Wild Monkeys and Boars enlisted to help measure Fukushima Radiation in Japan

By Xeni Jardin at 3:33 pm Wednesday, Dec 14

Many challenges remain in measuring radiation leaked from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, after a devastating quake and tsunami 9 months ago left that site crippled. The crowdsourced efforts of a DIY tech group called Safecast were the subject of a report I produced with Miles O'Brien for NewsHour; other projects to capture this badly-needed data have been led by young mothers.

Today, a story is circulating about a group of researchers from Japan's Fukushima University who plan to enlist the help of wild monkeys, and maybe wild boars, to monitor radiation starting in Spring of 2012.

From the Wall Street Journal:

    Researchers from Fukushima University plan to kit wild monkeys out with radiation-measuring collars to track the contamination levels deep in the forests, where it’s difficult for humans to go. (...) The monkey collars are geared with a small radiation-measuring device, a GPS system and an instrument that can detect the monkey’s distance from the ground as the radiation level is being tallied. Mr. Takahashi said more contraptions may be added, but these will be the three main ones.

So, it sounds like they'll capture the critters, tranquilize them, attach the devices, then free them again back in the wild to roam around and passively gather/transmit readings.

CNN reports that veterinarian Toshio Mizoguchi of the Fukushima Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (run by the regional government) came up with the idea. He wanted to find a way to observe the effect of radiation on the wild animals near Fukushima.

The researchers will first focus on the mountains near Minamisoma city, about 25 kilometers/16 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Some 14 monkey colonies are known to inhabit this area. Minamisoma city and its mayor Katsunobo Sakurai became "internet-famous" when the mayor posted a desperate appeal for help on YouTube.

During our reporting trip to Japan, I went with Miles to interview mayor Sakurai, by the way -- the interview didn't make it into our NewsHour piece, but man, he was really a fascinating character. Apparently things have not been easy for him personally or politically since.

More around the 'net about the "radiation-measuring monkeys will save Japan" story: CNN, ABC, Telegraph.

(Thanks, Miles O'Brien)

(Image: Snow Monkeys, or Japanese Macaques, bathe in the onsen hot springs of Nagano, Japan. This site is a considerable distance from the area that will be the focus of this project, and I'd imagine a different species may be involved.)

Black Widow Spider

By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 8:27 pm Wednesday, Dec 14

Reader Pete Johnson took this awesome photo of the red-splotched abdomen of a poisonous black widow spider. One of my favorite things about this shot: The fact that you can see hairs growing on the spider's abdomen.

Extra bonus: Until checking out this photo—and subsequently reading up a bit on black widows—I had no idea this spider came in brown. The specimen in this photo could be a male, or it could be one of several species that are simply brown widows, rather than black. Looking at the legs, there's a good chance it's Latrodectus geometricus.

Great work, Pete!

Technology confuse Lizard! Lizard no like!


By Dean Putney at 7:43 pm Wednesday, Dec 14
http://youtu.be/WTpldq3myV0

Why ant no tasty? Lizard mind no grasp concept of menu selection! AAAAAAAARRRRGH! Lizard crush microprocessors!!

I also originally found this as a GIF. Thanks to theortolan for Submitterating the video! [Video Link]

Tags: android, ant, bearded dragon, Delightful Creatures, lizard, phone, Technology

Give the Gift of Water

Honor someone you love by giving the Gift of Water in his or her name. Only $25 brings one person clean water for life.
https://water.org/ecards/

"The Protester" has been named Time's Person of the Year.

"The Protester" has been named Time's Person of the Year.

The magazine unveiled the choice on Wednesday morning. Managing editor Richard Stengel also revealed the decision on the "Today" show. Stengel said that finalists included Kate Middleton, Admiral William McRaven and Congressman Paul Ryan.

Steve Jobs and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords did not make the short list because they appeared elsewhere in the magazine. "It's not a lifetime achievement award," Stengel said of the award.

