls of film, Hitchcock created a “single tracking shot” for “Rope,” using the backs of characters’ sports jackets to change reels, mark the passage of time, and ratchet up the suspense. 3. “Groundhog Day” Harold Ramis’ classic comedy has Phil Connors (Bill Murray), a weatherman, stuck in a time loop as he reports on Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who ritually foretells the end of winter by seeing (or not seeing) his shadow. After realizing his situation—and that he can change his actions and thereby affect other people’s seemingly unalterable routines—Phil becomes emboldened. He eventually learns how to seduce his producer (Andie McDowell) and improve his life by getting out of the rut he has been stuck in. “Groundhog Day” amusingly asks the existential question: “What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.” 4. “The Swimmer” Frank Perry’s canny adaptation of John Cheever’s short story has Ned Merrill (a very fit Burt Lancaster) “swim” his way home, pool by pool—“they form a river all the way to our house” he says—after attending a neighbor’s party. The experience provides an allegory for Ned’s life: every pool “reflects” something about his personal and professional disillusionments and dissatisfactions. His “brilliant or crazy” journey comes to define his suburban alienation and malaise and—if one sees the film as an arch comedy of manners—provides a commentary on propriety. Ned’s determination is noble, and Lancaster makes this “tragic antihero” empathetic as the film’s tone becomes increasingly somber and sobering. 5. “A Single Man” Based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Tom Ford’s stylish film portrays George (Colin Firth), a depressed gay man in 1962 Los Angeles still mourning the death of his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). George proceeds to say some goodbyes, empties his bank account, and plans to put a bullet in his head using the gun he has been carrying around. As he goes about his day, teaching a class and talking with a student, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), or meeting an old friend (Julianne Moore) for drinks, George remembers Jim and knows he is making the right decision to end his life. But then Kenny reappears at a bar, and their encounter that night might just be his salvation. Ford’s outstanding direction combined with Firth’s interior performance conveys George’s quiet, palpable despair. By the end of the day, he will not be the same. 6. “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” This astonishing Romanian drama, set during the Ceausescu regime, is a harrowing, unforgettable experience. Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days pregnant. She asks her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) to help her procure an illegal abortion. The film, directed by Cristian Mungiu, uses a series of artfully composed scenes to capture the emotional and physical suffocation these two young women experience over the course of that single, fateful day. Throughout the day, Otilia must negotiate with doctors and even cajole Gabita. One of the most striking scenes has Otilia solemnly attending a birthday party where everyone but her is celebrating, a powerful metaphor. This astonishing film builds slowly to its remarkable climax, which suggests Otilia is likely more visibly affected by the devastating events of the day than even Gabita is. 7. “American Graffiti” George Lucas’ ensemble film, about a group of high school students in 1962 Modesto, California, spending one last night together before many of them head off to college, was a touchstone of 1970s American cinema. The film’s nostalgia factor and its fantastic soundtrack made it a hit, and it inspired many imitators. Four friends hang out at the drive-in, cruise around in their cars, and make decisions about their future. Steve (Ron Howard) tells his younger girlfriend (Cindy Williams) he wants to see other people when he’s off at college and they argue all night; Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) is having second thoughts about attending college, and gets distracted trying to find a woman driver (Suzanne Somers) who may have mouthed “I love you” to him; Terry (Charles Martin Smith) befriends Debbie (Candy Clark) and tries to get some alcohol and connect romantically; and John (Paul LeMat), a drag racer, spends the night driving around with Carol (Mackenzie Phillips), a 13-year-old, much to his chagrin. Each storyline is engaging and the characters are all funny and charming in their own ways; they are all (save 22-year-old John) teenagers. But by the end of the film and the end of the night, they have lost some of their innocence and found a sense of maturity that prepares them for adulthood. 8. “Before Sunrise” French Céline (Julie Delpy) and American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meet on a train in Austria and spend the day together, getting to know one another while walking and talking in Vienna. While it could be a prelude to a one-night stand, something about the way Céline and Jesse interact suggests that they really are falling in love. And viewers will fall in love with them. Director Richard Linklater keeps the sexual tension between the characters percolating throughout “Before Sunrise.” And he shrewdly creates a certain ambiguity about “did they or didn’t they” sleep together. While “Before Sunrise” is magical because of the chemistry of the enchanting leads, their 24 hours together wasn’t enough. This lovely film spawned two sequels, “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” both of which—remarkably—captured the same lightning in a bottle. 9. “The Daytrippers” Greg Mottola’s funny/angst-y comedy takes the idea of the road movie and synthesizes it into one city over the course of one day. When Eliza (Hope Davis) suspects her husband Louis (Stanley Tucci) of having an affair, she asks her dysfunctional family to escort her from Long Island to New York City to confront him. What transpires is a dark comedy in which the characters’ behavior shows them for who they are. As secrets are revealed, they expose who they really are. The humor comes from the abrasive personalities all ricocheting off one another in situations ranging from Eliza’s marital crisis to her mother Rita’s (Anne Meara) health crisis. By the end of the hectic day, everyone’s life has changed—but is that for the better? 10. “Clerks” Kevin Smith’s outrageous and hilarious low-budget/high-concept comedy, filmed in grainy black and white, chronicles a day in the life of two guys in their dead-end jobs. When Quick Stop convenience store clerk Dante (Brian O’Halloran) has to take a shift on his day off—“I’m not even supposed to be here today!” he moans—he ends up having quite a day. From dealing with irritating customers, to juggling a girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, and getting into some legal trouble (not his fault!), he needs relief. His best friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), a bonafide shit-stirrer, works at the video store next door, and coaxes him to misbehave by playing hockey on the roof, or taking off to attend a funeral where Randal causes a commotion. “Clerks” mines its laughs from the interplay between the uptight Dante and the reckless Randal, but also from the events that unfold during the day that prompt Dante to re-evaluate his life. If the men are no better off at the end of their shifts, they certainly are more self-aware, losing their delusions of importance and finding a modicum of self-worth.What a difference a day makes. In 24 hours, someone’s entire life can change—either incrementally, or in extreme ways. While films often provide a crucible for examining human nature, there is something heightened when characters face incredible pressure under a same-day deadline. Films that unfold over the course of a single day can take viewers on an intense, emotional journey, but they can also be extremely funny; see “Tangerine," last month's much-buzzed-about film, or “Grandma” when it opens this month. Opening this weekend is the droll comedy “Fort Tilden.” One night, Harper (Bridey Elliott) and Allie (Clare McNulty) befriend two guys a party, and agree to meet at the titular beach the next day. While Allie should be preparing for her stint with the Peace Corps (she’s leaving for Liberia), she takes the day off because she “deserves one day of happiness before shitting malaria blood.” The resourceful BFFs plan to bike to Fort Tilden but their efforts are met with setbacks, like trying to get an iced coffee, and distractions ranging from shopping sales to finding abandoned kittens. Their so-called “insane journey” is full of deadpan humor stemming from the young women’s awkward encounters with friends and strangers to a truth-telling session that arises after a series of bad decisions. “Fort Tilden” benefits from the rapport of its two leads, who make their friendship and frustrations believable as their day makes them reconsider their goals in life. While there are many “real time” examples (like the recent “Locke” or the classic “Cleo from 5 to 7”), here are 10 great films that portray characters having extreme transformations