The offer still stands. Follow the instructions here to get your dead bugs and rotten food scanned for free.

I sent in my toothbrush and they sent me an email with the results the other day! So here it is:

Pretty interesting, huh? They also put up two other toothbrush scans:

While mine was old, this one looks new. The corners of the top don’t look so worn.

Here’s the third one:

ASPEX also has a contest running. Name that sample for a free 1gb USB stick. Here’s this week’s which will be over soon:

Click the image to go to that page where you can comment with what you think it is. Or go here.

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I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph), and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within a few weeks they’ll have it scanned in and the image available on their website.

I asked them if they knew how many readers I have, and they said no problem, they can handle it.

Huh.

Well, you heard them. Scavenge your trash cans, dig into your local sources of vermin and oddments, and send them in. I’m thinking this could be really fun for any school teachers out there — you could have the whole class looking for interesting specimens to zoom in on. You can see their current galleries for ideas.

Follow the instructions here to get your dead bugs and rotten food scanned for free.

If you do send something in to get scanned be sure to note that you found them via PZ; and be sure to come back here and share your scan with the rest of us!

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Anyhoo, this is a roundup post in which I cover several topics that are tenuously connected at best. Here’s what I’m rambling on about:

• I’m a citizen scientist now! WOOT!
  • Encyclopedia of Life!
  • My Flickr
• Moving the body affects how we think – a study
• Prayer and meditation may reshape the brain – a study

First, I want to talk about a ScienceDaily report: Massive Online ‘Macroscopic Observatory’ Of Earth’s Biodiversity To Be Created. “Wanted (soon): observations from environment-minded citizens that will allow science to study biodiversity at a planetary level in a massive, comprehensive virtual observatory of historic importance.”

This guy, Edward O. Wilson, created a website, Encyclopedia of Life (eol). His dream: “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth…” and they are starting to do just that. A page for every species. If you read the ScienceDaily article, it will be amazing. You’ll be able to get information from the Deep Web from images, maps, classification, common and scientific names, links to research and papers, etc.

It’s already there now, and growing all the time. In the future you’ll also be able to get genome sequences and much much more. Basically anything you want to know about a species will be there, at your fingertips, all on one page, for free. My scientific geekiness is giggling with delight!

And here’s where I get to finally call myself a scientist! Uh, well, a citizen scientist, which is still cool. eol wants people to submit their pictures. I’m a photographer, and I love taking pictures of nature, but I’ve never been able to do much with them. Now I can help with this project! Can you say WOOT!? I can. Woot WOOT! (Sorry, uber-geek moment there).

So what you do, what I did, was to open a Flickr account. I’m ZeNeeceC on Flickr now. I got some older pictures posted yesterday. Then here’s the tough part. You need to machine tag them with their scientific names. This is so that when you send them to the eol Flickr group, eol’s computer can get those images and put them on the right pages.

My friend Jeff said that eol sounded like a Wikipedia kind of thing for science. In a way, he’s right, because we get to contribute our images. But eol is serious about science, so the images will get authenticated. Until that time, they have a yellow box around them so people can see that they are contributed but might not be scientifically accurate like the rest of the info on the page.

Even further, though, if you just want high end science info, eol lets you set that up so that you don’t even see the citizen science stuff. It’s a very well done site.

Anyway, I am having trouble finding out what things are called. Flickr has a group called ID Please, which I joined. And I joined BugGuide.net  as ZeNeece to help me ID bugs. But the flowers and plants, I will need to find an online source to identify those more readily.

So that’s that. I wanted to share it with you because it’s so exciting to me, but also in case you or someone you know might be interested as well.

Onto some studies!

Our Bodies, Our Brains: a recent study shows that moving your body in certain ways can improve your ability to think. Published in Psychological Science.

Working with 38 subjects, the scientists confirmed that either a step forward (a typically positive movement) or a step backward (usually negative) significantly changed one’s ability to perform a mental task.

Taking four steps back improved a subject’s accuracy and timing on the task, whereas taking four steps forward led to longer processing times and more errors.

How cool is that? Now, if you follow the link, you’ll see that this was on 60 second science on Scientific American, so there are no links to studies. But they list the publication, Psychological Science, if you want to look into it further.

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain… And Your Reality: This is interesting. I’ve told you about some studies (see below) in the past in this field, which this article calls “neurotheology”.  The article from NPR is about Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at University of Pennsylvania who has written several books and studies very religious people and their brains. Newberg says: “The more you focus on something — whether that’s math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain.”

He also tested a doctor who meditates for an hour a day. He had him meditate in a brain scanner.

As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime’s parietal lobes went dark. Newberg said, “This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world,” he explains. “When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area.”

