More linkage!

Thank you, pompe! I get to re-use my 'hubris' tag (in a good way): biggest building plans, from an architect who's already built similar buildings. Article also links to a much bigger proposal for Japan, which is probably vaporware. This hyperbolic pyramid design is a new one to me, for arcologies, and my first reaction is "wow, that's really space inefficient", compared to a cube or dome, but I assume there are other benefits. Be nice to know what they are.

From James we get GOP candidates as Buffy villains.

From fallenrose, Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma, Botany of Desire) has a new book out (In Defense of Food). Don't eat too much, eat plants, don't eat things your grandma wouldn't recognize as food... I'd note that some of the animal engineering he mentions is arguably counteracting previous abuses; eggs aren't getting "fish oils", they're getting a flaxseed component which might be closer to natural eggs than the pure corn diet.

I wonder how this interacts with the John Hawks paper on rapid human evolution, which seems to support my intuition that various human populations could well have adapted to their specific agricultural diets. Perhaps we should think about not just traditional foods but food traditional for our individual genomes, where determinable. A related thought was that if there's any genetic component to correlations between 'race' and IQ, perhaps it's not from "X are dumb" but "X aren't adapted to Middle Eastern-derived agriculture, and IQ is nutrition sensitive", with certain middle-class populations suffering from the fact that while they can afford all the food they think they want, their genomes actually want foods not sold in their hemisphere.

Creationists take on plate tectonics and linguistics.

Atheism, bestiality, internet ruckus

In one corner, we have PZ Myers, biologist and web atheist extraordinaire. In another we have his daughter, 17 year old Skatje Myers. Opposing them is creationist For the Kids of Reasonable Kansans, and an ally of hers I hadn't heard of before today, Salvador Cordova.

Back in October, Skatje wrote a post arguing that she saw no rational reason for banning bestiality specifically. When the sex act is harmful to the animal, it's already covered by animal welfare laws, while sex is sometimes non-harmful, and something an animal can easily consent to. I'd agree. I'd also say that "condone" is a fine verb for this position: tolerating something you have no interest in and may think is kind of squicky seems like an excellent example of "condoning something". And I'd say that while believing in evolution by means of natural selection doesn't intrinsically make one a condoner of bestiality or voluntary adult incest or even abortion, I do see a causal trend that goes from doing away with the argument from design, to a materialist universe, to one of a handful of possible materialist bases of universal ethics and morality -- social contracts, the golden rule, categorical imperatives, and utilitarianism -- to supporting all sorts of mutually voluntary and non-damaging sex acts which appall the traditional Christian.

Tick, tick, tick, boom. Skatje got lots of comments on her own, but eventually it's spread. Sal in Dec 6 -- independent of Skatje, but Forthekids mentions her obliquely in the first comment. On Dec 27 she went into detail, bringing up Skatje's defense of the tolerability of some bestiality as an example of where a Darwinist upbringing will lead you. FtK is wrong to suggest this is evidence that "Darwinism" is false, and I think the position of most atheists I know on bestiality is "animals can't consent, also, ewww", but I think FtK is correct that using consent-ability as opposed to eww-ness or Biblical standards to debate the morality of bestiality is a rather large shift, one naturally led to by a materialist worldview, holding one of which is greatly helped by Darwin. She says "But, from an atheist’s standpoint, due to our supposed evolutionary origins, there are no clear cut reasons as to why certain behavior is deemed immoral." which is wrong if it means that we can't say any behavior is immoral, but kind of right in that certain behaviors indeed don't have any grounds for being deemed immoral, although wrong again in pinning that on evolution. It's not evolution -> bestiality but evolution -> no God -> ignore the Bible -> no grounds for condemning nice bestiality. Or gay sex.

This morning I found that post, and e-mailed Skatje about it, which was followed by Skatje making her own comments, which led me to believe I actually had a role here, but now I don't know. Because Sal got into things himself today with a picture of a peccary, which drew attacks from JanieBelle and attention from PZ himself.

Resulting comments have tended to "what jerks", arguments over the meaning of 'condone', and Skatje resenting being used as an example, and very little of "yes, we *do* tend to support abortion, even late-term abortion, incest between consenting adults who don't produce inbred children, and even possibly bestiality. Disgusting? Yeah, we find your morals and how you abuse gay children to be pretty disgusting too."

I don't know. Seems to me like a lot of reflexive groupthink against normally despicably wrong thinkers, and defending the lines of "oh no, Darwin has no moral consequences at all", whereas I see most thorough materialists over the last 2500 years indeed converging on "anything goes that doesn't actually hurt someone."