as they deal with issues ranging from adultery, abortion and anxiety to murder, love, death and maturation, all over the course of a single day. 1. “Do the Right Thing” Spike Lee’s incisive, incendiary masterpiece, set in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the year, remains a landmark film for its cogent depiction of race relations. After establishing the rhythms of the neighborhood, the film culminates with shocking violence that turns into a riot. Sal’s Pizza Parlor, a white-owned establishment in an almost entirely African-American neighborhood, becomes the epicenter of an attack that leaves a man dead and a neighborhood in crisis after simmering tensions explode. The strength of Lee’s work is not just that viewers come to understand each character—from the righteous Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) to the racist Pino (John Turturro)—but also care about them. What happens that day deeply affects each of them, prompting the characters (and the viewer) to confront truths within themselves. “Do the Right Thing” remains as potent today as it was when it was made. 2. “Rope” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 “experiment” to shoot an entire movie in a single take yielded this nifty (albeit stagy) thriller that takes place on a single set on a single day. Two students (John Dahl and Farley Granger) murder their friend David (Dick Hogan) and hide his body in a chest that they use to serve dinner to the victim’s friends, family and their clever former headmaster (Jimmy Stewart). Using eight 10-minute rolls of film, Hitchcock created a “single tracking shot” for “Rope,” using the backs of characters’ sports jackets to change reels, mark the passage of time, and ratchet up the suspense. 3. “Groundhog Day” Harold Ramis’ classic comedy has Phil Connors (Bill Murray), a weatherman, stuck in a time loop as he reports on Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who ritually foretells the end of winter by seeing (or not seeing) his shadow. After realizing his situation—and that he can change his actions and thereby affect other people’s seemingly unalterable routines—Phil becomes emboldened. He eventually learns how to seduce his producer (Andie McDowell) and improve his life by getting out of the rut he has been stuck in. “Groundhog Day” amusingly asks the existential question: “What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.” 4. “The Swimmer” Frank Perry’s canny adaptation of John Cheever’s short story has Ned Merrill (a very fit Burt Lancaster) “swim” his way home, pool by pool—“they form a river all the way to our house” he says—after attending a neighbor’s party. The experience provides an allegory for Ned’s life: every pool “reflects” something about his personal and professional disillusionments and dissatisfactions. His “brilliant or crazy” journey comes to define his suburban alienation and malaise and—if one sees the film as an arch comedy of manners—provides a commentary on propriety. Ned’s determination is noble, and Lancaster makes this “tragic antihero” empathetic as the film’s tone becomes increasingly somber and sobering. 5. “A Single Man” Based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Tom Ford’s stylish film portrays George (Colin Firth), a depressed gay man in 1962 Los Angeles still mourning the death of his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode). George proceeds to say some goodbyes, empties his bank account, and plans to put a bullet in his head using the gun he has been carrying around. As he goes about his day, teaching a class and talking with a student, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), or meeting an old friend (Julianne Moore) for drinks, George remembers Jim and knows he is making the right decision to end his life. But then Kenny reappears at a bar, and their encounter that night might just be his salvation. Ford’s outstanding direction combined with Firth’s interior performance conveys George’s quiet, palpable despair. By the end of the day, he will not be the same. 6. “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” This astonishing Romanian drama, set during the Ceausescu regime, is a harrowing, unforgettable experience. Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is 4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days pregnant. She asks her roommate Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) to help her procure an illegal abortion. The film, directed by Cristian Mungiu, uses a series of artfully composed scenes to capture the emotional and physical suffocation these two young women experience over the course of that single, fateful day. Throughout the day, Otilia must negotiate with doctors and even cajole Gabita. One of the most striking scenes has Otilia solemnly attending a birthday party where everyone but her is celebrating, a powerful metaphor. This astonishing film builds slowly to its remarkable climax, which suggests Otilia is likely more visibly affected by the devastating events of the day than even Gabita is. 7. “American Graffiti” George Lucas’ ensemble film, about a group of high school students in 1962 Modesto, California, spending one last night together before many of them head off to college, was a touchstone of 1970s American cinema. The film’s nostalgia factor and its fantastic soundtrack made it a hit, and it inspired many imitators. Four friends hang out at the drive-in, cruise around in their cars, and make decisions about their future. Steve (Ron Howard) tells his younger girlfriend (Cindy Williams) he wants to see other people when he’s off at college and they argue all night; Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) is having second thoughts about attending college, and gets distracted trying to find a woman driver (Suzanne Somers) who may have mouthed “I love you” to him; Terry (Charles Martin Smith) befriends Debbie (Candy Clark) and tries to get some alcohol and connect romantically; and John (Paul LeMat), a drag racer, spends the night driving around with Carol (Mackenzie Phillips), a 13-year-old, much to his chagrin. Each storyline is engaging and the characters are all funny and charming in their own ways; they are all (save 22-year-old John) teenagers. But by the end of the film and the end of the night, they have lost some of their innocence and found a sense of maturity that prepares them for adulthood. 8. “Before Sunrise” French Céline (Julie Delpy) and American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meet on a train in Austria and spend the day together, getting to know one another while walking and talking in Vienna. While it could be a prelude to a one-night stand, something about the way Céline and Jesse interact suggests that they really are falling in love. And viewers will fall in love with them. Director Richard Linklater keeps the sexual tension between the characters percolating throughout “Before Sunrise.” And he shrewdly creates a certain ambiguity about “did they or didn’t they” sleep together. While “Before Sunrise” is magical because of the chemistry of the enchanting leads, their 24 hours together wasn’t enough. This lovely film spawned two sequels, “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” both of which—remarkably—captured the same lightning in a bottle. 9. “The Daytrippers” Greg Mottola’s funny/angst-y comedy takes the idea of the road movie and synthesizes it into one city over the course of one day. When Eliza (Hope Davis) suspects her husband Louis (Stanley Tucci) of having an affair, she asks her dysfunctional family to escort her from Long Island to New York City to confront him. What transpires is a dark comedy in which the characters’ behavior shows them for who they are. As secrets are revealed, they expose who they really are. The humor comes from the abrasive personalities all ricocheting off one another in situations ranging from Eliza’s marital crisis to her mother Rita’s (Anne Meara) health crisis. By the end of the hectic day, everyone’s life has changed—but is that for the better? 10. “Clerks” Kevin Smith’s outrageous and hilarious low-budget/high-concept comedy, filmed in grainy black and white, chronicles a day in the life of two guys in their dead-end jobs. When Quick Stop convenience store clerk Dante (Brian O’Halloran) has to take a shift on his day off—“I’m not even supposed to be here today!” he moans—he ends up having quite a day. From dealing with irritating customers, to juggling a girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, and getting into some legal trouble (not his fault!), he needs relief. His best friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), a bonafide shit-stirrer, works at the video store next door, and coaxes him to misbehave by playing hockey on the roof, or taking off to attend a funeral where Randal causes a commotion. “Clerks” mines its laughs from the interplay between the uptight Dante and the reckless Randal, but also from the events that unfold during the day that prompt Dante to re-evaluate his life. If the men are no better off at the end of their shifts, they certainly are more self-aware, losing their delusions of importance and finding a modicum of self-worth.