Time has bestowed the famous distinction on one person (or group of people, or, in the case of such choices as "The Earth" and "You," an idea) every year since 1927. Last year's choice was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The cover of the magazine mentions protesters from all over the world, ranging from the masses who fueled the Arab spring to the anarchists in Greece to the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Time's cover story, journalist Kurt Andersen wrote,

    It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/the-protester-time-person-of-the-year_n_1147328.html

How Credit Collectors Have Reinvented the Debtors’ Prison

Wednesday, 12/14/2011 - 11:59 am by Mike Konczal








mike-konczal-newNew tactics have an old ring to them and low-income debtors are falling prey.

NPR just ran a story called “Unpaid Bills Land Some Debtors Behind Bars.” As they report, ”Here’s how it happens: A company will often sell off its debt to a collection agency, generally called a creditor. That creditor files a lawsuit against the debtor requiring a court appearance. A notice to appear in court is supposed to be given to the debtor. If they fail to show up, a warrant is issued for their arrest.” Marie Diamond has more.

This is increasingly common across the country. My colleagues Matt Stoller and Bryce Covert have both written about debtors being jailed for failure to appear in court. Debtors’ prisons are illegal, and some point out that this is really jail for a summons problem, not a payment. But I haven’t had a full vision of the practice until I read this excellent working paper by Lea Shepherd of Loyola Chicago law school, “Creditors Contempt” (h/t creditslips). Beyond laying out the problems with the current system, which gives a disproportionate amount of the coercive powers of the state to creditors, this paper also has implications for another topic I’m interested in — the class bias of the submerged state.

The key here is something called in personam debt collection remedies. In an agrarian economy, it was relatively straight forward for creditors to order a sheriff to seize the property of a debtor. In rem actions, where a sheriff would go and seize property, would work just fine. But this became harder to do as time went on.

The debt collection market evolved in personam debt collection remedies. This in personam action has two goals: discovery and collection. The court orders the debtor to disclose information about his property, location of his assets, etc. to help creditors track down those assets. Then the court orders certain payments to be made, which allows for collection. This court order is enforced through the court’s authority to hold debtors in contempt, which in turn is enforced through threats of imprisonment. Depending on the jurisdiction, contempt charges can be made against either the failure to show up for the discovery process or the failure to stick to the collection ordered.

So how does this go wrong? The most obvious way is that this in personam debt collection method — which should be reserved for “extraordinary” situations — is used regularly by today’s collectors. Given that a debtor’s liberty is at stake, it seems very important that there are strict rules for this practice and that these actions are used only when appropriate. But as Shepard finds, “in personam remedies are often initiated and executed on a high-volume basis and with a striking degree of informality.”

Debtors who run into the law often don’t understand the process; since the debt has often been resold multiple times, they may not even recognize the names of the plaintiffs. It is also problematic that debtors who don’t show up for the summons are likely to be confused as to what they are being jailed for. They may think they are being jailed for nonpayment when they are actually being jailed for the failure to show up and not telling the court and creditors about their assets. It is in the interest of creditors to blur this distinction. Though debtors can often get out of jail by compliance, they may feel they need to pay off debts immediately to get out of jail instead. Debtors will be willing to make costly financial decisions, including using money that is legally protected from debt collectors, to get out of jail immediately. Indeed, many debtors are cash constrained and can’t deal with even temporary incarceration due to the costs of work and family disruptions and will be willing to do anything to get out of jail.

In many jurisdictions, bail posted to get out of being jailed for contempt of the discovery process is used to pay creditors. Besides being a great deal for creditors — as noted above, people often pay a huge economic penalty to get out of jail — it functions as a de facto debtors’ prison. As law professor Alan White described this process, “If, in effect, people are being incarcerated until they pay bail, and bail is being used to pay their debts, then they’re being incarcerated to pay their debts.” As the FTC noted, debtors being jailed for nonappearance “may be willing to pay the bail (and indirectly the judgement) using assets (such as Social Security payments) the law prohibits creditors from garnishing or otherwise obtaining to satisfy a judgement.”

