Gallup Poll Reveals Vast Majority of Americans Are Idiots

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 10-12, 2010, 

with a random sample of 1,019 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected 

using random-digit-dial sampling.For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence

 that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

A new Gallup poll reveals again that the vast majority of Americans believe in God, and also believe that a "deity" had either full or partial responsibility for creating humans. A plurality of Americans (40%) believe "God created humans pretty much in their present form approximately 10,000 years ago" (strict Creationism) while a smaller percentage (38%) believe that "God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms" (intelligent design-lite) while a mere 16% believe that "humans developed over millions of years, without God's involvement" (science). Happily, this last number is the largest it has ever been, but it is still a disappointing result, since it reflects undisputed scientific fact.

Unsurprisingly, there is a partisan differential between Democrats, Republicans and Independents over who believes what:

Clearly a majority of Republicans (52%) believe that humans are less than 10,000 years with a minuscule 8% believing in God-less evolution, while Democrats and Independents are virtually indistinguishable between 40% believing in God-guided evolution and approximately 20% aligning with the vast body of scientific knowledge on the topic.

And, that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have the 112th Congress with a Republican House majority!

WATCH: Time-Lapse Video Of Last Night's Lunar Eclipse

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Celebrity Friday: Dean Hamer

MadProfessah, with scientist Dean Hamer

Last weekend I attended the Out To Innovate conference as a panelist and moderator; it was held at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on October 10th. Organized by NOGLSTP, the national organization for gay and lesbian scientists and technical professionals, the conference is the LGBT's community response to President Obama's Educate to Innovate initiative.

Dean Hamer, the author of the famous Science article "A linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation" which demonstrates that sexual orientation has a genetic component, gave the keynote speech at the Out to Innovate conference during lunch.

Afterwards, he graciously agreed to take a picture with me.

New Report Estimates LGB Population In U.S. At 9%

The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School, a think tank devoted to sexual orientation law and public policy, has released a report (pdf) which analyzes national demographic surveys to tease out interesting information about the national lesbian, gay and bisexual population.

From the Executive Summary:

Data from the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS) indicate that nearly 9% of adults either identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual or report having had same‐sex sexual experiences as an adult. Although 90% of LGB people are out about their identity to other people, only 25% report being out to all of their coworkers in the workplace. The data show that bisexuals differ in several ways from those who identify as gay or lesbian, including being much less likely to be out or have a high school diploma and being much more likely to be women and/or racial or ethnic minorities.

Surveys that ask questions about sexual orientation and behavior are rare. Among the few surveys that ask these questions, few are representative of the US population. Even rarer is information about the coming out process from such surveys. As a result, little is known about how and if thinking of oneself as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, or experiencing same‐sex sexual behaviors and telling others about one’s sexual orientation or behavior varies by sex, age, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment.

The General Social Survey (GSS), conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, has monitored social and demographic changes in the United States since 1972. The 2008 GSS marks the first time that survey participants were asked about their sexual orientation (prior surveys had only asked about same‐sex sexual behavior). The 2008 survey also includes a module of questions (added with the financial support of the Williams Institute) directed at sexual minorities that ask about the experience of coming out, relationship status and family structure, workplace and housing discrimination, and health insurance coverage.

Other results that are included in the report are:

·        1.7% of adults self-identified as gay or lesbian and 1.1% self-identified as bisexual

·        More than 3 in 4 lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) adults say that they were first attracted to someone of the same-sex before they were 18 years old.

·        Women are more likely than men to be LGB (4.6% vs. 2.9%).    They are twice as likely to be bisexual than men (1.9% v. 0.7%, respectively).

·        Younger people are more likely to  be LGB.  7.2% of those aged 18-30 are LGB compared with 3.8% of those aged 30-54 and 1.4% of those aged 55 and older.

·         Gay men and lesbians are more likely than bisexuals to be out to at least some people (96% vs. 75%, respectively).

·         Older people are much more likely to be in the closet .   Adults over the age of 55 are 83 times more likely than those under 30 to have never come out to another person.

·         Bisexuals are more likely to be a racial/ethnic minority than heterosexuals, gay men, or lesbians.   More than half of bisexuals are non-white compared to approximately 30% of heterosexuals, gay men and lesbian.  The racial and ethnic characteristics of gay men, lesbians, and heterosexuals are similar to each other.