Decoded octopus genome reveals secrets to complex intelligence
The elusive octopus genome has finally been untangled, which should allow scientists to discover answers to long-mysterious questions about the animal's alienlike physiology: How does it camouflage itself so expertly? How does it control—and regenerate—those eight flexible arms and thousands of suckers? And, most vexing: How did a relative of the snail get to be so incredibly smart—able to learn quickly, solve puzzles and even use tools? The findings, published today in Nature, reveal a vast, unexplored landscape full of novel genes, unlikely rearrangements—and some evolutionary solutions that look remarkably similar to those found in humans. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) With the largest-known genome in the invertebrate world—similar in size to that of a house cat (2.7 billion base pairs) and with more genes (33,000) than humans (20,000 to 25,000)—the octopus sequence has long been known to be large and confusing. Even without a genetic map, these animals and their cephalopod cousins (squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses) have been common subjects for neurobiology and pharmacology research. But a sequence for this group of mollusks has been "sorely needed," says Annie Lindgren, a cephalopod researcher at Portland State University who was not involved in the new research. "Think about trying to assemble a puzzle, picture side down," she says of octopus research to date. "A genome gives us a picture to work with." Among the biggest surprises contained within the genome—eliciting exclamation point–ridden e-mails from cephalopod researchers—is that octopuses possess a large group of familiar genes that are involved in developing a complex neural network and have been found to be enriched in other animals, such as mammals, with substantial processing power. Known as protocadherin genes, they "were previously thought to be expanded only in vertebrates," says Clifton Ragsdale, an associate professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the new paper. Such genes join the list of independently evolved features we share with octopuses—including camera-type eyes (with a lens, iris and retina), closed circulatory systems and large brains. Having followed such a vastly different evolutionary path to intelligence, however, the octopus nervous system is an especially rich subject for study. "For neurobiologists, it's intriguing to understand how a completely distinct group has developed big, complex brains," says Joshua Rosenthal of the University of Puerto Rico's Institute of Neurobiology. "Now with this paper, we can better understand the molecular underpinnings." Part of octopuses' sophisticated wiring system—which extends beyond the brain and is largely distributed throughout the body—controls their blink-of-an-eye camouflage. Researchers have been unsure how octopuses orchestrate their chromatophores, the pigment-filled sacs that expand and contract in milliseconds to alter their overall color and patterning. But with the sequenced genome in hand, scientists can now learn more about how this flashy system works—an enticing insight for neuroscientists and engineers alike. Also contained in the octopus genome (represented by the California two-spot octopus, Octopus bimaculoides) are numerous previously unknown genes—including novel ones that help the octopus "taste" with its suckers. Researchers can also now peer deeper into the past of this rarely fossilized animal's evolutionary history—even beyond their divergence with squid some 270 million years ago. In all of that time octopuses have become adept at tweaking their own genetic codes (known as RNA editing, which occurs in humans and other animals but at an extreme rate in octopuses), helping them keep nerves firing on cue at extreme temperatures. The new genetic analysis also found genes that can move around on the genome (known as transposons), which might play a role in boosting learning and memory. One thing not found in the octopus genome, however, is evidence that its code had undergone wholesale duplication (as the genome of vertebrates had, which allowed the extra genes to acquire new functions). This was a surprise to researchers who had long marveled at the octopus's complexity—and repeatedly stumbled over large amounts of repeated genetic code in earlier research. The size of the octopus genome, combined with the large number of repeating sequences and, as Ragsdale describes, a "bizarre lack of interest from many genomicists," made the task a challenging one. He was among the dozens of researchers who banded together in early 2012 to form the Cephalopod Sequencing Consortium, "to address the pressing need for genome sequencing of cephalopod mollusks," as they noted in a white paper published later that year in Standards in Genomic Sciences. The full octopus genome promises to make a splash in fields stretching from neurobiology to evolution to engineering. "This is such an exciting paper and a really significant step forward," says Lindgren, who studies relationships among octopuses, which have evolved to inhabit all of the world's oceans—from warm tidal shallows to the freezing Antarctic depths. For her and other cephalopod scientists, "having a whole genome is like suddenly getting a key to the biggest library in the world that previously you could only look into by peeking through partially blocked windows." 
