Category Archives: science

beliefs, medical, nudism, science, thoughts

Air Baths

Thinking yesterday about nudism, I recalled some connection with the great American statesman, scientist, diplomat and thinker Benjamin Franklin.  And indeed it is so for Franklin was in the habit of taking a daily “air bath”, as he called it.  Almost 250 years ago on 28 July 1768, when in London, Franklin writes to the French physician, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg:

I greatly approve the epithet which you give, in your letter of the 8th of June, to the new method of treating the small-pox, which you call the tonic or bracing. method; I will take occasion from it to mention a practice to which I have accustomed myself. You know the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic; but the shock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I rise almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and, if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night’s rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined. I find no ill consequences whatever resulting from it, and that at least it does not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute much to its preservation. I shall therefore call it for the future a bracing or tonic bath.

Elsewhere Franklin also writes:

In summer-nights, when I court sleep in vain I often get up and sit at the open window or at the foot of my bed, stark-naked for a quarter of an hour. That simple expedient removes the difficulty (whatever its cause), and upon returning to bed I can generally rely upon getting two or three hours of most refreshing sleep.

Let us remember too that Franklin was no mean inventor.  Amongst other things he gave us: bifocals, the flexible urinary catheter, the lightning conductor, an especially efficient design of wood-burning stove, the odometer, America’s first public library as well as hugely increasing our understanding of electricity and mapping the Gulf Stream.  And as if that wasn’t enough he was one of the founding fathers of the United States.

Who would doubt the wisdom of such a man?

beliefs, science, thoughts

Hume's Guillotine

Astrophysicist Sean Carroll, over at Cosmic Variance, wrote an interesting piece on moral philosophy a few days ago. Carroll was reviewing/commenting on a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk by Sam Harris in which, according to Carroll “he [Harris] claims that science can tell us what to value, or how to be moral”.

Now I’m not concerned with the actual content of Harris’s talk, nor the arguments subsequent upon Carroll’s comments, which you can find in the links from here and here.

My concern is to highlight the interesting proposition in moral philosphy that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is”. This appears to have been first discussed by philosopher David Hume around 1739 and has become known as Hume’s Guillotine. Wikipedia quotes book III, part I, section I of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

In case you didn’t follow that (yep, I struggled too!), here’s Carroll’s version from the final paragraphs of his Cosmic Variance piece (remember he’s commenting on Harris’s talk):

In the real world, when we disagree with someone else’s moral judgments, we try to persuade them to see things our way; if that fails, we may (as a society) resort to more dramatic measures like throwing them in jail. But our ability to persuade others that they are being immoral is completely unaffected – and indeed, may even be hindered – by pretending that our version of morality is objectively true […]

The unfortunate part of this is that Harris says a lot of true and interesting things, and threatens to undermine the power of his argument by insisting on the objectivity of moral judgments. There are not objective moral truths (where “objective” means “existing independently of human invention”), but there are real human beings with complex sets of preferences. What we call “morality” is an outgrowth of the interplay of those preferences with the world around us, and in particular with other human beings. The project of moral philosophy is to make sense of our preferences, to try to make them logically consistent, to reconcile them with the preferences of others and the realities of our environments, and to discover how to fulfill them most efficiently. Science can be extremely helpful, even crucial, in that task. We live in a universe governed by natural laws, and it makes all the sense in the world to think that a clear understanding of those laws will be useful in helping us live our lives […] When Harris talks about how people can reach different states of happiness, or how societies can become more successful, the relevance of science to these goals is absolutely real and worth stressing.

Which is why it’s a shame to get the whole thing off on the wrong foot by insisting that values are simply a particular version of empirical facts. When people share values, facts can be very helpful to them in advancing their goals. But when they don’t share values, there’s no way to show that one of the parties is “objectively wrong”. And when you start thinking that there is, a whole set of dangerous mistakes begins to threaten. It’s okay to admit that values can’t be derived from facts […]

All of which seems about right to me; as is the corollary: you can’t derive an “is” from an “ought”, or in words of Flannery O’Connor “the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it”.

amusements, science

Absurb Scientific Papers

Discoblog over on the science channel Discover has reported today a list of 10 absurd scientific papers of 2009 as highlighted in Wired UK magazine.  I list them here for your delectation:

  1. Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel
  2. Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour
  3. Swearing as a response to pain
  4. Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children
  5. The “booty call”: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies
  6. Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats
  7. Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time
  8. More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy?
  9. Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?
  10. The nature of navel fluff

Can anyone actually explain to me how any one of these papers usefully expands the sum total of human knowledge? No, I thought not.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, medical, nudism, science, sexuality, thoughts

Nudity, Sex and Sex Education,

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I started this post with a dilemma. Do I write it as one long “review” post or split it into several so I can write more in depth about each topic. In the end I decided on the former if only to ensure that the articles I highlight actually get air time and not consigned, by default or laziness, to Bin 101.