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Debtors can also be jailed for being in contempt of the court-ordered payment plan, an action that certainly seems like the debtor is being jailed for a failure to pay debts (see Alan White on this battle in Indiana here). This exacerbates the first problem — as Shepard notes, “It may be easier to sue a debtor than to determine if she is a viable litigation target, and even judgement-proof debtors can tap ‘last resort’ payment sources, like exempt property, loans from family and friends, and fringe credit sources like payday lenders.” This encourages creditors to go fishing for potential earnings in an area of the law that endangers the liberty and freedom of debtors.

What does this have to do with the submerged state? The government’s method of providing benefits and protections through the tax code and legal channels disproportionately helps the most well-off, if only because they pay the most in taxes. But it also helps them because they can afford the necessary lawyers and support staff to take full private advantage of these rules. Let’s look at an example Shepard provides:

Steven Lipman had fallen on hard times… Steven received a pension income of $525 per month… One creditor who obtained a judgment against Steven served him personally with notice of an in personam debt collection action…

After about a 20-minute wait, the creditor’s attorney called out Steven’s name and guided him into the hallway outside the courtroom, where five other debtors’ examinations were taking place. The creditor’s attorney asked Steven about what property he owned and the location of his bank account. Eventually, the attorney asked Steven how much money he could afford to pay each month. Steven felt flustered and wasn’t sure what to say. Feeling embarrassed about having defaulted in the first place, Steven agreed that he could pay $80 per month until the debt was paid off. Steven, unfortunately, couldn’t pay $80 per month…

[H]e hadn’t noticed that it included examples of exempt property — various assets insulated from creditors’ collection efforts. The list included pension income, Social Security payments, a certain percentage of wage payments, veterans’ benefits, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, alimony and child support, and some personal property. Had Steven asserted his exemptions,  he would not have had to forfeit any of his money or property.

The creditor’s attorney didn’t tell him about the exemptions, and the judge never raised the issue. (Unless debtors affirmatively assert their exemption rights, judges may feel uncomfortable raising the topic. Otherwise, judges may be perceived as serving as debtors’ advocates — not as disinterested adjudicators.)

Notice that Steven is paying 15 percent of his meager income to creditors, even though if he had known about the full protections he’s entitled to under law he wouldn’t have to pay anything. Cash constrained Steven presumably couldn’t afford a lawyer — but one can imagine a richer debtor making sure each and every exemption was accounted for.

These exemptions are there for serious reasons. As Shepard notes, “Courts have articulated exemption statutes’ broad and fundamental public policy goals: 1) to provide the debtor with enough money to survive, 2) to protect the debtor’s dignity, 3) to afford a means of financial rehabilitation, 4) to protect the family unit from impoverishment, and 5) to spread the burden of a debtor’s support from society to his creditors.” With that in mind, why don’t judges take an active role in protecting exempt property?

Requirements to appear in court are being overused and abused as a way of confusing debtors and forcing a strong hand on payments. This ultimately threatens the integrity of the entire debt collection system and the crucial protection of freedom and liberty.

Mike Konczal is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

   

Rainbow Warrior: Dolphins at Gibraltar

En route from Bremen to Barcelona we kept looking for dolphins all the way from the English Channel and in the Bay of Biscay, but only when we reached the Strait of Gibraltar we were met by a large group of dolphins playing and swimming in front of the ship. They put on such a great welcome that was definitely worth waiting for.

Rainbow Warrior

Spiderwebs, Pakistan

December 14, 2011
Photograph by Russell Watkins

An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before, but they also reported that there were fewer mosquitoes than they would have expected, given the amount of standing water that was left. Not being bitten by mosquitoes was one small blessing for people that had lost everything in the floods.

"God particle" could be found or disproved in 2012, expert predicts.