Al Gore needs to run for president: Why the future depends on a climate commander-in-chief
It probably won't happen but, frankly, it really, really needs to happen. This week, Buzzfeed reported that advisers close to former Vice President Al Gore are "figuring out a path" for him to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. A "senior Democrat" revealed that the Gore camp is "getting the old gang together" and that "they’re figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically. It feels more real than it has in the past months." A second source said, "This is people talking to people, some of whom may or may not have talked to him." On Friday, however, Gore adviser Betsy McManus dispelled the rumors, telling Politico, "There’s no truth to it. He's laser-focused on solving the climate crisis." Sure, but what better way to help solve the climate crisis than by ascending to the presidency next year. We'll circle back to this point. It goes without saying a Gore candidacy would absolutely upend the nature of the Democratic race, and it's difficult to see Gore failing to present a serious challenge to the Clinton campaign, especially given what occurred 15 years ago and the subsequent feelings of lingering rage and injustice that went along with the recount and, ultimately, the Bush v Gore decision. Five hundred votes changed history, and it's heartbreaking to imagine how the 2000s would've played out had the recount continued, culminating in an inevitable Gore victory. If Gore had been the president we desperately needed during that decade, it likely would have meant prioritizing the climate crisis in a way that no other American political leader ever has -- even Obama, whose record on this issue has been solid, but not solid enough. That's not to say a future President Gore would necessarily have the political strength to win over skeptics and deniers enough to support serious legislative remedies in the Republican-controlled Congress. That'll never happen. Not even when rising sea levels overtake Washington and West Virginia properties enjoy an ocean view. But what Gore will surely accomplish is to put the issue front and center where it needs to be. The problems we face are legion, but it's difficult to conjure an issue that's more consequential than, you know, the survival of humanity in the face of an increasingly toxic climate. This isn't to say that the other candidates don't bring with them important priorities. Voting rights are crucial. Strengthening the middle class is a top shelf issue, too. So is education, health care, civil liberties, reproductive rights and overturning Citizens United. But we won't be able to do any of those things if we're fighting wars over shrinking water supplies or spending billions to hold back rising tides and mitigating damage from droughts and worsening hurricanes. We're on a path to inevitable and stupendous obliteration and it's already happening. Yet our very serious political leaders are debating fraudulent sting videos about Planned Parenthood; we're screeching about whether Mexicans are rapists; and our news media won't cover the climate crisis because it's not sexy enough. Something is horribly, horribly wrong, and we need real leadership in order to re-prioritize. Along those lines, it's highly unlikely that Gore would abandon his passion for this issue upon entering the race, nor would he pivot entirely to another list of priorities after he's inaugurated. Odds are, as president, he'd use the bully pulpit to become not only a national leader on the issue, but a lion on the world's stage. Again, this certainly won't endear him to the congressional Republicans, but screw them. History will judge the deniers accordingly. (By the way, history will also judge anyone of any party who delayed when action could've been taken.) But given the accomplishments of the Obama administration via legislation and executive orders, Gore would easily build upon previous moves while publicly emphasizing the scale of the crisis. That last point is critical. Until Obama, no president has ever mentioned the climate crisis in either an inaugural address or a state of the union. Not one. Not even Clinton. But even Obama has been sidetracked by other issues -- again, important ones, but at the expense of the most important one. It's easy to predict that Gore would push the urgency of crisis in a way that'd be not only persuasive to voters on the fence about it, but also in a way that embeds the appropriate degree of urgency in the minds of Americans bothering to pay attention. Realistically, this election might be the last opportunity to elect a climate president — a true leader on this issue, a leader with heft. Eight or twelve years from now might be too late. Indeed, 2016 might be too late. We need President Gore, and it's almost mandatory. History and our future as a species could depend upon it. And while it's true that his work as a private citizen has been invaluable, and will continue to be, it also desperately needs to be refueled and reignited, and the presidency can do that.It probably won't happen but, frankly, it really, really needs to happen. This week, Buzzfeed reported that advisers close to former Vice President Al Gore are "figuring out a path" for him to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. A "senior Democrat" revealed that the Gore camp is "getting the old gang together" and that "they’re figuring out if there’s a path financially and politically. It feels more real than it has in the past months." A second source said, "This is people talking to people, some of whom may or may not have talked to him." On Friday, however, Gore adviser Betsy McManus dispelled the rumors, telling Politico, "There’s no truth to it. He's laser-focused on solving the climate crisis." Sure, but what better way to help solve the climate crisis than by ascending to the presidency next year. We'll circle back to this point. It goes without saying a Gore candidacy would absolutely upend the nature of the Democratic race, and it's difficult to see Gore failing to present a serious challenge to the Clinton campaign, especially given what occurred 15 years ago and the subsequent feelings of lingering rage and injustice that went along with the recount and, ultimately, the Bush v Gore decision. Five hundred votes changed history, and it's heartbreaking to imagine how the 2000s would've played out had the recount continued, culminating in an inevitable Gore victory. If Gore had been the president we desperately needed during that decade, it likely would have meant prioritizing the climate crisis in a way that no other American political leader ever has -- even Obama, whose record on this issue has been solid, but not solid enough. That's not to say a future President Gore would necessarily have the political strength to win over skeptics and deniers enough to support serious legislative remedies in the Republican-controlled Congress. That'll never happen. Not even when rising sea levels overtake Washington and West Virginia properties enjoy an ocean view. But what Gore will surely accomplish is to put the issue front and center where it needs to be. The problems we face are legion, but it's difficult to conjure an issue that's more consequential than, you know, the survival of humanity in the face of an increasingly toxic climate. This isn't to say that the other candidates don't bring with them important priorities. Voting rights are crucial. Strengthening the middle class is a top shelf issue, too. So is education, health care, civil liberties, reproductive rights and overturning Citizens United. But we won't be able to do any of those things if we're fighting wars over shrinking water supplies or spending billions to hold back rising tides and mitigating damage from droughts and worsening hurricanes. We're on a path to inevitable and stupendous obliteration and it's already happening. Yet our very serious political leaders are debating fraudulent sting videos about Planned Parenthood; we're screeching about whether Mexicans are rapists; and our news media won't cover the climate crisis because it's not sexy enough. Something is horribly, horribly wrong, and we need real leadership in order to re-prioritize. Along those lines, it's highly unlikely that Gore would abandon his passion for this issue upon entering the race, nor would he pivot entirely to another list of priorities after he's inaugurated. Odds are, as president, he'd use the bully pulpit to become not only a national leader on the issue, but a lion on the world's stage. Again, this certainly won't endear him to the congressional Republicans, but screw them. History will judge the deniers accordingly. (By the way, history will also judge anyone of any party who delayed when action could've been taken.) But given the accomplishments of the Obama administration via legislation and executive orders, Gore would easily build upon previous moves while publicly emphasizing the scale of the crisis. That last point is critical. Until Obama, no president has ever mentioned the climate crisis in either an inaugural address or a state of the union. Not one. Not even Clinton. But even Obama has been sidetracked by other issues -- again, important ones, but at the expense of the most important one. It's easy to predict that Gore would push the urgency of crisis in a way that'd be not only persuasive to voters on the fence about it, but also in a way that embeds the appropriate degree of urgency in the minds of Americans bothering to pay attention. Realistically, this election might be the last opportunity to elect a climate president — a true leader on this issue, a leader with heft. Eight or twelve years from now might be too late. Indeed, 2016 might be too late. We need President Gore, and it's almost mandatory. History and our future as a species could depend upon it. And while it's true that his work as a private citizen has been invaluable, and will continue to be, it also desperately needs to be refueled and reignited, and the presidency can do that.
