Despite the fact that many in the culture drink, smoke and eat fatty foods; experts are now hoping to crack the code. In New York, Cornell scientists will study the stem cells of almost a dozen Ashkenazi Jews who came from a heavily persecuted group with origins from Russia.

Experts believe that years of intermarriage – and the sharing of genetic traits – might have helped the group live for so long.

Usually intermarriage has the stereotype for less “attractive” traits. In general, human beings became better looking after we started travelling far and inter-mingling. Usually, the rich mated with the rich. Then said rich person would get a portrait painted, being apart of a family who can afford it. We look at the features of people from old paintings and they are different from the typical ideals of today. I’m not even talking about weight; more like the roundness of faces, distance between eyes, etc. Microevolution is noticeable from these easy to understand tidbits. How anyone could deny micro- or macroevolution by natural selection is beyond me! (It’s so blatant; one must really not want to know the truth.)

But I digress. Getting back to the genes of Ashkenazi Jews, take Lilly Port for example.

Lilly Port, who turned 98 last week, is one of the Ashkenazi Jews who will be taking part in the study, claims that she has never been ill.

‘I always had good genes,’ she said.

And even though she doesn’t smoke, she does eat bratwurst and chocolate daily and drinks white wine ‘when I want to relax’.

She told the New York Post: ‘I limit my food intake, because I want to be able to fit into my clothes, but I’m in perfect health.’

It will be some time before the results have been carefully dissected and conclusions drawn, but this survey should go some way to unlocking the code to a long life. [Read more.]

Boy, do I envy a woman who says she’s never been ill! Moreover, I wonder what the study will reveal.

I’ve been designing shoes lately. I don’t really have much else to say about that. I just wanted to let you know that – alongside the posters - I’ve been creating other stuff as well. :)

Via Toonhole

Jesse Bering’s mother died of cancer on a Sunday, in her own bed, at 9 o’clock at night. Bering and his siblings closed her door and went downstairs, hoping they might somehow get some sleep.

It was a long, hard night, but around 7 a.m., something happened: The wind chimes outside his mother’s window started to chime.

Bering remembers waking to the tinkle of these bells, a small but distinct sound in an otherwise silent house. And he remembers thinking that those bells carried a very specific message.

“It seemed to me … that she was somehow telling us that she had made it to the other side. You know, cleared customs in heaven,” Bering says.

The thought surprised him. Bering was a confirmed atheist. He did not believe in any kind of supernatural anything. He prided himself on being a scientist, a psychologist who believed only in the measurable material world. But, he says, he simply couldn’t help himself.

Confirmed atheist? I suppose that means self-described atheist. In any case, there is a small part of me that understands this desire. However, when my father died last year, I did not have any of these supernatural leanings. I also do not see how having such leanings is beneficial to evolution. On a personal individual level, belief may be advantageous; yet, in the grand scheme of things, I fail to see it.

There are two parts of the equation I’d like to touch upon here: The belief in god as well as the belief in the supernatural, such as ghosts. Some people state that without god, there are no morals. I disagree for the following reason. Morals are innate, they are part of our societal instincts. Members of the non-human animal kingdom have proven this time and again. There is a huge advantage to following the so-called Golden Rule- treating others as we wish to be treated. Evaluating a situation and deciding what is right (as opposed to having a cut and dry set of rules to follow) is the key to true morality. Acting out of fear or to kiss the “ass” of an invisible bully is not truly moral behavior. Whether it be a god or a dead relative watching, one being good out of fear isn’t the optimal way to be good, in my opinion.

“Whether it’s a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they’re watching you, your behavior is going to be affected,” he says.

True enough, yet that doesn’t make it an evolutionary benefit. And he goes on:

In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother’s death.

I’m not so sure about that. It may be accurate in specific cases, but not so much for every nonbeliever. The idea of someone watching every single thing you do, from masturbation to hanging out with friends, is – quite frankly – creepy. I wouldn’t find it comforting in the slightest. If I’m in a bad situation, I try to think of the best reasonable way to get out of it rather than finding comfort in the possibility that someone or something is watching over me.

Every animal, including humans, has a moral center and that is what is advantageous to evolution. There is an innate desire to live in a society where people treat one another as they would like to be treated. It just makes good sense.

The chief scientist in Israel’s ministry of education, Gavriel Avital, “sparked a furor” by questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming, leading to calls for his dismissal, according to Haaretz (February 21, 2010). “If textbooks state explicitly that human beings’ origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don’t believe the evolutionary account is correct,” he was quoted as saying. “There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula.”

…

Hava Yablonka of Tel Aviv University told Haaretz that Avital’s statements were tantamount “to saying that space should be given in textbooks to the view that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. It’s astonishing that the chief scientist of a government ministry can say such bizarre things.”

But it isn’t really that bizarre in Israel.

Unfortunately, Avital’s views on evolution may be shared by a sizable segment of the Israeli public.

But somehow Israel is about 25% atheist.

Story via NCSE

If any question remains about the religious and political motivations of certain members of the Texas Board of Education, one need only read the words of their social studies curriculum experts.

Rev. Peter Marshall, for example, one of their appointed academic experts, wants to restore America, according to the website of his Massachusetts-based ministry, “to its Bible-based foundations through preaching, teaching, and writing on America’s Christian heritage and on Christian discipleship and revival.” He also believes that Hurricane Katrina, Watergate and the Vietnam War are the result of divine wrath.

And I could just as easily say that the events of the Holocaust displays there is no god. Hmm…

Marshall, along with his fellow reviewer David Barton, did not believe that students in the public education system should learn about Hutchinson:

Anne Hutchinson does not belong in the company of these eminent gentlemen. She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn’t accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble.” (emphasis added)

One of the original Puritans, Hutchinson disagreed with some of the scriptural teachings of the religious leaders and began hosting her own Bible study classes in her home. For this crime, Hutchinson was placed on trial and banished from her community. Later, she and her exiled family were killed in a Siwanoy attack.

This is indeed quite disturbing.

They can be downloaded here.

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