The article goes on to suggest that you can benefit from meditation and prayer as well, even if you don’t devote 1 or 2 hours a day to it. I find this interesting and compelling, and it goes along with the other studies listed below. I would have liked some studies referenced and linked to in the article, but I guess I’m not that lucky.

Here are the other posts I’ve done about other relevant brain and mind studies recently:

• Church: No brain activity required- study showed how experiencing transcendence basically shut down the right parietal lobe.
• More differences in the brains of believers and non-believers: A recent study that found religious people were less anxious about mistakes they made than non-believers.
• Knowledge and Beliefs are stored differently in the brain: this wasn’t a specific study. Dr. Steven Novella mentioned it in passing on his podcast.
• Religion is the path of least resistance: This was about an article in New Scientist where people are born believers. I strongly suspect the way they conducted the studies mentioned.
• Superstitious? It could be your lack of control: This was a neat study about people who were basically put into a situation where they felt a lack of control found patterns more readily in random information.

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1. I understand that Zeus, Santa, the Easter Bunny, Odin, Osiris and all of their ilk are fairy tale characters, stories made up to explain things that weren’t known at the time, or to get weak-minded people to do what someone wanted. They are all just stories to tell to children or sheep, to keep them in line or entertain them. Jesus, Yahweh, Allah and Jehovah are no different. I’ve studied world religions. They’re all mythical and steal from each other. They are all about submission and control of simple people through fear and coercion.
2. I’m curious and inquisitive. I am intelligent. I think for myself. I value logic, critical thinking and common sense. If I don’t understand something, I research it. I look for experts to help me figure things out. In other words, if I don’t understand something, I don’t just say, well, some invisible man in the sky did it and consider it case closed.
3. I get to sleep in on Sundays, I don’t have to wear special, magical underwear or other clothes, I don’t have to do weird rituals, I am not forced to give 10% to an organization that is less than ethical, I don’t have to drink wine and eat stale crackers that are supposed to be the zombie flesh of a dead prophet, I don’t have to kneel and pray to nothing instead of take personal responsibility, etc.
4. I’m actually HAPPY thinking for myself and living for today. I am not afraid of the wrath of a supreme being who is fickle, has barbaric human emotions and reacts violently to the exertion of free will, which must have been instilled by said supreme being in the first place, if he existed, which he doesn’t.
5. A lot of god’s spokesmen are greedy and hypocritical. I would venture to say a great many are unpalatable. I wouldn’t want to be friends with them, never mind follow their orders.
6. Everyone cherry picks from their holy books. If no one can follow the whole book in its entirety, that says something. Like how amazingly contradictory the texts are, not to mention violent, hypocritical and hateful and barbaric.
7. While it’s much harder to think for myself, it’s much more rewarding. I get to make my own decisions and form my own beliefs based on evidence, reality, facts and experience.
8. I am not a sheep. I have no need to follow a shepherd to the slaughter, to be whipped into line through fear and shame. I have no need to be led by a carrot dangling on a stick, an unattainable goal in a distant future, in fact, not until after I’m dead.
9. I am capable of being moral just for the simple reason that being a good person is its own reward. Jesus did not invent the golden rule. It’s much older than christianity. I also believe in the silver rule. They make sense. I don’t need fear and shame to force me to make moral, healthy choices for myself and my behaviors. I take responsibility for my actions.
10. I value the scientific method and am skeptical in nature. There is not one mustard seed of evidence that the supernatural world exists. In fact, by definition the supernatural cannot exist because if it did it would not be super. It would just be natural. Anyway, there’s no evidence of gods, fairies, mermaids, leprechauns or ogres. Not one little teeny speck of evidence. Not a hint or a whiff. I value science. It works. It evolves and grows and learns. It’s beautiful and awesome and amazing.
11. Mohammad was a pedophile and so are many priests. All excused away and ignored. Any organization or person that makes excuses and allows the rape of innocent children is reprehensible and therefore has no right to teach morals to anyone. Also, the bible condones slavery. Again, unacceptable. They have no business preaching morals and forcing people to follow in their footsteps. The big 3 religions are all based on texts and stories from barbarians. Their gods were created by those barbarians and are flawed, angry, hateful and petty. If I HAD to choose gods to follow, I’d go for the Greek gods. At least the Greeks were intelligent and created gods that were openly flawed and interesting.
12. I prefer not to live my life based on ignorance, fear and guilt.
13. I am not willing to get my morals from a complete hypocrite. I don’t want a two-faced greedy liar to tell me how to live my life. I choose to decide for myself.
14. My decisions are not based on how they affect some all powerful being in the sky who has a notoriously bad temper. My decisions are based in reality.
15. I don’t need imaginary friends to hold my hand and tell me what to do or what to think. There’s medication for that mental illness now. I hear it’s quite effective. I have real friends who actually help me. No need of invisible ones who won’t actually help me move or bring me soup when I’m sick.
16. Math and science work. Prayer? Not so much. It’s just a way to be helpless and pretend you’re helping when you are not.
17. Atheism never started a war. Religion has started so many wars… to kill other people who happened to believe in a different invisible man in the sky. There are wars right now over who’s invisible friend is the best. It’s the 21st freaking century. That’s insane.
18. I thank myself and my husband for every meal I have, because I cooked it and we paid for the groceries.  We made it happen through hard work. I thank the coach and the players on my team that won, because they are the ones that did the hard work, the people who actually won, not an invisible man in the sky who happens to like the same team as me.
19. I don’t have to strap a bomb on to go blow up a school bus. Being godless I am free of this kind of stupid insanity.
20. I’m emotionally mature enough to be happy with one life. I don’t need fear of eternal damnation, or promise of future reward in a boring heaven on my knees supplicating myself to a god for all eternity, to get me through the day. I understand that no one, not one single person, knows what happens when we die, but that it happens to all of us. It’s a natural process, not supernatural.