The author of the report is Williams Distinguished Scholar Dr. Gary Gates who says:

"These provocative findings demonstrate the challenge in understanding the
complex relationship between sexual orientation identity and behavior.
Given that nearly half of Americans still believe that homosexual
relationships are morally wrong, it is not surprising to find ambiguity
between how people behave sexually and how they identify their sexual
orientation."

First Planet Found In Habitable Zone 20 Lights-Years Away: "Gliese 581g"

Very cool news! NASA announced on Wednesday that researchers at UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institute of Washington have found the first extra-solar planet which scientists believe is not too cold or too hot to sustain life.

From the official report:

The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system outside of our own. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly-circular orbits.

The new planet designated Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times that of Earth and orbits its star in just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere. 

Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has two previously detected planets that lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly-discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the "terminator").

Makes the geek in me very happy!

13-Year-Old Morehouse Whiz Kid!

.Thanks to Jack and Jill Politics, I found out about this heart-warming story about a 13-year-old Black male college student:

At thirteen years of age, Stephen Stafford is causing quite a stir at Morehouse College. Stafford has a triple major in pre-med, math and computer science. Though he loves playing video games and playing his drum set, he is no typical teenager.

"I've never taught a student as young as Stephen, and it's been amazing," said computer science professor Sonya Dennis. "He's motivating other students to do better and makes them want to step up their game."

Stafford began his college career at the age of 11, after being home-schooled by his mother. Stafford's mother said that when Stafford began to teach her instead of being taught by her, she knew he needed to be in a college environment.

Isn't that a great story? In a perfect world, Stephen Stafford's name would be more well-known than Chris Brown. I'm jus' sayin'!

'Lost' Final Season Begins In One Week!

Here is a video telling you everything you need to know about the first 5 seasons of Lost in 8 minutes:

π Calculuated to 2,700,000,000,000 Digits!

Big news, y'all! The number π has just been calculated to 2.7 trillion digits!

According to the Mathematical Association of America news story:

Computer scientist Fabrice Bellard has computed Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion digits, breaking the record by 123 billion places.

It took him 131 days to do it. The old record had been set in August, 2009, by Daisuke Takahashi(University of Tsukuba, in Japan), who needed just 29 hours on a supercomputer 2,000 times faster than Bellard's desktop.

"I got my first book about Pi when I was 14 and since then, I have followed the progress of the various computation records," Bellard told BBC News.

Pretty cool, huh?

REVIEW: Vernor Vinge's A FIRE UPON THE DEEP

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep is an instant classic science fiction novel. It won the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction novel of 1992 and is considered one of the finest examples of its genre.

Vinge also won the Hugo award in 2000 for A Deepness In The Sky and again in 2007 for Rainbows End. A Deepness in the Sky is an astonishing novel, written in the same fictional universe as A Fire Upon The Deep, sometimes called the Zones of Thought. (See MadProfessah's A review.)

A Fire Upon The Deep has a very complicated but engrossing plot (of course).

The basic story is about what happens to two young children Johanna and Jefri who are accompanying their scientist parents when the family is forced to evacuate a region of space to avoid a dangerous anomaly, crash-land on a planet and the kids are orphaned. The inhabitants of the planet are one of science fiction's most intriguing creations: Tines, furry four-legged creature which resemble dogs in appearance and intelligence but when they bond together in groups of four or more they become sentient beings. Vinge is at his amazingly sympathetic when depicting aliens and their novel civilizations. The Tines' culture resembles a medieval feudal society emerging from the Bronze Age which has had two aliens (who happen to be adolescents) with 30th century technology.

The plot develops in surprising ways and Vinge deals with the youth of the protagonists amazingly well. The two are separated relatively early in the book and join rival factions of the Tines, the overall resolution is exciting and engrossing.

A Fire Upon The Deep is a classic work that should be read (and re-read) by anyone remotely interested in alien civilizations, high technology and youthful heroes.

Mass Market Paperback: 624 pages.
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction.
Date: February 15, 1993.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

LOOK: A 3-D Depiction of the Mandelbrot Set

Thanks to io9, I was alerted to this interesting 3-D visualization of the famous Mandelbrot set. The Mandelbrot set is a very famous example of a fractal, which is an object which is self-similar under magnification. It is usually depicted in two-dimensions, since it is generally generated using complex variables. There are many more stunning images available.

