Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

One thing Watson and others forget is that the brain is highly malleable based on environment. Although he is the father of DNA he knows very little about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Previously it was thought that the human brain was ‘hardwired’ after a certain age. This is not true. Not only is not true, but the human mind is capable of adaptation but actual neuron growth even late in life. Ten years ago this was thought impossible.

Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity proves that a nurturing social and family setting shifts IQ, perspective, and emotional IQ. The so-called bell curve isn’t genetic. Oppressed Tibetans and Chinese ethnic minorities -whose test scores soar in the United States and Canada- are 20-30 points lower in their homeland. That 20-30 points deficit is in the same range of a lot of groups that are attacked or threatened (Muslims in France, Christians in Nigeria, Blacks in America). Conversely when oppressed groups are removed from their environment their IQ, emotional health returns to a normal rate, thus proving that is NOT genetic.

It is plastic, shifting and based upon the environment.

That is why people under prolonged stress experience memory loss, emotional outbursts and many other symptoms of a mind that is under duress. When the stress ends, normal memory levels return. A Black male living in the inner city in a single parent household facing an assortment of threats is obviously going to test differently than a white child growing up in the suburbs in a nurturing environment.

What is concerning about this growing myth in the end-all-be-all power of genes is that it leaves people helpless. There is apparently a fat gene, an Alzheimers gene, and what next? A stupid gene? This is genetic determinism and it’s not only a false scientific creation but down-right scary. It leaves people waiting around for ‘the magic pill,’ helpless and perpetual victims. It makes doctors and scientists as God and turns the average human into a lab rat.

A. J. Jacobs writes:

By the end of the year, I had moved from my old agnosticism to what a minister friend of mine calls "reverent agnosticism": Whether or not there is a God, I think there’s something to the idea of sacredness. The Sabbath can be sacred, rituals can be sacred, and there’s an importance to that. Do you think there’s anything to the idea of being a "reverent agnostic"? Or is it just oxymoronic?

Matt Labash and Stephen Colbert think it is. And if you think faith is a one-off, moment-of-total-revelation from which everything else follows, then I can see their point. But this, of course, does not exhaust the varieties of religious experience, to echo James. And there are times when intelligent believers, in periods of doubt or just spiritual drought, pray without assurance the God is truly there; or attend Mass or other services and feel and see nothing. But they still show up; and they still pray: unsure but still aware that what is beyond us will not always be clear to us, and the the struggle to believe is as important as the achievement. If this is "reverent agosticism," then it is another phrase for thinking faith. J.K. Rowling speaks to it in the Harry Potter books. Here’s a recent quote of hers, debunking the notion that somehow her work is anti-Christian. It isn’t. It’s just not fundamentalist. Money quote:

"The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It’s something I struggle with a lot. On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it’s something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that’s very obvious within the books."

Or as Montaigne put it:

"Some impose upon the world beliefs they do not hold; others, more in number, impose beliefs upon themselves, not being able to penetrate into what it really is to believe."

(Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I don’t know if you saw this in the NYT yesterday:

"Katon Dawson, the chairman of the state Republican Party, … was far more dismissive of Mr. Colbert’s apparent intentions than his Democratic counterparts. "My advice," he said in an interview, “is that he could probably have more fun buying a sports car and getting a girlfriend."

Since Mr. Colbert is married, I think what Mr. Dawson is trying to say is, in order to fit into the Republican Presidential field properly; he needs to spend beyond his means and engage in an adulterous relationship.  We have all seen that is what’s required to fit in with the modern Republican Party, but I am at a loss as to why he needed to spell it out so plainly.

What is Mark Penn smoking, apart from complacency? He claims a quarter of Republican women will vote for Clinton. Drudge blared it in his new role as Clinton’s publicity arm. WaPo points out that if this were to happen, Clinton

would significantly outperform any Democratic candidate since 1972 among this group of voters. In exit polls from 1972 to 2004, an average of 9 percent of GOP women voted for Democratic candidates…

In the latest Post-ABC poll, 80 percent of Republican women said they definitely would not support Clinton if she were the Democratic nominee. Fewer said so of Obama or Edwards. Only 11 percent said they would vote for her in a general election match-up against Rudy Giuliani.

11 percent? 24 percent? Who’s counting? Obama adviser Joel Benenson adds:

In a recent Cook/RT Strategies Poll, in a head-to-head match-up against Rudy Giuliani, Clinton won only 7% of Republican women voters. Indeed, more Democratic women crossover to the Republican side to vote against Clinton—9% – than Republican women crossover to vote for her.

The Clinton lies are already under way.

"This is like a lighthouse going on, the light shining its beam on Mitt Romney," – Albert Mohler on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. Yes, an institution that untilo very recently banned inter-racial dating and engaged in brutal anti-Catholic bigotry is now a light shining on Mitt Romney, a man who belonged to a church which, in his lifetime, barred African-Americans from the priesthood and temple ceremonies. Ah, the GOP. They don’t even pretend any more, do they?

As Cartman would say, why the fuck not?

John Cole has some:

1.) "Would you have sex with a man to stop a terrorist attack?"

2.) "If lowering taxes results in increased revenues then would lowering taxes to zero result in infinite revenues?"

3.) "If you had a time machine, would you travel back in time and abort Bin Laden?"

4.) "Would you torture and kill Jesus to ensure mankind’s salvation? And how does that work?"

Just beat Jesus repeatedly and put him in a stress-position for several hours. That’s not torture, according to John Yoo. Oh, wait …

The Bush administration may not have meant this (yes, I know, the benefit of the doubt again) but it comes with the territory when you’re funding abstinence-only programs in Uganda. Ed Brayton comments here.

And it took the "Bowling Alone" Internet, of course:

“This finding was both novel and unexpected,” says Denise Anthony, associate professor of sociology. “In traditional laboratory studies of collective goods, we don’t include Good Samaritans, those people who just happen to pass by and contribute, because those carefully designed studies don’t allow for outside actors. It took a real-life situation for us to recognize and appreciate the contributions of Good Samaritans to web content.”

A new front in the semantic wars:

Not all Islamophobes are fanatics. Most, on the contrary, are decent people who just want to live in peace. Islamophobia forms only part of their identity. They grew up fearing Islam, and they still worry about it from time to time, especially during holidays and on certain anniversaries; but many would confess to doubt about just how Islamophobic they feel deep down inside. They may find themselves wondering, for example, if the Koran is really that much more bloodthirsty than the Jewish scriptures (Joshua 6 is plenty murderous) or the Christian (Matthew 10:34 is not exactly comforting).

Unfortunately a handful of troublemakers thrive among them, parasitically.

They spew out hatred through Web sites. They seek to silence their critics, and to recruit impressionable young people. Perhaps it is unfair to confuse matters through calling the moderates and the militants by the same name. It would be more fitting to say that the latter are really Islamophobofascists.

Some might find the expression offensive. That is too bad. If we don’t resist Islamophobofascism now, its intolerance can only spread. And we all know who benefits from that. One name in particular comes to mind. It belongs to a fellow who is now presumably living in a cave, drawing up long-term plans for a clash of civilizations…