An illustration of the Higgs-Boson particle.

A typical "candidate event" in the Higgs-hunting CMS experiment. Red lines represent high-energy proton beams while yellow lines show the tracks of particles produced in the collision.
Illustration courtesy CERN

Physicists are hopeful that the long-sought Higgs boson is finally within reach, after two experiments at the proton-smashing Large Hadron Collider (LHC) observed tantalizing hints of the elusive particle.

Speaking today at a public seminar at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, scientists with the LHC's ATLAS and CMS experiments presented data showing that the Higgs boson—if it exists—likely has a mass of around 125 gigaelectron volts (GeV), the unit of mass used by particle physicists.

"We have restricted the most likely mass region for the Higgs boson to 116 to 130 GeV, and over the last few weeks we have started to see an intriguing excess of events in the mass range around 125 GeV," ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti said in a statement.

"This excess may be due to a [random] fluctuation, but it could also be something more interesting. We cannot conclude anything at this stage. We need more study and more data."

CERN director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer later cautioned reporters that the results are preliminary.
"We still [need] many more collisions next year to get a definite answer to the Shakespeare question on the Higgs: To be or not to be?" he said.

David Evans is a particle physicist at the University of Birmingham and the leader of the U.K. team that works on the LHC's ALICE experiment, which is not involved in the Higgs hunt.

Evans said the ATLAS and CMS teams have done an "impressive job" of narrowing down the Higgs mass range, and that he expects more exciting results in the near future.

"By the end of next year ... they will have enough data to either discover the Higgs or prove it doesn't exist," he predicted.

Still Counting Higgs "Change"

Higgs bosons are thought to be extremely short-lived subatomic particles, so scientists can detect them only by spotting the particles into which the Higgs decays.

But just as a vending machine might return the same amount of change using different coin combinations, the Higgs can decay into different combinations of other particles. (Explore a Higgs boson interactive.)

What the ATLAS and CMS teams claim to have done is observe excesses of decay particles in the 116 to 130 GeV mass range—hinting that the Higgs could exist in that zone.

The CERN researchers say they have what they call a two-sigma degree of confidence, which translates to about a 95 percent chance that the results are not due to a statistical fluke.

But according to the very stringent standards of particle physics, an experiment must have a sigma level of five—or a 99.99 percent chance—to count as an official discovery.

"We make so many measurements at the LHC that three-sigma effects show up quite often. I've seen three-sigma effects come and go," Evans said.

"So you really do have to have this five-sigma [level of confidence] before the community will accept it as a discovery."

LHC Well Suited to "God Particle" Hunt

Finding the Higgs boson has been a major scientific pursuit, because the particle is crucial to the standard model of physics—the incredibly successful theory that explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of nature.

Popularly referred to as the God particle, the Higgs boson was proposed in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs to explain why some particles, such as electrons and quarks, have mass while others, such as the photon, do not.

Higgs proposed that the universe is bathed in an invisible field similar to a magnetic field. If a particle can move through this field—now known as the Higgs field—with little or no interaction, there will be no drag and that particle will have little or no mass.

On the other hand, if a particle interacts significantly with the Higgs field, it will have a higher mass.

The idea of the Higgs field requires the acceptance of a related particle: the Higgs boson.

"In the standard model, if you have this new type of field, there must be a particle that goes with it," Evans said. "You can't have a field without a field particle." For instance, the particle associated with the electromagnetic field is the photon.

While the standard model predicts the existence of a Higgs boson to go with the Higgs field, it doesn't say anything about its mass, which is one reason why the hunt for the God particle has proven so difficult.

In fact, while most physicists think the Higgs is a single particle, others have proposed a non-standard Higgs model—called the two Higgs doublet model—in which the Higgs is actually made of five distinct particles with similar masses but different electrical charges.

But in the past few years, physicists think they have limited the possible mass of a single, standard-model Higgs to a very narrow range, one which the LHC—the most powerful particle accelerator yet constructed—is quite capable of searching. (See LHC pictures.)

