type two posts and call me in the morning...

Good news fellow bloggers -- blogging is good for your health! The June '08 issue of Scientific American has a short article about the therapeutic value of blogging/writing. Besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism (and who couldn't use that?!), research shows that it "improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity...and even speeds healing after surgery." Whoa!

Now scientists are starting to explore the neurological basis for these positive effects by using tools such as brain-imaging techniques. (There are likely a cluster of neurological pathways, but since the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain govern speech, they would certainly have to figure into the picture.)

Of course one can go overboard with the writing/blogging, and there are people who do it compulsively. Hypergraphia is an uncontrollable urge to write. I don't have that... although I might have hyperphotoshoppia, the uncontrollable urge to photoshop Presbyterian Gal's face onto any possible picture.

The article ends by noting blogging's added benefit of "receptive readers in similar situations". One researcher writes: "Individuals are connecting to one another and witnessing each other's expressions--the basis for forming a community."

Good stuff! Now excuse me while I go work on another picture of presbygal...


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credits: shakespeare blogging picture found at 'emergingwriter.blogspot' via google

more about brains...

Just read in today's USA Today that scientists recently scanned musicians' brains and have located the region that lights up when they improvise. It's the medial prefrontal cortex. Turns out this is the same area we all use when we're talking about ourselves (i.e. describing who we are and what interests us). Charles Limb, one of the researchers who is also a jazz saxophonist, thinks this makes perfect sense. He said, "Because the person is spontaneously composing, they really are revealing themselves musically. It's like your own musical autobiography."

And... at the same time the medial prefrontal cortex lights up in the improvising musician, the portion of the brain linked to careful planning and self-censoring (the ol' dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) turns off. Interesting stuff.

I'd like to go on record as saying Offspring #2 (who plays jazz trumpet) has a darn fine medial prefrontal cortex.

adventures in pseudo-science

Well, it was bound to happen. Creationists, who have had scant success getting their papers published in serious scientific journals, have launched their own online 'scientific' journal. The Answers Research Journal has begun posting 'research' and articles which are "consistent with the biblical account of origins." According to their website, the ARJ is "peer-reviewed", however the journal's guidelines discourage non-creationists from conducting any reviews. (Okaaaay. That keeps it objective!)

Here's a quote from an article on bacteria and viruses from their very first journal:

Ubiquitousness and persistence of...microbes in the biological ecosystem strongly implicate a beneficial microbe-host interaction in the original creation and subsequent disruption of the beneficial microbe-host interaction after the Fall.

Translation: Darn that Eve! Bacteria and viruses were happy and good in the Garden of Eden:

Then Eve just had to chomp on the fruit, and the microorganisms became dudes with nasty 'tudes:


You know, I'm thinking God doesn't really need these folks to try and make things fit into a little restricted box...

my 200th post -- the God post!

Over winter break, the topic of belief in God came up briefly with Offspring #2. I use the word "briefly" because I couldn't articulate my thoughts well enough on the spot to make it a more lengthy discussion. So, I've thought about things more and here's why I give the nod to God. (I guess you'll be the judge if I can articulate any better at this point!)

I should perhaps start by saying that I've always been interested in both science and theology -- especially where they 'intersect'. (I'm sure that explains why several of my undergraduate electives were theology classes while getting my biology degree.) It's not that I'm trying to use science to either prove or disprove the existence of God (that can't be done anyway), but I believe one's 'faith' shouldn't contradict reason either. I've never been willing or able to suspend my brain activity for the sake of any 'religion'.

Having said that, I do think science provides some 'evidence' that points to a transcendent cause. For starters, there is this incredibly narrow band of parameters which made complex forms of life and consciousness a possibility. In fact, Stephen Hawking made the comment that if the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even 1 part in 100 thousand million, the universe would have recollapsed. He said, "The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications." Of course you can argue if this is design or accident, but the numbers, at least in my mind, are pretty compelling.

Then there's the fact that nature obeys laws. For me, this begs the question "What brought about these laws of physics to make evolution possible?" I find the newest work by physicists on string theory and M-theory particularly fascinating. Some physicists believe that it will be possible one day to write a single (and beautifully simple) 'ultimate equation' from which all laws of reality can be derived. So, then I'd have to ask: Why that particular equation? And, Who 'wrote' it?

It's enough to make a brain hurt so I'll just close with a limerick written by George Gamow (a physicist and cosmologist) which seems appropriate for this post:

There was a young fellow from Trinity
Who took the square root of infinity
But the number of digits
Gave him the fidgits;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

I'd welcome any comments out there in bloggerland!

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(Big Bang pic from here. It's difficult to find good Big Bang photos. Hmm... guess there weren't many cameras around at the time.)