A moderately forceful high-five for Obama’s summer music and reading choices
To people who dislike him, he’s a socialist Muslim from Kenya who faked his birth certificate. Even to many of those who like him, he’s almost a cipher, a guy so guarded and studiously moderate that you need to penetrate numerous layers to see how he really feels about something. Which is why – even though it’s all surely been vetted (and perhaps created) by a team of handlers – we’re happy to see President Obama’s playlist and summer reading list. There’s nothing shocking here – someone could easily make fun of it for being a rollcall of acknowledged greats, new and old – but it shows sober good sense and some intellectual and musical curiosity. If he’s really listening to and reading this stuff, a moderately forceful high-five is in order. The books selected by Obama include “The Lowland” – a novel by the well-liked Jhumpa Lahiri set largely in ‘60s Calcutta – and Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See,” last year’s bestseller and Pulitzer winner, set in World War II France. It’s easy to imagine Obama reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”; the Atlantic writer’s sort-of letter to his son, inspired by James Baldwin’s work and Coates’ meeting with the president, is one of the books that Obama voters are wrestling with this year. Besides “The Sixth Extinction,” Elizabeth Kolbert’s look at the damage human beings have done to the planet’s other species, this is the choice most likely to unleash shouting from the far right. Coates is as sharp a commentator as we have on race in this country, but he’s also a few clicks to the left of the president politically. And unlike Obama, he doesn’t hesitate to get angry about the treatment of black men and boys. Overall, it’s a list likely to draw approval from clerks at independent bookstores and people who run book groups. That’s not a diss, by the way. The musical list – two Spotify playlists, one for the summer night, one for the day – includes 40 songs and ranges pretty widely, including a few surprises. Mostly, it’s as tasteful and reasonably safe as his list of books. It’s hard to object to anyone selecting a Van Morrison song, for instance – but couldn’t he have picked something less obvious than “Moondance”? (Okay, it’s still a great song.) The president's Otis Redding choice – “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” – is a little more imaginative. (We’re just hoping the prez did not select it because it had “dream” in the title.) Beyoncé with Frank Ocean (“Superpower”), Joni Mitchell (“Help Me”), and Ray Charles (“You Don’t Know Me”) are also included. For years, jazz fans have expressed disappointment about Obama for not getting behind jazz more fully. Why should a guy from the jazz capital of Chicago – and an American man, like jazz itself, with both white and black ancestry -- fall behind Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter in spreading the word about this American art form? The White House jazz summit that music critic Howard Reich called for would have meant a lot. Barring that, songs by John Coltrane (“My Favorite Things”), Miles Davis (“Flamenco Sketches”), and Billie Holiday (“The Very Thought of You”) are at least tips of the cap. These three are hardly unknowns, but listeners can follow them in some pretty profound directions. And “Until,” from Cassandra Wilson’s “New Moon Daughter” album, is a good choice by a great singer. In the jazz-adjacent category: It’s nice to see Nina Simone on the list, with “Feeling Good” – tellingly, not one of her explicitly political numbers. (It’s probably not realistic to imagine Obama kicking back on a summer night with “Mississippi Goddam.”) If you were expecting a kind of bird-flipping list – the cultural-taste version of his provocative interview with Marc Maron, say – this isn’t it. If you were hoping to see a tribute to the “Straight Outta Compton” movie with some N.W.A. or Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic,” you’ll be disappointed. But Obama doesn’t overlook hip hop entirely – Mos Def and Talib Kweli are on here. And if you were hoping to see Obama stretching out from the cultural mainstream – digging into Flying Lotus or the recent set of lost Pavement songs, or a novel that had not already drawn heavy acclaim in the New York Times – this won’t make you happy. (He’s got songs by Okkervil River and Florence + the Machine listed, at least.) This isn’t quite JFK-style cultural evangelism. And it doesn’t show a reader or listener with particularly intense passions in any particular direction. But it shows someone (or a team of handlers) devoted to a pretty wide range of good work, from Howlin’ Wolf to James Salter. If we’re trying to decode the complexities of an elusive man, that’s as close as we’re gonna get for now.To people who dislike him, he’s a socialist Muslim from Kenya who faked his birth certificate. Even to many of those who like him, he’s almost a cipher, a guy so guarded and studiously moderate that you need to penetrate numerous layers to see how he really feels about something. Which is why – even though it’s all surely been vetted (and perhaps created) by a team of handlers – we’re happy to see President Obama’s playlist and summer reading list. There’s nothing shocking here – someone could easily make fun of it for being a rollcall of acknowledged greats, new and old – but it shows sober good sense and some intellectual and musical curiosity. If he’s really listening to and reading this stuff, a moderately forceful high-five is in order. The books selected by Obama include “The Lowland” – a novel by the well-liked Jhumpa Lahiri set largely in ‘60s Calcutta – and Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See,” last year’s bestseller and Pulitzer winner, set in World War II France. It’s easy to imagine Obama reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”; the Atlantic writer’s sort-of letter to his son, inspired by James Baldwin’s work and Coates’ meeting with the president, is one of the books that Obama voters are wrestling with this year. Besides “The Sixth Extinction,” Elizabeth Kolbert’s look at the damage human beings have done to the planet’s other species, this is the choice most likely to unleash shouting from the far right. Coates is as sharp a commentator as we have on race in this country, but he’s also a few clicks to the left of the president politically. And unlike Obama, he doesn’t hesitate to get angry about the treatment of black men and boys. Overall, it’s a list likely to draw approval from clerks at independent bookstores and people who run book groups. That’s not a diss, by the way. The musical list – two Spotify playlists, one for the summer night, one for the day – includes 40 songs and ranges pretty widely, including a few surprises. Mostly, it’s as tasteful and reasonably safe as his list of books. It’s hard to object to anyone selecting a Van Morrison song, for instance – but couldn’t he have picked something less obvious than “Moondance”? (Okay, it’s still a great song.) The president's Otis Redding choice – “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” – is