"With the LHC, we know that we will either find the Higgs or prove that it doesn't exist," Evans said.

According to Evans, the discovery of the standard-model Higgs would be a spectacular validation of the theory—and a find on par with the discovery of the electron by J.J. Thompson in 1897.
"People had been measuring and studying electricity up to that point, and then Thompson discovered the actual particle that was responsible," he said.

Higgs Search Is "No Lose" Situation

The next step for CERN scientists will be to conduct more proton-proton collisions to detect more Higgs signals and bolster their case.

Evans said he expects a conclusive result one way or the other as early as next summer.

Gianotti of ATLAS said that she would prefer that scientists find the standard Higgs, because "we as a community have been looking for for many years, and it would fix many problems in the standard model," such as why certain particles have their associated masses.

For Evans, though, a failure to find the standard-model Higgs would be even more interesting, because it would hint at completely new physics, such as a nonstandard Higgs. (Also see "Strange Particle Created; May Rewrite How Matter's Made.")

"To me," Evans said, "it's a no-lose situation."

The Two Twists that let Hummingbirds fly like Insects

In flight, the hovering hummingbird is more like a insect than a bird. Most most birds only create lift when they flap downwards. But the hummingbird, by flipping its wing before it flaps upwards, can create lift in both directions. Insects do the same thing, but their wings have no bones inside them. How does the hummingbird fly like a fly despite having the bones of a bird?

Tyson Hedrick has found out, by filming hovering hummers with high-speed X-ray cameras. I’ve written about the results in my new piece for Nature News, so go there and read the full story (including details about how hummingbird muscles work at high gear). The meat of it is this:

    By filming ruby-throated hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) in flight, Hedrick showed that the birds invert their wings by twisting their wrists. “It looks like it’s affecting the whole wing because the bird’s skeleton is very compressed and its wrist isn’t very far from its shoulder,” says Hedrick.

    In most birds, the wrist collapses on the upstroke to draw the wing towards the body as it is raised. Hummingbirds have adapted the same movements to rotate their wings instead. “The usual mechanism makes the upstroke aerodynamically invisible,” says Hedrick. “The hummingbirds’ mechanism makes the upstroke aerodynamically effective.”

    The videos also showed that hummingbirds flap their wings by twisting the humerus (upper arm bone), rather than flapping it up and down from the shoulder like other birds. To understand the difference, Hedrick recommends trying to mimic a bird by flapping your arms. “You’re doing something not too different to what a seagull’s doing,” he says. To mimic a hummingbird, “hold your upper arm close to your body with your elbow on your hip, and flap your forearms back and forth”.

Go try it. You can look as stupid as I did when I was writing about the paper.
Photo by Joe Schneid

All Farewells are Sudden...

http://youtu.be/2X0xYT8Rtiw

Four Hemophiliac Patients Successfully Treated with Gene Therapy

Hemophilia, a disease whose victims can suffer serious internal bleeding and may bleed to death from injuries, has a long and eventful history. Caused by defective blood clotting factors, the disease has been with us since at least the second century, when a rabbi gave mothers whose first two sons had bled to death from circumcision wounds permission to leave the third sons uncircumcised. It also famously  afflicted several members of European royal families. But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine brings us a bit closer to a new kind of historic event: a cure.

Following up on years of preclinical trials, including the curing of hemophiliac mice earlier this year, scientists gave six patients a  gene therapy treatment, injecting them with a specially built virus carrying a functioning version of the gene for the defective clotting factor. The virus inserted the gene into liver cells, which proceeded to manufacture the clotting factor, and the patients maintained elevated levels of it for over 6 months. Four of the patients were able to stop receiving injections of clotting factor (the current treatment) altogether.