VIDEO: A depiction of all of known space

hat/tip to TowleRoad.

Truth About That "AIDS Vaccine Breakthrough"

The New York Times and online news outlets like WebMD and DailyKos are starting to analyze more carefully the more sensationalist claims of an "AIDS vaccine breakthrough" that you may have heard pf last week.

For example, Times reporter Donald McNeil reports that

In the data itself, the real margin of success was razor-thin: 23 Thais out of 16,395.

That is, three years after getting the vaccine or a placebo, 74 in the placebo arm of the trial became infected while only 51 in the vaccine arm did.

Bloggers with a taste for biostatistics — and one rival AIDS vaccine specialist who declined to be quoted — said it would take only a handful more infected Thais in the vaccine column to shift the results from “statistically significant” to meaningless. Even one more would have weakened the data enough to make headlines saying “One Quarter Protected” more likely, given the way journalists round off numbers.

Got that? The 1/3rd protect meme that was propagated last week came from the fact that 23 fewer Thais out of more than 16,000 participants who would have been expected to get HIV, did not.

VIDEO: 3-D Tour Of Space Via Hubble

VIDEO: Longest Eclipse of the 21st Century

Hat/tip TowleRoad

VIDEO: HIV Infecting T-Cells Caught On Tape

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Boricua In Space!

Los Angeles-born Joseph Acaba is now the first Puerto Rican in space!

Liftoff occurred at 4:44 p.m. Pacific time, about 3 minutes after sunset in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The shuttle is to rendezvous with the Space Station on Tuesday.

Joseph Acaba -- a geologist and former Peace Corps member, Marine Corps reservist and math and science teacher -- is to serve as a mission specialist and take two space walks during the 14-day mission.

He is on the team assigned to install the final truss elements and solar arrays that provide power to the space station.

The shuttle mission, originally set for Feb. 12, was previously delayed several times to check hydrogen fuel valves, one of which broke during a flight in November.

On the first of his two spacewalks, Acaba is to join crewmate Steve Swanson on a tour of the truss.

Acaba's second space walk will involve preparing the International Space Station for future flights.

Mad Professah is happy to see another Math and Science teacher in space. Here's to wishing Mr. Acaba a safe return to planet Earth.

Obama Restores Constitutional Order

According to DailyKos diarist SusanG President Obama has issued a Presidental Memorandum instructing all Federal agencies to ignore all previous signing statements issued by the previous administration and to consult the Obama Justice Department on their legality before relying on them for current federal policy.

The main text of the memorandum is here:

For nearly two centuries, Presidents have issued statements addressing constitutional or other legal questions upon signing bills into law (signing statements). Particularly since omnibus bills have become prevalent, signing statements have often been used to ensure that concerns about the constitutionality of discrete statutory provisions do not require a veto of the entire bill.

In recent years, there has been considerable public discussion and criticism of the use of signing statements to raise constitutional objections to statutory provisions. There is no doubt that the practice of issuing such statements can be abused. Constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the President will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements. At the same time, such signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system, at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections. In appropriately limited circumstances, they represent an exercise of the President's constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and they promote a healthy dialogue between the executive branch and the Congress.

With these considerations in mind and based upon advice of the Department of Justice, I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities. In issuing signing statements, I shall adhere to the following principles:

1. The executive branch will take appropriate and timely steps, whenever practicable, to inform the Congress of its constitutional concerns about pending legislation. Such communication should facilitate the efforts of the executive branch and the Congress to work together to address these concerns during the legislative process, thus minimizing the number of occasions on which I am presented with an enrolled bill that may require a signing statement.
2. Because legislation enacted by the Congress comes with a presumption of constitutionality, I will strive to avoid the conclusion that any part of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional. In exercising my responsibility to determine whether a provision of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional, I will act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded.
3. To promote transparency and accountability, I will ensure that signing statements identify my constitutional concerns about a statutory provision with sufficient specificity to make clear the nature and basis of the constitutional objection.
4. I will announce in signing statements that I will construe a statutory provision in a manner that avoids a constitutional problem only if that construction is a legitimate one.