In the last week or so there have been a number of items on the intertubes about nudity, sexuality and sex education. Regular readers (What? You mean I have regular readers?) will be aware of my liberal views and my belief that we need to break down society’s taboos in these areas (very much in the Dutch-mode) so my choice of items should come as little surprise.


We Need to Stop Circumcision
Written by Christine Northrup, herself an obstetrician and gynaecologist, this item in the Huffington Post makes a passionate case for not circumcising infant boys, as well as girls. Here are few extracts:

In the weeks ahead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are likely to publish a recommendation that all infant boys undergo circumcision. This is a huge mistake. Circumcision is an unnecessary procedure that is painful and can lead to complications, including death. No organization in the world currently recommends this. Why should we routinely remove normal, functioning tissue from the genitals of little boys within days of their birth?

[C]ircumcision was introduced in English-speaking countries in the late 1800s to control or prevent masturbation.

Routine female circumcision, which has been practiced in some cultures, is completely unacceptable … the United Nations has issued a decree against it. Circumcision is a form of sexual abuse whether it’s done to girls or boys.

[M]isleading medical information has begun to surface (yet again) in support of circumcision. This information supports the belief that men with foreskins are more likely to get viral or bacterial infections and pass them on … these are justifications that science has been unable to support. Nor is there any scientific proof that circumcision prevents sexually transmitted diseases.

The United States has high rates of HIV and the highest rate of circumcision in the West. The “experiment” of using circumcision to stem HIV infection [as has been done in Africa] has been running here for decades. It has failed miserably. Why do countries such as New Zealand, where they abandoned infant circumcision 50 years ago, or European countries, where circumcision is rare, have such low rates of HIV?

Circumcision also has profound implications for male sexuality. Studies document that the amount of pleasure a man can receive during intercourse is greater in uncircumcised males. That’s because the male foreskin, like the clitoris, is richly innervated for maximum sexual pleasure. Sexual researchers have determined that men with [their foreskin] are more likely to feel the most pleasure when they make love.

More Sex Education Please, we’re British
This was an article in the Times on 24 February, in which Alice Thomson argued that we (the British) have the highest rate of teenage STDs, abortions and pregnancies in Europe and that the only way this will be reduced is by very open and frank sex education conducted in an adult way. Sniggering behind the bike-sheds, as we British always have done, has gotten us into this mess and won’t get us out of it. Again a telling quote or two:

British children shouldn’t be getting their sex education from Ashley and Cheryl [Cole] but from their parents and teachers. I was once one of those prissy, prudish parents pussyfooting around the question until I was sent to the Netherlands by this newspaper to discuss procreation.

As I walked to De Burght junior school in Amsterdam to talk to the headmaster about his policy, I bumped into eight-year-old Carla carefully balancing a dish. It was a sample of her father’s sperm for “show and tell”. [I bet that had Tunbridge Wells choking on its Shredded Wheat! – Ed.]

In the Netherlands, sex and children aren’t a taboo subject. As pupils play mummies and daddies in the playground they know exactly what they might have been doing last night … a 12-year-old at the senior school showed me how to roll a condom on to a broomstick while her friend asked me if I masturbated.

The British, meanwhile, expect their children to learn about sex and relationships from the playground, internet porn, WAGs and celebrities, and are amazed that we have the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases and abortions among the under 21s in Europe.

We need to talk about the subject until we can say various anatomical parts without sniggering.

For the first time, I found myself agreeing with Ed Balls [same here – Ed.], the Schools Secretary, on the Today programme yesterday [23 Feb] that sex education should be compulsory in all schools. Of course five-year-olds need to learn about sex, the earlier the better, and from parents as well as teachers.

The Dutch are more religious than the British and still manage to reach consent among Calvinists, Catholics and Muslims that children should be provided with all the facts to make their own informed decisions, not just lectured on morality and the missionary position.

Thoughts on the “hook-up culture,” or what I learned from my high school diary
This appeared on Scarleteen (an excellent site which addresses all sorts of sexuality questions and is aimed at teens and young adults, in a mature and adult way) and elsewhere on 2 March. In it the female writer discusses dating, sex and relationships and how they relate to our current views of feminism and gender roles. A couple of comments particularly struck home with me.

