The Dish

by Patrick Appel

Jonah Lehrer highlights a few studies suggesting that not believing in free will adversely impacts ethics. The gist:

At the very least, free will is a useful illusion, leading us to be more prosocial and ethical. Because even if we are just "a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules," we're a vast assembly that feels like so much more. William James, as usual, said it best: "My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."

Some related thoughts by Jonah here:

When we learn that the amygdala is an ancient part of human nature, pumping out fear and anger, does that make it harder to resist the amygdala? When we learn that sugar activates the same dopaminergic areas as sex and crack, does that make it harder to not eat the candy bar? The brain has preserved a small space for executive control, which is a weak synonym for free will. Is modern neuroscience, by describing the determinism of the fleshy machine, undermining that sense of control? My worry is that we've come to see our imperfections as inevitable, just like those testosterone fueled subjects acting greedy in the ultimatum game.

by Chris Bodenner

TDW:

Tis the season to be silly at the National Physical Laboratory, where scientists have constructed the world’s smallest snowman by shooting a focused ion beam at nano-scale tin beads used in the correction of electron microscope astigmatism. The final product measures a ridiculous 10 µm across — 1/5th the width of a human hair. Check out the making of here.

by Patrick Appel

Clay Shirky responds to Evgeny Morozov:

It is impossible to know how the next few months in Iran will unfold, but the use of social media has already passed several tests: it has enabled citizens to coordinate with one another better than previously, to broadcast events like Basij violence or the killing of Neda Aga Soltan to the rest of the world, and, by forcing the regime to shut down communications apparatus, the protesters have infected Iran with a kind of technological auto-immune disease. However great the regime’s short-term desire to keep the protesters from communicating with one another, a modern economy simply cannot function if people can’t use their phones. The regime may yet crush protests, but even if they do, the events of June to November this year will still have broken the old illusion of a happy balance between democratic, theocratic, and military power in Iran.

by Chris Bodenner A reader sends along a song by Jonathan Coulton. Lyrics after the jump:

You have put on your feety pajamas
It’s time for a long winter’s nap
There’s a knock on the door and a stranger is there
He wants you to sit on his lap
He takes your watch and he gives you a hairbrush
Your wife gets a wig on a chain
He says he can’t stay
Cause he’s got a long way to go
And it’s starting to rain

Christmas is interesting
Like a knife in your heart
Christmas is interesting
How it tears you apart
Christmas is interesting
Like a stick in your eye
It’s so freaking interesting
That it might make you cry

So you’re an elf, but you’d rather be a dentist
Maybe you’re a train with square wheels
Maybe you’re a squirt gun that only shoots jam
Now you know how Jesus feels
He is riding a sleigh he calls Rosebud
His mansion is lonely and cold
He can’t remember a pleasant December
When he wasn’t tired and old

Christmas is interesting
Like a knife in your heart
Christmas is interesting
How it tears you apart
Christmas is interesting
Like a stick in your eye
It’s so freaking interesting
That it might make you cry

So you’re drunk and your name is Jimmy Stewart
You once had a wonderful life
Then you lost all your money, you cracked up your car
You yelled at your favorite wife
You go to bed and you wait for Jacob Marley
He comes to make you feel brave
But under his cloak he is nothing but smoke
And a finger that points at your grave

Christmas is interesting
Like a knife in your heart
Christmas is interesting
How it tears you apart
Christmas is interesting
Like a stick in your eye
It’s so freaking interesting
That it might make you cry

by Patrick Appel

The Economist heralds immigration:

Immigration keeps America young, strong and growing. “The populations of Europe, Russia and Japan are declining, and those of China and India are levelling off. The United States alone among great powers will be increasing its share of world population over time,” predicts Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, a think-tank. By 2050, there could be 500m Americans; by 2100, a billion. That means America could remain the pre-eminent nation for longer than many people expect. “Relying on the import of money, workers, and brains,” writes Mr Lind, America is “a Ponzi scheme that works.”

Another paragraph worth pondering:

It is possible that unskilled immigrants hurt the wages of unskilled locals. George Borjas, a Harvard economist, estimates that native workers’ wages decline by 3% or 4% for every 10% increase in immigrants with similar skills. But others, such as David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, have found little or no impact. Gianmarco Ottaviano of the University of Bologna and Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, find that nearly 90% of native-born American workers actually enjoy higher wages because of immigration. Many immigrants bring new skills and ideas, spend money, pay taxes and employ natives.

by Chris Bodenner

Brian Palmer explores the history of the "side grip," or holding a gun sideways when firing, which makes for terrible aim. Its contemporary origin is traced to the opening scene of the 1993 film Menace II Society, which popularized it among street gangs. But the side grip has an even earlier history:

During the first half of the 20^th century, soldiers used the side grip for the express purpose of endangering throngs of people. Some automatic weapons from this era—like the Mauser C96 or the grease gun—fired so quickly or with such dramatic recoil that soldiers found it impossible to aim anything but the first shot. Soldiers began tilting the weapons, so that the recoil sent the gun reeling in a horizontal rather than vertical arc, enabling them to spray bullets into an onrushing enemy battalion instead of over their heads.

Video NSFW. Film reviews here.

by Patrick Appel

Michelle Cottle flags a new study on young people's pitiful knowledge of contraception. She pounces:

When 18 percent of young adult men (ages 18-29) believe that having sex standing up is a good form of birth control, it is time for massive, mandatory, honest, comprehensive sex education.

by Chris Bodenner

"Professor Fnord’s Internet-legendary “Mad World” / Domo-kun mash-up “Domo Darko” gets a long overdue HQ remastering."

by Patrick Appel

BPS passes along an interesting study:

Nordgren's team tested the idea that "restraint bias" could explain why drug addicts are so prone to relapse. They recruited 55 participants through a smoking-cessation programme, all of whom had been smoke free for at least three weeks. Those who said they had more impulse control also tended to say they wouldn't be trying so hard to avoid temptation, such as the company of other smokers. Four months' later, those with the inflated sense of impulse control were more likely to have relapsed.

by Andrew Sprung

This just in* from Jonathan Cohn – removing a major worry about the Senate HCR bill (link is my addition):

Paragraph (2) allows for annual caps before 2014, to an extent difficult to determine on a first read: plans "May only establish a restricted annual limit on the dollar value of benefits…with respect to the scope of benefits that are essential benefits under section 1302(b)" of the bill (pg. 103ff). That section does not obviously clarify the way in which annual caps may work. But they are prohibited as of Jan. 1, 2014.

One thing about this endless sausage craft: many of the bill's potential booby traps have been flagged by a thousand watchers and pinged around the Internet pretty quick. Not everything about the process has been dispiriting. 

* Updated with bill language, 4:10