To ensure that all signing statements previously issued are followed only when consistent with these principles, executive branch departments and agencies are directed to seek the advice of the Attorney General before relying on signing statements issued prior to the date of this memorandum as the basis for disregarding, or otherwise refusing to comply with, any provision of a statute.

Ahhhh, smell that? That's the fresh air cleaning away the stench of the Bush Administration. That's change we can believe in.

Oh, and today Barack Obama also overturned Bush's policy on banning the use of federal funds on embryonic stem cell research AND went further to issue a Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity that declares the politicization of science will not happen in the Obama administration.

Lesbian Named Fellow of the AAAS

Rochelle Diamond, founder of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals (NOGLSTP) has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science precisely for her work in organizing out LGBT individuals in science.

The announcement was made in the December 19 issue of the association's journal, Science. Diamond is one of 486 new fellows awarded for "socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications," says the AAAS.

The association recognized Diamond for "outstanding technical contributions to the field of cytometry/cell sorting, and for distinguished professional service in development of understanding human diversity in science and engineering.

I have been an email correspondent of Rochelle's for nearly 20 years, although I have never met her. Regardless, I am very supportive of her work, and replicated it somewhat when I co-founded a silmilar organization for Mathematicians in 1995. Congratulations, Rochelle!

Circumcision Ineffective In HIV Prevention in MSM

The latest research results about the impact of circumcision on HIV prevention have been released. You may recall the "to cut or not to cut" controversy earlier in the year when the head of the New York City health department floated the idea of adult male circumcision as a reasonable HIV prevention strategy, to much derision and dismay from AIDS activists. The new research shows that uncut guys can maybe uncross their legs now...

Despite research showing circumcision can reduce a man's risk of HIV during heterosexual intercourse, a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the procedure offers little protection against the virus for men who have sex with men, AFP/Yahoo! News reports. According to the study, there was minimal difference in HIV infections between those MSM who were circumcised and those who were not (AFP/Yahoo! News, 10/7).

For the study, researchers at CDC, led by Gregorio Millett, reviewed 15 previous studies on circumcision that included 53,567 MSM from Australia, Great Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, Peru, Taiwan and the U.S. Circumcised MSM were 14% less likely to be HIV-positive than those who were not, a rate that was not statistically significant, according to the researchers. Millett said, "You can't necessarily say with confidence that we're seeing a true effect there," adding, "Overall, we're not finding a protective effect associated with circumcision" for MSM (Dunham, Reuters, 10/7).

However, when examining studies carried out before the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy in 1996, the researchers found evidence that circumcision in the past had a protective effect for MSM, BBC News reports. The researchers said one explanation for the reduced effectiveness of circumcision among MSM following the introduction of HAART is that the efficacy of drugs diminished the perceived need to practice safer sex to avoid contracting HIV. In addition, the study noted that HAART might help reduce the risk of HIV transmission to a level that circumcision does not provide further benefits. The researchers also said that there may have been a smaller proportion of men in the pre-HAART trials who engaged primarily in receptive anal sex, which carries the greatest risk of HIV among MSM (BBC News, 10/7).

French Scientists Win 2008 Nobel Prize for Discovery of HIV

The Nobel Prize committee has finally weighed in on the long-running dispute between French scientist Luc Montagnier's team and American scientist Robert Gallo's team. They have chosen the French:

Following medical reports of a novel immunodeficiency syndrome in 1981, the search for a causative agent was on. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier isolated and cultured lymph node cells from patients that had swollen lymph nodes characteristic of the early stage of acquired immune deficiency. They detected activity of the retroviral enzyme reverse transcriptase, a direct sign of retrovirus replication. They also found retroviral particles budding from the infected cells. Isolated virus infected and killed lymphocytes from both diseased and healthy donors, and reacted with antibodies from infected patients. In contrast to previously characterized human oncogenic retroviruses, the novel retrovirus they had discovered, now known as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), did not induce uncontrolled cell growth. Instead, the virus required cell activation for replication and mediated cell fusion of T lymphocytes. This partly explained how HIV impairs the immune system since the T cells are essential for immune defence. By 1984, Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier had obtained several isolates of the novel human retrovirus, which they identified as a lentivirus, from sexually infected individuals, haemophiliacs, mother to infant transmissions and transfused patients. The significance of their achievements should be viewed in the context of a global ubiquitous epidemic affecting close to 1% of the population.