We need to admit as a culture that teens are sexual beings, and that more often than not, sexual maturity has a completely different timeline than emotional maturity. This is, to be sure, skewed by sexism and restrictive gender roles to make sexual coming-of-age worse for girls. But beyond that, maybe discovering what you want sexually and emotionally is just part of growing up – and that’s okay.

Girls deserve to discover themselves sexually at their own pace, to be neither rushed into having sex nor shamed into not having it. They deserve to have their very own “This is bullshit” moments without wearing a chastity belt.

My only comment is something we’re in danger of forgetting: that (despite all the machismo) just the same applies to boys!  If anything it is more important for boys as they first have to slough off that machismo.

Psychology and the Shock of Nudity
This item on the Academic Natuirist weblog addresses the problem of guilt surrounding being discovered naked. For most people the one discovered appears to carry the guilt, which in the view of the writer (and me) is stupid. Again a couple of excepts:

Naturists have a different attitude … You’ve seen me naked? Good! That means I don’t have to get dressed next time you come over …Why should Alice feel bad about seeing Bob naked, if Bob didn’t care at all about it? Alice is not guilty of embarrassing Bob. 
[Equally why should Bob feel guilty at being seen naked if Alice doesn’t care about it? – Ed.]

Getting textiles to not feel guilty about seeing nudity would be a good step for general acceptance [of nudity] … Maybe we’re wrong about how we notify others? The signs … warn “ATTENTION – BEYOND THIS POINT YOU MAY ENCOUNTER NUDE BATHERS” Perhaps the right approach is something like “There’s friendly naked people beyond this sign, and we won’t mind if you stop over and chat with us!”

Naked People – Your Version
Finally a challenge. On 18 February Dairy of a Nudist invited us to take part in a new phase of Sebastian Kempa’s ongoing Naked People project: Naked People Your Version. All you have to do is to submit a pair of identically posed photos of yourself, one clothed the other nude. The idea is, of course, “to help further break down the barrier of clothing which society has imposed to imprison our natural bodies”. I’ve not yet submitted my photos, but I have every intention of doing so in the next week or so. Dare you? – For each one of you who convinces me you’ve submitted your photos (I may ask you for evidence; depends how well I know you!) I’ll make a small donation to charity.  Who’s up for it?

medical, science, sexuality, thoughts

Body Comfort & Sex Education

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The eponymous author at Oh My God, That Britni’s Shameless wrote an interesting post a day or so ago about sex education.  What I like about Britni is that she is not only completely open minded but she has the confidence to say exactly what she thinks.  Which doesn’t mean I agree with everything she says; for instance her assertion “It’s just a natural and accepted thing that men are sexual, so they’re going to talk about sex and masturbation and dick size“.  Well, no, sorry, at least in my experience, men don’t; they’re too uptight – but that may be different for the younger generation.

Britni’s post, while being largely aimed at sex education (and just as applicable in the UK as in America), adds support to my long-held belief that we would all be better adjusted mentally, have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, and be in better health generally, if we were less repressed, better educated and more comfortable with our bodies.  As an example the US and UK have the two highest rates of unwanted teenage pregnancy in the western world; compare with the laid-back, free-thinking Dutch who have the lowest.  See this Wikipedia article (though some of the date here is quite old) and the diagram in this article from the Independent; see also, inter alia, here, here and here.

If we are to achieve this change of mindset we have to do two things: (a) restructure the brains of our revered leaders (political and religious) giving them a complete paradigm shift in their thinking on all things sexual, and then (b) investing in much better, more open and more caring sex & health education, vide the Dutch.  Along the way this, of course, will mean a change in attitudes towards nudity.

But of course the status quo is self-fulfilling and comfortable; change is uncomfortable and no-one much likes being outside their comfort zone.  Our leaders are repressed, so the modus operandi follows this, making the (unthinking) populous repressed, and they become or elect our leaders, and so ad infinitum.  I don’t know how we break the cycle.  All people like me can do is to keep expressing our views in the hope that the message does eventually seep into the cracks in a few brains and start that paradigm shift.  So I’m not putting any money on this change happening any time soon, but hope springs eternal.

science, thoughts

Quantum Spin-Drying

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Two pieces from the Feedback column in New Scientist of 13 February which especially “amused” me.

The care instructions for the dog kennel John Straede bought advised: “Hand wash in warm water with mild detergent.  Do not spin dry.”

Secondly, and probably more worryingly …

FEEDBACK has observed that the word “quantum” often translates to “magic” or “expensive fruitloop magic remedy”.  Threatening to put this observation on a sound academic footing, Graham Barrow carried out a pilot literature-survey.

