By Mel

Republican Socialism, Part Deux: Dressed-up Greed, Naked Fear

animal-farm-graphic-big-pig-close-mouth-713368They manipulate fear, reward greed, and give new meaning to the term “Orwellian.”

They’re not bailing out the single mom who works checkout at Wal-Mart, has a diabetic son, and no health insurance.

They’re not bailing out the guy in Michigan whose job on the factory line got shipped to Mexico with the blessing and subsidies of their administration, and who now kicks cans in the afternoons and wonders how to face his wife.
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Neuronews

Brain science's astounding pace of discovery is bringing new hope to many.

I want to take a rest from the political and religious wars and instead do a little of what I do with my students at the start of each semester. I'm teaching my course on the human brain this fall, and as usual my first lecture was called "While You Were Catching Rays-Discoveries Since the End of Last Semester."
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Republican Socialism

"Conservatives" nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mocking their own market mantra

Anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists are fascinated by two poles of human behavior: cooperation and competition. You've got to get your own in terms of reproductive success, but you're in a relentlessly social species, so you often have to do well by doing good.
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Sarah Palin: Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural Anthropology

McCain’s VP Pick Makes Darwinian and Boasian Sense

Sarah Palin takes aimShock and awe. That had to be one thought in McCain’s mind when he picked a little-known governor of Alaska–the state one pundit called an overgrown igloo–to stand a heartbeat away from his seat in the Oval Office, his age and cancer history be damned.
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Who’s Delusional? 2

Thank "goodness," for sure, but stop and ask yourself how the goodness might have come about.

I have to say that at the Salk Institute "Beyond Belief 2006" conference, I was most moved and impressed by the philosopher Dan Dennett's contribution. It was phoned-or I guess emailed-in, because the poor guy was flat on his back in a hospital bed recovering from a dissecting aortic aneurysm.
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“Evil Genes”

Evil is real, and so are evil genes.

Today I stumbled on a C-SPAN presentation by Barbara Oakley about her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend. I haven’t read the book, but it evidently overlaps with many things I’ve long thought and written myself, in The Tangled Wing and elsewhere.
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Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer

An excellent new study once again takes us back to the future.

Last week’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine carried another powerful vindication of The Paleolithic Prescription, a book co-authored by Boyd Eaton, Marjorie Shostak and me just twenty years ago. Boyd and I fired the first salvo in the same journal in 1985, with an article called “Paleolithic Nutrition.”
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What Do Bioethicists Do?

Want to make your life better with the help of medical technology? It might be between you, your doctor, and the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Bioethics has become a booming industry, and it goes way beyond conventional medical ethics. But what exactly do bioethicists do? Are they just a bunch of self-appointed moralists who want to tell everybody what to do? Are they representatives of particular churches or religions?

A year or so ago Read more