The scientists are monitoring patients for any signs of liver cancer caused by the virus inserting the gene in an inopportune location, a known risk in gene therapy, but thus far, there have been no signs of such complications. The next stage, a trial of 20 patients, will assess what dosage of virus is necessary to get enough liver cells making clotting factor that most (hopefully all) patients can stop receiving injections. There are still plenty of ways that the treatment could fail before reaching the clinic. But here’s hoping that the results continue to be this promising.

Image courtesy of  Andrew Mason / flickr
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December 12th, 2011 4:53 PM

Dr. Sith’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Amateur Astronomer Discovers Sungrazing Comet

Back in the day, it used to be that most new comets and asteroids were discovered by astronomers diligently sitting at their eyepieces, spending one cold night after another patiently scanning the skies. The advent of robotic astronomy changed that, and now the vast majority of all celestial newcomers are found automatically.

But Australian "amateur" astronomer Terry Lovejoy changed that last week: not only did he discover a comet — which isn’t that unusual, though still cool — but it turns out to be a sungrazer, a comet that plunges deep down to the center of the solar system, practically skimming the Sun’s surface.

Here is Lovejoy’s discovery image:

This is a combination of three images; the comet moves between exposures a bit so he re-centered the comet in each shot and added them together. It’s the fuzzy blob in the middle of the frame. The comet’s official name is C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), and on December 16th it will pass just about 880,000 km (500,000 miles) from the Sun’s surface — only a little bit more than than the radius of the Sun itself! 180,000 km (110,000 miles) — less than half the distance from the Earth to the Moon!* This may be a death dive, since many such comets don’t survive the intense heat of the Sun from that distance. Comets are composed of lots of rock held together by ice, so when the ice vaporizes, the comets disintegrates.

Michael Mattiazzo took the shot shown here of the comet on the evening of December 2. It’s a combination of ten short exposures lasting only minutes in total, but the comet moves enough during that time to trail in the final image. As you can see, it’s faint but moving rapidly as it heads down to its rendezvous with the Sun. You can also see more images of it at Astro Bob’s website.

Sometimes these sungrazer comets — technically called Kreutz family comets, after the man who figured out they all came from the same parent comet — survive their passage and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they also get bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, though 2011 W3 is pretty faint right now and probably won’t brighten. But comets are difficult to predict; each is different and can surprise us. If this one flares up I’ll be sure to let you know.

This is a pretty good find by Mr. Lovejoy: most sungrazer comets are first seen when they appear in data from the SOHO solar observing satellite, already very near the Sun. It’s hard to find them when they’re far from the Sun since they’re usually so faint, and in fact this is the first such sungrazing comet found from the ground in over 40 years! So it’s quite a nice discovery. Congrats to Mr. Lovejoy, and we’ll have to see what happens to his comet over the next couple of weeks!

Image credits: Terry Lovejoy, courtesy José Luis Galache; Michael Mattiazzo. Both used by permission.

* I originally found a set of numbers that gave the closest approach distance to the Sun of 880,000 km, but turns out that was the distance to the Sun’s center. Subtracting the Sun’s radius of 695,000 km yields the surface-skimming distance of roughly 180,000 km. My apologies for the error.

One True God-Not as Popular as You Might Think

The above results are from an Ipsos MORI from last summer. Please note, the opinions above are restricted only to those who asserted a religious affiliation. Obviously in Saudi Arabia this is irrelevant, as nearly the whole population has a religious affiliation. But it is important in Japan, because there nearly 2 out of 3 individuals in the survey reported no religion, so these are results from the minority who reported having an affiliation (mostly Buddhist). As they say, read the whole thing. Here are some conclusions I drew from these data:

- Even in Saudi Arabia 25 percent of the population would not sign on to a very exclusive reading of their religion. This is not surprising to me. Very exclusive adherence to the proposition that all non-believers are damned is often hard to adhere to in any marginally cosmopolitan circumstance. Obviously there are people who will agree that Gandhi is in hell (this is a litmus test used to smoke out heterodox deviation in some fundamentalist Protestant churches in the USA), or that their close friend is going to hell, but when push comes to shove most people flinch. There seems to be a wide range in responses to this question about religious exclusivism, and I think that’s probably due to differences in priming.