a little more imaginative. (We’re just hoping the prez did not select it because it had “dream” in the title.) Beyoncé with Frank Ocean (“Superpower”), Joni Mitchell (“Help Me”), and Ray Charles (“You Don’t Know Me”) are also included. For years, jazz fans have expressed disappointment about Obama for not getting behind jazz more fully. Why should a guy from the jazz capital of Chicago – and an American man, like jazz itself, with both white and black ancestry -- fall behind Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter in spreading the word about this American art form? The White House jazz summit that music critic Howard Reich called for would have meant a lot. Barring that, songs by John Coltrane (“My Favorite Things”), Miles Davis (“Flamenco Sketches”), and Billie Holiday (“The Very Thought of You”) are at least tips of the cap. These three are hardly unknowns, but listeners can follow them in some pretty profound directions. And “Until,” from Cassandra Wilson’s “New Moon Daughter” album, is a good choice by a great singer. In the jazz-adjacent category: It’s nice to see Nina Simone on the list, with “Feeling Good” – tellingly, not one of her explicitly political numbers. (It’s probably not realistic to imagine Obama kicking back on a summer night with “Mississippi Goddam.”) If you were expecting a kind of bird-flipping list – the cultural-taste version of his provocative interview with Marc Maron, say – this isn’t it. If you were hoping to see a tribute to the “Straight Outta Compton” movie with some N.W.A. or Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic,” you’ll be disappointed. But Obama doesn’t overlook hip hop entirely – Mos Def and Talib Kweli are on here. And if you were hoping to see Obama stretching out from the cultural mainstream – digging into Flying Lotus or the recent set of lost Pavement songs, or a novel that had not already drawn heavy acclaim in the New York Times – this won’t make you happy. (He’s got songs by Okkervil River and Florence + the Machine listed, at least.) This isn’t quite JFK-style cultural evangelism. And it doesn’t show a reader or listener with particularly intense passions in any particular direction. But it shows someone (or a team of handlers) devoted to a pretty wide range of good work, from Howlin’ Wolf to James Salter. If we’re trying to decode the complexities of an elusive man, that’s as close as we’re gonna get for now.To people who dislike him, he’s a socialist Muslim from Kenya who faked his birth certificate. Even to many of those who like him, he’s almost a cipher, a guy so guarded and studiously moderate that you need to penetrate numerous layers to see how he really feels about something. Which is why – even though it’s all surely been vetted (and perhaps created) by a team of handlers – we’re happy to see President Obama’s playlist and summer reading list. There’s nothing shocking here – someone could easily make fun of it for being a rollcall of acknowledged greats, new and old – but it shows sober good sense and some intellectual and musical curiosity. If he’s really listening to and reading this stuff, a moderately forceful high-five is in order. The books selected by Obama include “The Lowland” – a novel by the well-liked Jhumpa Lahiri set largely in ‘60s Calcutta – and Anthony Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See,” last year’s bestseller and Pulitzer winner, set in World War II France. It’s easy to imagine Obama reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”; the Atlantic writer’s sort-of letter to his son, inspired by James Baldwin’s work and Coates’ meeting with the president, is one of the books that Obama voters are wrestling with this year. Besides “The Sixth Extinction,” Elizabeth Kolbert’s look at the damage human beings have done to the planet’s other species, this is the choice most likely to unleash shouting from the far right. Coates is as sharp a commentator as we have on race in this country, but he’s also a few clicks to the left of the president politically. And unlike Obama, he doesn’t hesitate to get angry about the treatment of black men and boys. Overall, it’s a list likely to draw approval from clerks at independent bookstores and people who run book groups. That’s not a diss, by the way. The musical list – two Spotify playlists, one for the summer night, one for the day – includes 40 songs and ranges pretty widely, including a few surprises. Mostly, it’s as tasteful and reasonably safe as his list of books. It’s hard to object to anyone selecting a Van Morrison song, for instance – but couldn’t he have picked something less obvious than “Moondance”? (Okay, it’s still a great song.) The president's Otis Redding choice – “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” – is a little more imaginative. (We’re just hoping the prez did not select it because it had “dream” in the title.) Beyoncé with Frank Ocean (“Superpower”), Joni Mitchell (“Help Me”), and Ray Charles (“You Don’t Know Me”) are also included. For years, jazz fans have expressed disappointment about Obama for not getting behind jazz more fully. Why should a guy from the jazz capital of Chicago – and an American man, like jazz itself, with both white and black ancestry -- fall behind Bill Clinton and even Jimmy Carter in spreading the word about this American art form? The White House jazz summit that music critic Howard Reich called for would have meant a lot. Barring that, songs by John Coltrane (“My Favorite Things”), Miles Davis (“Flamenco Sketches”), and Billie Holiday (“The Very Thought of You”) are at least tips of the cap. These three are hardly unknowns, but listeners can follow them in some pretty profound directions. And “Until,” from Cassandra Wilson’s “New Moon Daughter” album, is a good choice by a great singer. In the jazz-adjacent category: It’s nice to see Nina Simone on the list, with “Feeling Good” – tellingly, not one of her explicitly political numbers. (It’s probably not realistic to imagine Obama kicking back on a summer night with “Mississippi Goddam.”) If you were expecting a kind of bird-flipping list – the cultural-taste version of his provocative interview with Marc Maron, say – this isn’t it. If you were hoping to see a tribute to the “Straight Outta Compton” movie with some N.W.A. or Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic,” you’ll be disappointed. But Obama doesn’t overlook hip hop entirely – Mos Def and Talib Kweli are on here. And if you were hoping to see Obama stretching out from the cultural mainstream – digging into Flying Lotus or the recent set of lost Pavement songs, or a novel that had not already drawn heavy acclaim in the New York Times – this won’t make you happy. (He’s got songs by Okkervil River and Florence + the Machine listed, at least.) This isn’t quite JFK-style cultural evangelism. And it doesn’t show a reader or listener with particularly intense passions in any particular direction. But it shows someone (or a team of handlers) devoted to a pretty wide range of good work, from Howlin’ Wolf to James Salter. If we’re trying to decode the complexities of an elusive man, that’s as close as we’re gonna get for now.
