To 3G or not 3G

Today I upgraded iTunes to 7.7, downloaded the iPhone 2.0 software, installed it on my iPhone, visited the App store, grabbed a handful of free applications, bought one (Bejeweled 2, natch), and hooked up my iPhone to the Amazon Exchange infrastructure.
And paused.
Everything seems to be working, except for the fact that all my calendar entries from Exchange are shifted 15 hours into the future. That’s weird, and I’m not quite sure how to troubleshoot it.
So the big question: do I want to buy an iPhone 3G tomorrow? Earlier this week I was determined to do so. Now I’m not sure; I think I may try spending a few days with the new software before making a decision. I’ve seen reports from colleagues that the push email from Exchange is doing a number on the iPhone’s battery life, and I’d like to see some comparative data for the new device.
Must-load free apps: Zipcodes, Facebook, Currency, Remote and NY Times. And for the unreconstructed retro-gamers among us, there is a port of the original “Colossal Cave” under the name Advent.
Obvious missing app: a WordPress blogging client. [UPDATE] It’s coming, soon. And it looks really nice.
UPDATE: Well, I’m really glad that I installed iTunes 7.7 and the iPhone 2.0 software yesterday (using the instructions at Macworld), because today looks like a freaking trainwreck. Maybe Apple should rent some EC2 capacity for its activation services….

Abso-bleeping-lutely brilliant, Lewis!!!!

What an extraordinary drive by Lewis Hamilton at today’s British Grand Prix! Lewis Hamilton leading the British Grand Prix.Horribly wet conditions, with great puddles of water on the track, and a few dry spells to tempt people into risky tyre changes. Everybody seemed to be spinning, or sliding off the track, except for Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren, and he wound up winning by over a minute, lapping everyone up to third place. Unquestionably the best drive of his short career.
The Driver’s Championship is in a fascinating state: half-way through the season, we have a three-way tie at the top, with Hamilton, Räikkönen and Massa all on 48 points. Nine races down, nine to go. This is going to be fun.

Theism, dualism, and brains

I’ve been kicking around an idea for a blog post on the relationship of dualism and religion. The arguments go something like this: small children are natural dualists (and animists) for a whole bunch of adaptive reasons: taking the intentional stance towards stuff is often a good way of modelling the world. And if you never get a chance to question this dualism (and culture, family, language, and wishful thinking can make it hard), you wind up with a worldview which needs some kind of supernatural authority to make sense of it. Etcetera. Not very novel, perhaps – various writers, from Scott Atran to Dan Dennett, have visited this territory – but perhaps it makes clear the fact that arguments about religious epistemology are mostly intended as justification.
And then I started to think about all of the reasons why people do, in fact, question dualism. I imagined that some might reject theism as incoherent, and then find they have no need of the supernatural, while others might come to a materialist monism as the best explanation of the world that they see, and only then realize that they had no need of a deity. “Best explanation of the world…?” What might this be? Mental illness replacing demonic possession? The effects of drugs on the mind, demonstrating an unquestionably physical basis for aspects of emotion and personality?
It was at this point that I realized that I actually knew very little about the history of the brain: how personal experience, evidence, and dogma have influenced the way in which people have thought about brains, minds, and souls over history. And by a happy coincidence I came across a highly-esteemed book on the subject by an author who is a new favourite of mine. So I picked up a copy of “Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain – and How It Changed the World” by Carl Zimmer, the author of “Microcosm”, the wonderful book on E.coli that I just finished.
“Soul Made Flesh” doesn’t pretend to address the entire history of the study of the brain. Instead, Zimmer concentrates on one man: Thomas Willis, a 17th century English doctor who effectively invented neurology. I read the first two chapters over dinner this evening, before going down to the waterfront to watch the Ivars fireworks on Elliott Bay. Zimmer’s style is as deft as it was in “Microcosm”; I’m really going to enjoy this. (And when I finish it, I may be able to write that piece on dualism with a little more evidence to support my hypothesis….) My only frustration? No Kindle edition. Sigh….

"if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture"

Christopher Hitchens sees for himself.

