Last night, National Geographic had a special on the brain. One thing that was mentioned that is extremely interesting: if you are starving, your cells grow much more slowly, because your brain is trying to conserve energy. Your hair and fingernails virtually stop growing altogether. They also said that utilizing this mechanism (one that developed during the dinosaur era) can actually increase your life span, and make you a bit more healthy.

According to Harvard:

Cutting back dramatically on calories leads to a longer life, at least for species ranging from yeast to rats. But whether not eating the pudding gives the same advantage to humans has yet to be proven.

Tantalizing evidence does exist, however, that cutting calories by 20 percent helps monkeys, who are close relatives, to live longer, healthier lives. And, in one nonscientific program, adults are reducing their caloric intake by as much as 30 percent in the hope of living healthfully (if not too happily) for 100 years or more.

Brian Delaney, who, at age 34, tried going hungry to extend his life, described what it's like. "I got used to being hungry all the time," he said, but could not stand the physical result. "I don't really want to look this skinny," he complained. "I'm into this whole life extension thing, living to be 120, or 130, or 150, but the idea of living like this for another 80 or 90 years is unappealing."

But what if scientists can figure out just what combination of genes and proteins extends the lives of so many other living things that don't fully give in to their hunger. In that case, it might be possible to come up with drugs that would let us have our cake and eat it, too.

David Sinclair and his colleagues at the Harvard Medical School have cooked up some delicious clues to how this might happen. They found an enzyme that makes yeast cells live longer simply because they think they are starving. The enzyme catalyzes a marked increase in the activity of a protein known as Sir2, which in turn promotes yeast survival by reducing events associated with cell death.

With the help of the enzyme, called Pnc1, yeast cells live 70 percent longer. If humans lived that much longer, their average life span would increase from 80 to 136 years. Humans aren't yeast, or worms, flies, or rats, but they do have a version of Sir2 called SIRT1.

To the inevitable question, Sinclair answers: "It's pure speculation at this point, but indications are that the same pathway [that was found in the yeast] might be present in humans. There is good evidence that it exists in worms, flies, and other organisms whose lives can be extended by caloric restriction."

"If we can understand the molecular basis of what's going on in lower animals," Sinclair continues, "we might have a chance to understand how it might work in humans, too. What we want to do is find small molecules that would adjust protein pathways in a way that would increase life span." By small molecules he means the active ingredients in drugs that would help us live longer without almost starving ourselves.

The skinny on not eating

It will be a long time (if ever) before Delaney and the rest of us are able to add years to our lives by taking a pill. In the meantime, restricting calories is the best way to live longer and stay healthy, according to evidence that's been accumulating for the past decade. Rats and mice whose calories were drastically restricted not only lived 50 percent longer (roughly 120 in human years) but suffered less cancer and other age-related diseases.

Two Harvard studies published in 1997 concluded that being 15 to 20 percent underweight decreased the risk of death from all causes. Other studies have concluded that eating significantly less food lowers blood pressure, increases so-called "good" cholesterol, and cuts the risk of dying from cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

If the work of Sinclair and others can lead to a pill that has all or even some of these benefits, it's hard to find words that can describe how great that would be.

If you're not an Obama fan, and if you're not glued to your Super Smash Brothers Brawl game, enjoy.:P

What in the hell. . .

Charlotte Staples Lewis, played by actress Rebecca Mader, is a character in the television show Lost. Interestingly, she shares her middle name (Staples) with the author's, goes to the same school as the author (Oxford), and may even have a link to one of the author's books, Perelandra.

Just when I thought Lost couldn't get any more interesting. . .

The post that was here has been moved to my Google blog. Feel free to comment here, if you'd like, but the post is now on Google.

My mom had spinal surgery yesterday.

Her neck and back have been hurting her for a very long time, and recently, her left wrist has started to hurt non-stop. She heard from one of her friends about a spinal surgery where the docotor goes in through the front of the neck, pushed the esophagus aside, and does his thing on the spine. When she heard it, my mom was dead-set on getting that surgery. Two opposing doctor opinions later, here we are.:P

It went well. Her neck doesn't hurt (except for, you know, the hole in it), and her wrist finally stopped hurting. We (me, my brother, my grandparents, my two great-aunts, and my step-dad) were in the waiting room of the surgery center for about 9 hours. Her surgery took three hours. The rest were us waiting for her to get a room. . .this same thing happened when my grandfather had open-heart surgery.