The Megafauna Massacre: Humans responsible for the extinction of ancient species
Beginning 80,00 years ago, many of prehistory's most famous large animals, including mammoths, wooly rhinos and sabertooth tigers, began to vanish from the Earth. We've never been able to say why -- until now. That's the claim of a new study published this week in the journal Ecography by researchers from the universities of Exeter and Cambridge, who have used innovative statistical analysis to identify the real culprit. Bad news: Humans did it. The study's authors say that they have decisively settled a long-running debate about whether these extinctions were caused by humans or climate change, or even some combination of the two. They ran thousands of scenarios that showed that, even accounting for changes in climate, none of the megafauna went extinct until humans showed up. "As far as we are concerned, this research is the nail in the coffin of this 50-year debate - humans were the dominant cause of the extinction of megafauna," Lewis Bartlett, the study's lead author, told Phys.org. "What we don't know is what it was about these early settlers that caused this demise. Were they killing them for food, was it early use of fire or were they driven out of their habitats? Our analysis doesn't differentiate, but we can say that it was caused by human activity more than by climate change. It debunks the myth of early humans living in harmony with nature." Such myths have never been very strong. Since the 18th century, when explorers and scientists began discovering the bones of these animals and realizing what they were, the popular imagination has pictured our ancestors cowering before strange and terrible beasts, only overcoming them through desperate struggle or cunning. It is only in recent decades that have we come to realize that the slaughter of the megafauna never ended, and we're still driving lions, rhinos, bears and whales to extinction. Now we seek to protect these animals and many feel outrage when they are killed. Even more radically, some of these long-dead animals may be brought back to life by efforts such as the Long Now Foundation and Pleistocene Park. One day we might again see Wooly Mammoths roaming the steppes of Siberia. Many extinct megafauna are well known, but many remain totally mysterious. Little is known beyond legend of Sylviornis, a kind of giant chicken that once lived on New Caledonia. Some are almost theoretical, such as the Giant Polar Bear, known only from a single bone found under a bridge in London. Here are some of the fascinating megafauna that we probably once hunted to extinction. The Glyptodon 
Glyptodon, by Heinrich Harder 1916. Public domain.
This large, heavily armored relative of the armadillo once roamed the lowlands of South America and reached as far as modern-day Guatemala. Lumbering and herbivorous, it had little defense against the early human settlers, who may have used its thick, domed shell for shelter. Glyptodon was an early megafauna celebrity, discovered by pioneering English biologist Richard Owen, the man who coined the name "Dinosaur". The London Literary Gazette reported its discovery in breathless wonder,A still more interesting discovery is that of the apparently complete remains of another monstrous fossil animal, completely unknown to us, of which I annex a sketch reduced by Mr. Clift... The monster it refers to, possessing the characteristic armour of the armadillo tribe, was found in the bank of a rivulet near the Rio Matanza.The Glyptodon quickly became a standard feature in the work of early paleoartists, delighting the Victorian and Georgian public before Owen's Dinosaurs conclusively seized the spotlight. The Giant Ground Sloths
Megatherium, by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins 1871. Public domain.
Now only represented by sleepy-looking tree dwellers, the sloth family once included among its number some of the largest land animals ever to live. Some were as big as an elephant. They ranged all across South America. They used their great height and long claws to reach branches high in trees, and along with the elephant-like Gomophotheres they likely played an essential role in forest ecology. Large, pendulous fruits such as papaya and avocado probably evolved to attract megafauna like the giant sloths, who then distributed the seeds in their dung. The avocado's large, bitter pit is a holdover from this time. After the extinction of the sloth, such fruits probably only survived thanks to "pulp thieves" such as rodents, who dragged the seeds away from their mother trees. Later, a far superior pulp thief arrived. From The Ghosts of Evolution: nonsensical fruit, missing partners, and other ecological anachronisms:Nor was [the avocado] shaped by the food preferences of bipedal apes, who invaded avocado territory just before the gomphotheres and ground sloths disappeared. Those apes are now doing a better job dispersing one species of the genus than any animal has done before... and its range now wraps around the world.So perhaps we can take some slim comfort that at least one species isn't suffering from our slaughter of the ground sloth. Haast's Eagle
Giant Haast's eagle attacking New Zealand Moa by John Megahan. PLoS Biol. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
When the ancestors of the Maori first arrived on the islands now known as New Zealand around 1300 CE, they discovered an ecosystem teaming with enormous birds, which they quickly began to hunt to extinction. The first to go were the Moa, some species of which could be 11 feet tall. Not far behind, however, was Haast's Eagle, previously the Moa's only natural predator. Weighing as much as 30 pounds and with a wingspan of 9 feet, it was the largest flying bird ever to exist. It was so large that until relatively recently it was thought that it may have been flightless or gradually evolving to be flightless. It's now known to have been a powerful predator, with 60mm talons capable of killing even the largest adult Moa. From The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric Life in New Zealand:The spectacular fossil evidence shows that the eagle used its great claws to grasp the hindquarters of the Moa and to kill by crushing the bone and causing massive bleeding. Over a dozen Moa pelves are known that bear severe damage from eagle claws... The marks range from pinpricks to crushing indentations, punctures and rents up to 75mm long and 10mm wide.The Haast's Eagle could easily have killed a human, and they survive in Maori legend as the Poukai, an enormous bird that eats people. Beginning from an estimated population of about 15,000, the eagle was extinct by 1400, only about 100 years after the arrival of humans. A popular figure in cryptozoology, persistent rumors suggest that it survives in isolated, mountainous regions. Julius von Haast, the German geologist who described the eagle in 1872 and gave it its name, believed that he was attacked by one when it blundered into his tent, attracted by a campfire. The Irish Elk
Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), skeleton, by Franco Atirador. CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
Towering above the height of a human and with antlers that could be a dozen feet across, the Irish Elk was neither an elk (it was a deer) nor Irish (it ranged across all of Eurasia.) This animal and its distinctive antlers appears in many neolithic cave paintings, sometimes in hunting scenes. It get its common name from the well-preserved specimens that began to be pulled from Irish peat bogs in the 17th century, causing sensation and controversy and spurring the development of the theory of evolution. In those pre-Darwinian times, many couldn't believe that God would create any animal only to allow them to become extinct. Thomas Molyneux, who first described the Irish Elk, thought they were probably related to the Moose. George Cuvier later studied the Elk and demonstrated conclusively that it was in fact an animal that no longer existed in any form, the first "proof" of extinction. In the late 19th century, the Elk became the prime example for a theory called orthogenesis, which asserted that evolution wasn't down to natural selection but linear development. The Elk's antlers kept getting bigger and bigger until they got tangled in trees or couldn't hold up their heads, and this accounted for their extinction. It wasn't until 1974 that Stephen Jay Gould's famous study of the Irish Elk conclusively showed that even apparently pointless characteristics such as enormous antlers have an evolutionary benefit. An important animal for science, but tragically only because it had once been an important animal for early human hunters. These are just a few of the many extinct megafauna. Let us know about your favorites in the comments.