I am somewhat proud of my ability to “keep my head,” as the saying goes, and to maintain presence of mind under trying circumstances. I was completely convinced that, when the water pressure had become intolerable, I had firmly uttered the pre-determined code word that would cause it to cease. But my interrogator told me that, rather to his surprise, I had not spoken a word. I had activated the “dead man’s handle” that signaled the onset of unconsciousness. So now I have to wonder about the role of false memory and delusion. What I do recall clearly, though, is a hard finger feeling for my solar plexus as the water was being poured. What was that for? “That’s to find out if you are trying to cheat, and timing your breathing to the doses. If you try that, we can outsmart you. We have all kinds of enhancements.” I was briefly embarrassed that I hadn’t earned or warranted these refinements, but it hit me yet again that this is certainly the language of torture.

Rewriting history (as we all do, all the time)

Further confirmation (and expansion) of Libet‘s classic work demonstrating that we start to act before we are conscious of our decision to do so, and rewrite our subjective experience so that we feel that we’re in control:

Dutch researchers led by psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam recently found that people struggling to make relatively complicated consumer choices — which car to buy, apartment to rent or vacation to take — appeared to make sounder decisions when they were distracted and unable to focus consciously on the problem.
Moreover, the more factors to be considered in a decision, the more likely the unconscious brain handled it all better, they reported in the peer-reviewed journal Science in 2006. “The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us,” Dr. Dijksterhuis said.

(From the Science Journal at WSJ.com)

Re-Hipify John Scalzi

This is going to be a really educational thread…

Tell me what new music or artists you’re listening to these days.
For the purposes of this discussion, “new” is defined to mean:
1. The artist/band started publicly releasing music (or alternately made their major label debut) after January 2005;
or
2. The artist/band started publicly releasing music (or alternately made their major label debut) after January 2003, but you only heard about them in the last year.

(From Whatever » Re-Hipify Me: A Weekend Assignment, over at John Scalzi’s site.)
UPDATE: Here’s my submission.

How to shoot yourself in the foot…

Riazat Butt, the Guardian’s religion reporter, has been writing about Gafcon, the meeting of conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem. Ostensibly this movement is all about African bishops bemoaning the moral laxity of US and UK Anglicans, and offering them an alternative free from the blight of homosexuality. Apparently, the American conservatives (dominionists, even) who are actually behind the whole thing are now trying to keep the Africans in their place:

In the fateful press conference – regarding torture – Akinola said that what was permissible in one culture was not permissible in another, without realising that same-sex unions have become the norm in western society and should therefore be accommodated in the same way that discriminatory legislation and treatment of homosexuals are par for the course in some African countries.
If the white bishops can turn a blind eye to polygamy and persecution then surely the courtesy should be returned.

Hypocrisy seems to be thriving in the Southern Cone…
UPDATE: Ruth Gledhill of the Times has posted an analysis of Gafcon which portrays this event as far-reaching:

Organisers believe the Jerusalem gathering is the most significant event in Anglicanism in their lifetimes and will lead to a new “movement” that will herald a “new reformation”.The movement could be akin to the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical revivals that revived a moribund Church of England in the 19th century. It will possess its own bishops, clergy and theological colleges, and eventually its own structures, but will be constructed entirely within the legal constraints of existing Anglican institutions.

And she says of the participants in Gafcon:

The majority do not want a split. They want their Church back. They appear to have decided that the best way to achieve this is not to start another one but to remain within the one they have got, and reform it from within.

Well, maybe. I don’t see how a split can be avoided: I reckon that the only thing still to be decided is who will play the part of the Judean Popular People’s Front. But the reactionaries really have to make their move now: all of the trends suggest that twenty years from now there will be no constituency for homophobia.

Do I know any of you?

Via the Bad Astronomy Blog comes this graph from a Gallup Poll of US beliefs.
Gallup Poll data on beliefs about human origins.
Now a number of bloggers have commented on the party political differences that are highlighted by the survey. However, I want to ask a different, rather simpler question.
Do I know any of you?
More specifically, is there anyone that I know – someone who reads this blog – who actually falls into the category “God created humans as is, within the last 10,000 years”. Because if the answer is “yes”, I’d really love to exchange email with you.
I know that people with these ideas exist – I’m confident that Gallup isn’t simply making up the numbers – but I simply haven’t ever (knowingly) met any of you. And I’d love to learn more. Do you take medicine? Do you use computers or fly on airliners? How do you reconcile your trust in science with your anti-scientific beliefs? Do you keep the ideas in different mental compartments, or do you find them genuinely compatible? I’m honestly interested in your answer. Puzzled. Incredulous, even. But definitely curious.