When we finally got to see her, she was hungry. She ate four cups of lime sherbet. . .twelve graham crackers. . .and three cups of pudding before they brought her dinner at 6:00. She's coming home today, and is probably on her way right now.

As for me, I got more photos taken by the photographer. Interesting fact: I'm going to need a grand total of three pictures at this thing (one a baby picture), and my mom had her (the photographer) take more than 30. :| I'll post a few pictures later, but I don't have any of them on the computer I'm using.

I also took a tour of Jacksonville University. It's an incredible school, and the people who took us on the tour were also students. The campus is small for a university, but still huge -I got lost.:P There were ten people supposed to go on that tour with me. Every single one of them got sick. I'm extremely grateful for that flu shot I got, with this bug sweeping the nation. . .

I've also been trolling certain Google blogs.:twisted: I wanted to see what people would act like. It's pretty easy to fool people over the Internet.

So much has happened in the past several days.

First off, I hope you guys like Barack Obama. I've discovered that the moderators here certainly do.>__> I'll say no more than that.

My doctor got onto me because I wasn't dieting/excercising right. Then he prescribed me two medicines, one that I don't really need, and ambien, a medicine for insomnia, which I really do need. The ambien makes me incredibly dizzy, and gives me the most "real" dreams I've ever had. I sometimes wake up thinking somebody's calling me, or that something is happening when it's only those dreams. But I'm sleeping much better now. I also bought a stationary excercise bike.

I had my pictures for graduation (which is next month) taken. The photographer (very nice woman) took about twenty, and sent four previews.

Fancy:

I had to practically look at the sun without squinting on this one. . .

Schmancy:

Say it: I'm gorgeous.8) The fancy shoes I had to wear to that, however, dug into my left heel. When I was done with them, I was bleeding badly. I'm literally in pain in the picture in front of the house.

Either me, my mother, or grandmother, or a mixture of the three, have had a doctor appointment every single day, early in the morning. My stomach has been bothering me, kind of like it did back when I had the ulcers (you know, the ones we found out I had because the doctor had to shove a camera tube down my throat and up my ass?), so we went to see doctor about that, and he put me on a medicine for Irritable Bowel Syndrome and said if that doesn't help, he'll need to do another endoscopy.

My little brother has had his ingrown toenail removed, because it was starting to cause him tremendous pain out of nowhere. He went to the same doctor my grandfather went to, for the same reason.

And that goldmine is also known as "reading material."

Two works of genius--one a book, and one an article--that have made my week.

The article is titled Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, and here is why I love it: The author goes at why the New Atheists (also known as Cognitio Defectum) are acting rather stupid toward the moral and societal effects of religion. Here are some wonderful little quotes from him:

"...the presence of passions should alert us that [Dawkins and Harris], being human, are likely to have great difficulty searching for and then fairly evaluating evidence that opposes their intuitive feelings about religion."

"The scientist ... respects empirical evidence as the ultimate authority and avoids ad hominem arguments. The metaphor for science is a voyage of discovery, not a war. Yet when I read the new atheist books, I see few new shores. Instead I see battlefields strewn with the corpses of straw men."

"Dawkins is explicit that his goal is to start a movement, to raise consciousness, and to arm atheists with the arguments they'll need to do battle with believers. The view that "we" are virtuous and our opponents are evil is a crucial step in uniting people behind a cause, and there is plenty of that in the new atheist books. A second crucial step is to identify traitors in our midst and punish or humiliate them. There is some of that too in these books-atheists who defend the utility of religion or who argue for disengagement or détente between science and religion are compared to Chamberlain and his appeasement of Hitler."


"Reading Harris is like watching professional wrestling or the Harlem Globetrotters. It's great fun, with lots of acrobatics, but it must not be mistaken for an actual contest."

"Don't dismiss religion on the basis of a superficial reading of the Bible and the newspaper. Might religious communities offer us insights into human flourishing? Can they teach us lessons that would improve wellbeing even in a primarily contractualist society.