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I wrote a transcript because it’s so awesome:

Will you fight? “No, we will run! And we will live.”
Shame on you!
This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re gonna let it be the worst.
And I guarantee a week won’t go by in your life you won’t regret walking out, letting them get the best of you.
Well, I’m not going home.
We’ve gone too far!
And I’m going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause.
A day may come when the courage of men fails, but it is not this day.
A line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.
You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked before.
But that’s fine, we’ll just get tougher winning!
A person grits his teeth, and shows real determination.
Failure is Not an option!
That’s how winning is done!
Believe me when I say,
We can break this army here.
And win just one for the giver.
But I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time.
You’ve got to get mad.
I mean plum mad dog mean.
If you would be free men then you must
Fight to fulfill that promise! Let us
Cut out their living guts.
One inch at a time.
And they will know what we can do!
HOO!
Let no man forget how menacing we are. We are Lions!
Like a big bear, man!
This is Your time!
Sieze the day.
Never surrender.
Victory or death!
That’s the Chicago way.
Who’s with me!?
Clap. Clap! Don’t let Tink die! Clap!
Alright!
Let’s Fly!
And gentlemen in England now abed
Will Know my name is the LORD when I
Tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take
Our Independence Day!

Found at Infidelicacy, Thanks!

Freethinkers, Atheists, Agnostics, all people who cherish their rights and freedoms, we must unite! We must find common ground and common cause. We must eschew apathy as the evil it is and rally for justice, common sense, reason, science,  skepticism and critical thinking!

It’s happening, slowly. We must encourage and nurture this brave cause against the enemy of mindless, hypocritical religious bullies.

Will you be the problem? Will you wallow in apathy and ignorance? Will you let the senseless automatons controlled by their religious leaders keep you in the dark shadows under their jackboot of fear, repression and false morals?

Or are you part of the solution? Will you stand tall and proud? Free of gods, myths and fairy tales, free to think clearly and independently? The choice is yours.

In that vein I would like to have one symbol, an atheism logo or a freethinking logo that would encompass the whole idea, to help us come together and make us all stronger than we could ever be alone. Maybe an atheist creed, or a freethinking creed. Something we can all get behind. I wonder if such things are possible. I would like to think they are. Suggestions, ideas and comments are Always welcome.

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I’ve seen his videos in the past, but I didn’t realize he has been so prolific. (I know, I live under a rock). He did this latest video about a month ago and it’s awesome, as usual. I decided to do a transcript mainly for myself because I agreed with just about everything he said. So I thought I’d add it here. Thanks Pat, you really did nail what I think!

Godless and Free by Pat Condell

Somebody pointed out to me recently that by focusing on what I don’t want, namely religion, I’m attracting more of it into my life, which I agree would be a very unfortunate irony if not for the fact that I’m focusing on what I do want, and that’s freedom, and lots of it.

You see, I make these videos not because I despise religion as humanity’s way of poking itself in the eye with a sharp stick for no reason, although obviously I do, but because I want to live in a free world full of free people who can say whatever they want to say and who can be whoever they want to be one thousand percent fo the time, and where nobody is allowed to shut them up because their crackpot religious beliefs have been offended.

I don’t care at all about theology, unless it threatens that freedom, and then I care about it the way I care about rabies or typhoid. So you could say that I’m not so much anti-religion as pro-freedom. Indeed if religion was pro-freedom, I wouldn’t have such a problem with it. But then if religion was pro-freedom it wouldn’t exist.

Because religion feeds on a broken spirit, and that’s why it tries to break your spirit the moment you come into contact with it.

Submit. Obey. Do not question.

Those words should be chiseled above the entrance of every church and every mosque. Because that’s the only message religion has, when it comes right down to it – Praise the lord, or else.