Sharon Stone poses nude and opens up about brain aneurysm in Harper’s Bazaar: “It’s like, I have brain damage; you’ll just have to deal with it”
Sharon Stone posed naked in the most recent issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and she looks goddamn flaw-less, despite her protestations that her bum looks like a “bag of flapjacks” (who puts flapjacks in a bag though, honestly?) "I'm aware that my ass looks like a bag of flapjacks but I'm not trying to be the best-looking broad in the world,” said the aforementioned radiant, glowing, almost spookily blemish-free 57-year-old. "At a certain point you start asking yourself, 'What really is sexy?' It's not just the elevation of your boobs. It's being present and having fun and liking yourself enough to like the person that’s with you. If I believed that sexy was trying to be who I was when I did 'Basic Instinct,’ then we'd all be having a hard day today.” Stone also opened up about the aneurysm and cerebral hemorrhage that she suffered back in 2001, which she has only recently begun discussing openly. After feeling ill for three days, Stone went to the emergency room, where she was told she had had suffered from a stroke. Soon after, she lost consciousness. "When I came to, the doctor was leaning over me. I said, 'Am I dying?' And he said, 'You're bleeding into your brain,' " Stone recalls. "I said, 'I should call my mom,' and he said, 'You're right. You could lose the ability to speak soon.’” Stone was eventually diagnosed with a ruptured vertebral artery, which it took surgeons 22 platinum coils to repair. The actress says that the stroke and the events that followed have changed her life irreparably. "It took two years for my body just to absorb all the internal bleeding I had," she explains. "It almost feels like my entire DNA changed. My brain isn't sitting where it used to, my body type changed, and even my food allergies are different.” Despite long-lasting side symptoms including a stutter, compromised vision and the absence of feeling in her left leg, Stone says there have been some silver linings: "I became more emotionally intelligent. I chose to work very hard to open up other parts of my mind. Now I'm stronger. And I can be abrasively direct. That scares people, but I think that's not my problem. It's like, I have brain damage; you'll just have to deal with it.” Talking about her 2010 guest spot on “Law and Order: SVU” back in 2010, Stone recalls being humiliated by the role and the fact that she kept forgetting lines. Yet she forced herself to persevere. "I thought, 'You know what? I got thrown off the bullet train, and now I'm going to have to crawl up a hill of broken glass, get back on the train that's going a million miles an hour, and work my way from the cattle car up. That's just the way it is, so I'd better get humble and shut the fuck up and do the job. Because if I can't do this job, I'm certainly not going to be able to do anything else,’” Stone says. This fall, Stone will executive produce and play the vice president on “Agent X,” a new TNT show. Read the rest of the profile — which includes details about Stone’s Buddhism, her songwriting and her love life (“I never get asked out,” she laments) — and of course, check out that photoshoot over at Harper’s Bazaar. Sharon Stone posed naked in the most recent issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and she looks goddamn flaw-less, despite her protestations that her bum looks like a “bag of flapjacks” (who puts flapjacks in a bag though, honestly?) "I'm aware that my ass looks like a bag of flapjacks but I'm not trying to be the best-looking broad in the world,” said the aforementioned radiant, glowing, almost spookily blemish-free 57-year-old. "At a certain point you start asking yourself, 'What really is sexy?' It's not just the elevation of your boobs. It's being present and having fun and liking yourself enough to like the person that’s with you. If I believed that sexy was trying to be who I was when I did 'Basic Instinct,’ then we'd all be having a hard day today.” Stone also opened up about the aneurysm and cerebral hemorrhage that she suffered back in 2001, which she has only recently begun discussing openly. After feeling ill for three days, Stone went to the emergency room, where she was told she had had suffered from a stroke. Soon after, she lost consciousness. "When I came to, the doctor was leaning over me. I said, 'Am I dying?' And he said, 'You're bleeding into your brain,' " Stone recalls. "I said, 'I should call my mom,' and he said, 'You're right. You could lose the ability to speak soon.’” Stone was eventually diagnosed with a ruptured vertebral artery, which it took surgeons 22 platinum coils to repair. The actress says that the stroke and the events that followed have changed her life irreparably. "It took two years for my body just to absorb all the internal bleeding I had," she explains. "It almost feels like my entire DNA changed. My brain isn't sitting where it used to, my body type changed, and even my food allergies are different.” Despite long-lasting side symptoms including a stutter, compromised vision and the absence of feeling in her left leg, Stone says there have been some silver linings: "I became more emotionally intelligent. I chose to work very hard to open up other parts of my mind. Now I'm stronger. And I can be abrasively direct. That scares people, but I think that's not my problem. It's like, I have brain damage; you'll just have to deal with it.” Talking about her 2010 guest spot on “Law and Order: SVU” back in 2010, Stone recalls being humiliated by the role and the fact that she kept forgetting lines. Yet she forced herself to persevere. "I thought, 'You know what? I got thrown off the bullet train, and now I'm going to have to crawl up a hill of broken glass, get back on the train that's going a million miles an hour, and work my way from the cattle car up. That's just the way it is, so I'd better get humble and shut the fuck up and do the job. Because if I can't do this job, I'm certainly not going to be able to do anything else,’” Stone says. This fall, Stone will executive produce and play the vice president on “Agent X,” a new TNT show. Read the rest of the profile — which includes details about Stone’s Buddhism, her songwriting and her love life (“I never get asked out,” she laments) — and of course, check out that photoshoot over at Harper’s Bazaar.