You can't use the New Atheists as your guide to these lessons. The new atheists conduct biased reviews of the literature and conclude that there is no good evidence on any benefits except the health benefits of religion. Here is Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell on whether religion brings out the best in people:

"Perhaps a survey would show that as a group atheists and agnostics are more respectful of the law, more sensitive to the needs of others, or more ethical than religious people. Certainly no reliable survey has yet been done that shows otherwise. It might be that the best that can be said for religion is that it helps some people achieve the level of citizenship and morality typically found in brights. If you find that conjecture offensive, you need to adjust your perspective. (Breaking the Spell, p. 55.)

I have italicized the two sections that show ordinary moral thinking rather than scientific thinking. The first is Dennett's claim not just that there is no evidence, but that there is certainly no evidence, when in fact surveys have shown for decades that religious practice is a strong predictor of charitable giving. Arthur Brooks recently analyzed these data (in Who Really Cares) and concluded that the enormous generosity of religious believers is not just recycled to religious charities.

Religious believers give more money than secular folk to secular charities, and to their neighbors. They give more of their time, too, and of their blood. Even if you excuse secular liberals from charity because they vote for government welfare programs, it is awfully hard to explain why secular liberals give so little blood. The bottom line, Brooks concludes, is that all forms of giving go together, and all are greatly increased by religious participation and slightly increased by conservative ideology (after controlling for religiosity).

These data are complex and perhaps they can be spun the other way, but at the moment it appears that Dennett is wrong in his reading of the literature. Atheists may have many other virtues, but on one of the least controversial and most objective measures of moral behavior-giving time, money, and blood to help strangers in need-religious people appear to be morally superior to secular folk."

Did I mention that the author, Jonathan Haidt, is an atheist? Read to satisfy your curiosity.

The book is titled The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day. It strikes at the heart of this idiotic New Atheism movement by going after the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. Here is my favorite quote from the entire book:

"I am saying that they are wrong, they are reliably, verifiably, and factually incorrect. Richard Dawkins is wrong. Daniel C. Dennett is wrong. Christopher Hitchens is drunk, and he's wrong. Michel Onfray is French, and he's wrong. Sam Harris is so superlatively wrong that it will require the development of esoteric mathematics operating simultaneously in multiple dimensions to fully comprehend the orders of magnitude of his wrongness. You make the call."

Yes, these epic (and hilarious) statements are backed up in the book.

What is the book about? It is NOT about proving Christianity to be true, nor is it even about proving atheism to be false. It is about the mindless and hypocritical teachings of people like Sam Harris (author of Letters to a Christian Nation and/or The End of Faith, one of the most hateful atheist books ever written) Christopher Hitchens (Author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which basically states that every problem in the history of the world can be traced to religion), and Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion. My critique of this little gem is pretty well-known by now.). Basically, what the author tries to do is instead of proving all atheists are stupid, he wants to make most atheists ashamed to be lumped in with these idiots.

The entire book can be downloaded for free here. Or, you can buy it on Amazon.

I strongly recommend both works to anyone with any belief, but especially to my atheist friends. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a cold and need to go suffer.:D

Well, I have just finished what is quite definitely the largest paper I have ever written. She said it needs some minor tweaking, but overall it's an A paper.:D

At the request, I will post some of it. This is NOT the whole thing; GameSpot won't let me post all of that. I will start with my first paragraph, minus the thesis statement. The paper is about whether or not Jesus' Resurrection can be appropriately explained by naturalistic means. Enjoy!

The first of these scenarios is the story scenario: The proposal that Jesus simply did not come back from the dead; that the Resurrection is a myth the Church came up with centuries later in order to add divinity to an enthusiastic man named Jesus. While this seems to make the most sense, it leaves several questions unanswered. If Jesus never came back, why did the Apostles all make up such an astounding story? And why did anybody believe them? After all, all anybody ever had to do was go to the tomb, find Jesus' body, and the Resurrection would be disproven. If the Resurrection was a myth that was invented by the Church long after the Apostles died, then the Apostles saw something that wasn't there.