In just 5 minutes a famous web search engine showed him many variants, starting with – of course! – “quantum crystal healing”.  Then there was “quantum kinesiology”, which presumably begins with the recipient’s arm in a superposition of floppiness and firmness, and “quantum reflexology”, which could lead to your feet changing position without passing through intervening space – handy for avoiding the cracks in the pavement.

“Quantum homeopathy” is so obvious in retrospect that we’re ashamed we didn’t invent it: the remedy does and does not contain any molecule of the claimed active substance, until you open the bottle.

In “quantum acupuncture” we imagine the needle both punctures the skin and misses it altogether.  And would a “quantum massage” involve a hand all over your body at once?  But what on earth, or anywhere else, is “quantum reiki”?  We fear there may be answers – and more examples.

Like Feedback, my mind boggles slightly over the concept of “quantum reiki”.  What’s worse is that in about two minutes I have found “quantum hypnosis”, “quantum dowsing” and “quantum meditation”.  I think I might be getting an attack of quantum worry!

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, science

Mythbusters

The latest (March 2010) issue of the BBC’s popular science magazine Focus contains an article busting some of the world’s most common myths.  For example:

Goldfish have short memories. 
False; they have memories which last at least a week according to experiments.

Sugar makes kids hyperactive. 
Experimentally proven to be false.  But that’ll be about as popular a result as the finding that MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism.

Men with big feet have big penises. 
Sorry girls, also false, according to just about every survey ever conducted.  There is no reliable way to determine the size of a guy’s lingam without seeing it.  Enjoy!

At the end of the article they add a few new myths suggested by readers, including the following with rather zen qualities …

In the era of black and white films,the world was black and white.
According to which logic the world didn’t exist before films were invented.  Interesting idea for a thriller story though!

When you jump up, the world moves forwards a bit before you land, so you touch down in a slightly different place.
This is an old one and I’ll get into trouble with the science community here but I reckon this is actually true.  When you jump the world moves on, but so do you as you have angular momentum (essentially forward motion) from when you were attached to earth.  However you will, I suggest, be slowed very marginally by friction with (resistance from) the air and thus will land in a subtly different spot from where you jumped.  But this effect will be so tiny it will be unmeasurable even after a huge number of jumps.  So for all practical purposes this is also false.

People with outie belly buttons are more attracted to people with innie belly buttons because they fit together: like a jigsaw
Would that life were so simple.  But if it were around 80% of us would be single as outies make up only around 10% of the population.  And no-one knows why.

Every zebra, when scanned by a barcode reader, comes up as ‘frozen peas’.
Unless there is some strange default barcode which defaults to “frozen peas” (very unlikely) this can’t be true as a zebra’s stripes do not conform to the coding of thick and thin lines which make up a barcode.  But I love the zen quality of the idea.  Another good plot-line for a short story?

Anyone got any other new myths?

beliefs, medical, science, thoughts

The Dawkins Delusion

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As regular readers will know I don’t do God or gods (of any gender).  In fact I don’t do dogmatic belief systems at all, preferring to find my own way and my own ethics, intellectually.  Which of course does not mean that I can’t appreciate many of the great things which have been done in the name of religion; that I don’t abhor the many bad things; that I am amoral; or that I would ever deny anyone’s right to believe whatever they wish as a crutch to get them through this life.

I am not a theist; neither am I an atheist.  I prefer to say that, while I find the notion of some all-supreme being inherently unlikely – literally fantastic – I simply do not know; and further I doubt that we can ever know.  Which should not stop us seeking and pushing back the intellectual envelope.

I am as suspicious of atheists as I am of theists.  For atheists are just as bigoted – sometimes more so – than theists.  Richard Dawkins is a case in point.  His aggressive “new atheism” is just as dogmatic, inflexible and demanding as the belief system of any theist fundamentalist.  Indeed I would go so far as to label Dawkins himself a fundamentalist – albeit one who doesn’t fly plane-loads of innocents into office blocks.

I was pleased therefore to see in next week’s Radio Times (23-29 January) the most measured and comprehensive demolition of Dawkins and his ilk under the title The Dawkins Delusion.  It was written by novelist Howard Jacobson who presents the first programme in Channel 4’s series The Bible: a History.  And it isn’t that Jabobson is a believer: he describes himself as an atheist “who fears all fanaticism bred by faith” which includes Dawkins et.al.

Sadly the Radio Times article isn’t on their website, but I feel sufficiently enraged by Dawkins’s bigoted anti-bigot stance that I’ve broken the rules and put a scanned copy online here (although it will be removed forthwith if I am requested to do so by Radio Times, or if I spot that the article is available elsewhere online).

Jacobson’s opinion, although not new, is important and deserves a wider airing.