The pope spelled it out for American catholics when he told them, “Obedience to the doctrine of the church is the foundation of your faith.” That’s what he said. There was no mention of enlightenment or spirituality or any of these things, because he’s not in this business. He’s in the obedience business, the only business where the customer is always wrong.

Clergy are the only salesmen who don’t have to justify or prove any of the outrageous claims they make for the product they’re hustling, and this leaves them free to engage in the kind of open fraud which in any other walk of life would be a criminal offence.

For the level of investment they demand from us I believe we’re entitled to expect actual enlightenment and wisdom in return. Instead, what do we get? We get dogma, crude coercion, and endless empty pieties about the love of a god who clearly loves us the way a violent husband loves the woman sitting next to him with two black eyes. If we step out of line we pay in the most brutal way.

And it’s this crass violence at the heart of religion which I believe makes it truly evil, and also furnishes proof, as if proof were needed, that this is an entirely manmade phenomenon with nothing divine about it, otherwise it wouldn’t be so damned ugly.

The god of the desert is transparently a false god. He’s a puppet who speaks with the voice of ignorant men who are afraid of knowledge and afraid of freedom and who therefore need desperately to control the thoughts of others for their own miserable survival.

They need us to believe that we’re less than we are, and to diminish ourselves in our own minds, to feel small and helpless, in need of salvation. So what do they tell us? They tell us that strength and virtue lie in submission. Yes, of course they do. With our faces in the dust we are invincible, isn’t that right?

And of course we live forever, either in eternal bliss or in eternal torment, but that’s entirely up to us. Eternal bliss requires that you wear a straitjacket of blind faith, not permanently, just from now until you die, whereas living a joyful, humane, compassionate, but godless life will get you horribly tortured for all eternity.
Fear is religion’s currency of choice. It’s the lowest of human emotions because it’s the most crippling emotion and this is why it’s religion’s currency of choice. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but hey, don’t strain yourselves.

But actually it’s religion that has everything to fear because it depends on maintaining the illusion, maintaining the spell, and hoping that nobody manages to burst its artificial bubble of faith, and this is exactly why it wages such determined war on our basic freedoms of thought and speech.

But it’s losing this war, because every day more and more of us are waking up to the damage that this nonsense is doing to our world. We can see our societies being twisted out of shape, being injected with false values that pander to bigotry and superstition, and we’ve realized that this god of the desert has outstayed his welcome and become a liability, and quite frankly he needs us a lot more than we need him.

Because we’ve moved on from the desert, and we’ve discovered a few things about the world, and the universe, and our place in it, and we’re no longer afraid of the thunder and the lightning. Our world is no longer populated by demons and hobgoblins, and we no longer need to be led around by the nose for the benefit of clergy.

And they know this, just as they know that their god’s very existence depends entirely on our belief – belief without evidence and belief that defies reason – and when that belief disappears, as one day it certainly will, this ridiculous god will disappear with it, instantly and forever.

He won’t be able to vent his wrath or visit retribution on anyone, because he won’t exist. He’ll evaporate quicker than common sense in a creation museum, and his vast army of controlling parasitical clergy will find themselves briefly, cartoon-like in mid air, before dropping like fleas into a bucket.

That’s what I’m looking forward to, and that’s what I’m focused on, and it’s why I make these videos, because I think we’re better than this. And I know we’ve got the power to withdraw our belief, and our consent, and put a stop to this nonsense.

All we need is the courage.

Peace and freedom. Let’s not forget the freedom.

This is just brilliant. I wish I had the sunny optimism Pat expresses in this video. I can’t say that I do, but it sure would be nice if people could find the courage and the wherewithall to break free of the shackles of blind faith and dogma.

I want to point out one thing. The argument Pat talks about in the beginning is flawed. He said that someone told him that by focusing on what he doesn’t want in his life, he’s attracting more of it. This is called the Law of Attraction and it’s completely bogus. I’ll write more about it later. Remind me if I forget.

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• Global Atheist is an aggregate site that refreshes every 15 minutes. It’s a great place to scan lots of awesome skeptical and atheist sites at once.

Now for the Rambling Political Bit:

After about 2 years of campaigning and general political nastiness, it’s over. We’ll have a new president soon! Change is in the air! President Barack Obama. I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad it’s done.

It seems that most of America is probably relieved and happy today, while some people (like my parents) are very angry and busy selling off their stocks so that they can leave the country. Maybe they can move to Canada. Oh wait, Canada really IS a socialist country. Just teasing.

Hopefully things will settle down, and people will get on with their lives. My phone didn’t ring all day from the Republican party, telling me how to think, so it was nice to have some peace and quiet.

I feel like there is so much potential for positive change. I hope good things will be able to happen with a new administration.

What does it mean to us, the little people, to have a new president? Hopefully a lot. In my humble opinion, things can only get better after the past 8 years. Apparently most of America agrees that it was time for something different. WOOT!

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