The next scenario is the hallucination scenario: The Apostles thought they saw Jesus but it was actually a hallucination generated by their grieving minds. But if this is true, then that means eleven people with no history of mental illness all suddenly saw (and heard) the exact same illusions. In addition, if it was a hallucination, why did Thomas, one of the Apostles, refuse to believe it until he, too, saw Jesus for himself? You cannot choose when and where to see a hallucination. Also, according to the Bible, there were many witnesses to Jesus after His Resurrection:

1. Appearance to Mary Magdalene. (Matt 28:9-10, Mark 16:9, John 20:14-17)

2. Appearance to Peter. (Luke 24:34, 1 Corinthians 15:5)

3. Appearance to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. (Mark 16:12, Luke 24:15-31)

4. Appearance to the eleven disciples. (Mark 16:14-18, Luke 24:36-49, John 20:19-23)

5. Appearance to the eleven disciples on a mountain. (Matt 28:16-20)

6. Appearance to the eleven disciples before ascension (Mark 16:14-18, Luke 24:36-49, Acts 1:6-9)

7. Appearance to Thomas and the disciples (John 20:26-29)

8. Appearance to Peter, Thomas and two other disciples at Sea of Tiberius. (John 21:1-23)

9. Appearances over the course of 40 days. (Acts 1:3)

10. Appearance to "more than 500". (1 Corinthians 15:16)

Even if some of these are fake stories made up by the Church, that doesn't change the Apostles' accounts, since they actually existed and died for their beliefs. Finally, as I said above, all any of them had to do was go to the tomb, find Jesus' body, and see that they were simply delusional. It is quite obvious that the Apostles were not insane.

The next scenario is the liar scenario: The Apostles took Jesus' body from the tomb, and lied about His Resurrection in order to promote an unknown agenda. This scenario explains why nobody found Jesus' dead body when they looked in the tomb, and why so many people then believed the Apostles' testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead. However, we must ask the question: How in the world did the Apostles sneak Jesus past the Roman guard who was put in place to prevent exactly that? There are a few explanations:

1. Perhaps the guard fell asleep. But then, how was he not woken by the sound of the boulder being rolled away by the Apostles? Why would he fall asleep on the job when doing so meant he would be executed? Execution would be a bit of an incentive to stay awake, no matter the situation.

2. Perhaps he was bribed, and then fled the wrath of the Romans. But if this is true, why did the Apostles, who knew that it was all a lie, not recant their belief in the Resurrection when they were captured and tortured by the Romans? Every single Apostle was tortured, and offered freedom, if they merely said it was all a lie. Not a single one of them ever did, and for it they all died by crucifixion, one of the worst deaths imaginable. Even on their crosses, the Apostles never recanted their solid belief in the Resurrection.

The next scenario is the survival scenario: Jesus in fact did not die on the Cross, but survived in a comatose state inside the tomb for three days, woke up, rolled away the stone, and appeared before the Apostles, who mistakenly thought He had risen from the dead. By now you should realize how ludicrous this scenario is. If true, then this means that the Roman guard who speared Jesus to make sure He died was wrong, that Jesus survived the massive blood loss from the holes in His hands, feet, and side, that He survived the cold of the tomb for three days (in His sleep) without food or water, that He rolled away the stone (by Himself!) despite His broken shoulders (from hanging on the Cross for three hours), and still looked presentable enough for the Apostles to believe He had risen from the dead. Along with all of this, Jesus survived for forty days with the Apostles before passing away. This scenario is absolutely impossible.

And that's all I can post. Here are some of my resources:

Impossible Faith

And, used even more than the above, a skeptic's article.

You can also read this debate between them for a much more compehensive rundown of what is in my essay.

I'm in my room, doing my homework, when my mother walks in, tells me some stuff, and then says "Oh, and I want you to write a paper on your apologetics stuff by the end of the term."

As if it's just the most casual thing in the world.

Did I mention I have less than one month until the end of the term?

Did I also mention that it can take me weeks just to think up a decent thesis?

I'm not bad at writing. . .everybody who sees my work says I'm good. I even got straight A's in my last writing class. But I've never written anything as in-depth as I have to now. And the hilarious part?

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I've written apologetics papers before, but now, I have no idea what subject to use. The survey has been postponed until I can complete it.

I hate school.:(