- I have gotten into arguments with Hindus and New Atheists about the exclusive nature of Christianity online. My argument is that they tend to confuse fundamentalist Protestantism with Christianity qua Christianity. If I we believed that Christianity had a basis in truth this sort of attitude might make sense, but as that is not the case I don’t see the line of reasoning where non-Christians can assess who is, or isn’t, exhibiting more fidelity to Christianity. Granted, you can think of religion as a mathematical system where you can test propositions by inference from axioms. But I don’t think that’s too useful, though I see its logical coherency (and even in that case, it is trivially obvious to show that “fundamentalists” are themselves often revisionists who play fast & loose with what might “plainly” be inferred from the source text of a religion). The reality is that in most developed nations the vast majority of Christians no longer adhere to a position exclusivism which has come to make the Abrahamic religions particular distinctive. In fact, if you look at the survey in the results it indicates that Hindus in India are as exclusive in their understanding of their religion as Christians in the United States!

- Speaking of Hindus (and Buddhists to a lesser extent), these data speak to a difference between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions. Though Hindus are not quite as universalist as Swedish Christians, matching social development they are quite tolerant. The Hindu model in India in a religious sense mixes a moderately high level of commitment with an acceptance of pluralism. This is pretty much the stereotype of Hindus in relation to Abrahamic faiths. In contrast, you have the Muslim model, which combines high levels of commitment with low levels of pluralism. Finally, you have the developed nations model, excepting the USA, which combines low commitment and high pluralism. India and the USA seem to occupy similar space in many ways in these data.

- Finally, in these results Turkey and Saudi Arabia seem to be positioned at the two poles of Islamic piety. I think that that is actually a good choice, as all other data indicates that Tunisia and Egypt would fall in the middle of these extremes (Tunisia closer to Turkey, Egypt to Saudi Arabia). What does that tell us? If you look at the results you’ll see that Turks as a nation seem to express attitudes and sentiments not too far from those of the USA. As I’ve long said, this is an important insight about the Islamic world: one of the most organically secular Muslim nations is in the same zone as the most pious of Western nations (along with Poland and Malta). In many ways the American Republican party today is probably analogous to moderate Islamists of the AKP; though I would suspect that the AKP has a larger “tail” of social conservatism than the Republican party.

COMMENTS NOTE: Any comment which misrepresents the material in this post will result in banning without warning. So you should probably stick to direct quotes in lieu of reformulations of what you perceive to be my intent in your own words. For example, if you start a sentence with “so what you’re trying to say….”, you’re probably going to get banned. I said what I tried or wanted to say in the post. Period.
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By Razib Khan in Data Analysis

Classic Coconut Cream Pie

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

    1 cup coconut flakes
    3 cups coconut milk (or 2 cups coconut milk and 1 cup soymilk, depending on desired richness)
    1/2 cup blended soft tofu
    2/3 cup sugar
    1/2 cup cornstarch
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    1 9" pre-baked pie crust
    1 cup vegan whipped topping of choice

Directions:

1. Spread coconut flakes on a cookie sheet and bake in oven at 350 for 5 minutes. Set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan, combine coconut milk, tofu, sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil.

3. Remove from heat and add 3/4 cup toasted coconut and vanilla. Stir well. Pour into  pie crust and place in fridge. Chill pie in fridge for 3 hours, or until firm.

4. Remove from fridge and spread whipped topping evenly over the pie. Sprinkle with remaining toasted coconut, and voila! You have a delicious, decadent coconut cream pie.

Source of recipe: A friend gave me this recipe and I veganized it to perfection!

Makes: 1 pie, Preparation time: 3 hrs, 30 mins, Cooking time: 20 mins.

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