Cleanliness Makes People Less Severe In Moral Judgments

I can't help wondering about religious traditions where bathing and washing are part of the regular routine, in the light of this research: Cleanliness Makes People Less Severe In Moral Judgments. Here's the main summary statement of what was discovered: "findings from both experiments demonstrated that those who were subject to the cognitive feeling of cleanliness exercised less severe moral judgment than their counterparts"
Of course the intriguing possibility it opens up is the prospect of defence lawyers asking for jurors to have showers before deliberating ...

More research on praying

Sometimes science is not as objective as is made out. Take a look at this article, A Book Of Common Prayers and note this interpretive gloss by one of the researchers: "Prayer writers also tend to frame their prayers broadly, in abstract psychological language, and this allowed them to make many interpretations of the results of their prayers"
Which seems to indicate that prayer can be a bit like cold reading. And while you'll get no argument from me; it is clear that sometimes levels of abstraction do allow multiple interpretations. The point in intercessory praying would be to move over time towards more specific and focused understandings of the will of God.
The other misreading that seems to be tied up in this sentence is that writers of prayers are trying to produce prayers that can be seen as answered in multiple ways. As a writer and user of written prayers, I'd have to say that it's actually producing something that is at the start of the intercessory process and which therefore needs to be written at sufficient a level of abstraction to be apprehensible by people in a variety of situations. There's little point writing a prayer unless you're trying to allow a number of people in differing situations to find something in it that expresses something of their relationship with the Divine and their experience of the world. So it's not cold reading so much as a wide starting point.

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy an anti-depressant treatment?

As someone who, in the past, has dealt with people suffering depression and wanting to maintain their relationship with God (not easy in depression) I'm interested when there seems to be something that can positively link spiritual practice and dealing with depression. Here's the report
Depression Treatment: Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy As Effective As Anti-depressant Medication, Study Suggests and here's the guts of what it says: "a group-based psychological treatment, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), could be a viable alternative to prescription drugs for people suffering from long-term depression."
It's no miracle cure but it does seem to be statistically worthwhile: "Over the 15 months after the trial, 47% of the group following the MBCT course experienced a relapse compared with 60% of those continuing their normal treatment, including anti-depressant drugs"
By now you may be wondering just what it is that is being taught, well ...
"During the eight-week trial, groups of between eight and fifteen people met with one therapist. They learned a range of meditation exercises that they could continue to practice on their own once the course ended. Many of the exercises were based on Buddhist meditation techniques and helped the individual take time to focus on the present, rather than dwelling on past events, or planning for future tasks. The exercises worked in a different way for each person, but many reported greater acceptance of, and more control over, negative thoughts and feelings."
While it is stated that it has a strong connection with Buddhist traditions, it should be said that Christian traditions are not without techniques that achieve the same sort of ends: some contemplative ways are very much about being in the moment and it is arguable that the whole 'take no thought' thing in the gospels encourages finding ways for us to be learning to be present to the present, so to speak.
Since there is, it seems to me, a cognitive element to much depression, based in events and our interpretation of them, then learning how to bypass or downplay certain kinds of cognitive habits must surely have important effects on us. It may be that this is related to reasons why 'religious' people seem to score significantly better in health and well-being indices.
Of course we should beware of the obliquity factor here; and the danger of appropriating spiritual traditions for their obique /secondary ends. It might be better, in view of the research, to encourage people to learn mindfulness for their health and then help them to apply it as spiritual practice.

High challenge can mean more learning

An important piece of research comparing learning starting with easier problems, starting with harder problems or having them in random order. Probably our instinct would be that starting with easier problems would be the better way. However, as this article Using Challenging Concepts To Learn Promotes Understanding Of New Material tell us: "the effects of the different training methods depended on the type of categories that the participants were learning. When the categories could be easily described (i.e. was the line horizontal or vertical?), all three of the training procedures were equally effective. However, when the categories could not be described easily, starting with the harder problems then moving to easier ones produced the best results."
It would seem that the Adam naming the animals paradigm (where there is no preconceived system; you have to sort it out for yourself) is the most effective ...

Mamma Mia! My, my, how can I resist you?

Oh dear. Here was I; happily anticipating going to a Mama Mia! sing-a-long on Tuesday night, and then I read this articleMamma Mia! My, my, how can I resist you? Quite easily | Comment is free | The Observer: and my dilemma might be summed up in this quotation from it: "Mamma Mia! is not so much a film, nor, as its distributors describe it, a 'feel-good cinema event', nor even a global phenomenon the like of which has never been seen, as a key signifier of gender.". You see, dear reader; it seems that I may be almost alone of my gender in loving the film. Apparently, if I go along to the sing-a-long; I may be commiting gender treason.

Well, all I can say is 'am I bovvered?' I liked it, I like singing, I'm a child of the Abba era; this is the soundtrack of my youth; it's moving for me. That said: will I feel like the proverbial pork pie at a kosher wedding? I now have trepidations I didn't have before!

Ten technologies to save the climate

Could you name 10? I'm not sure I could have, but never fear, New Scientist to the rescue. Here are three that I reckon it'd be easy to miss from your list.

7. Second-generation biofuels
Making fuel from food crops is now almost universally regarded as a bad idea, encouraging deforestation and potentially leading to food shortages. But the next generation of biofuels made from agricultural waste shows real promise. Using new cellulose-cracking technologies, waste wood can be broken down into liquid fuel, and with US venture capitalists investing heavily in these technologies, it won't be long until this idea becomes a reality. However, with the global appetite for fuel on the increase, careful management of cellulose production will be vital.
8. Carbon capture
With the growth of renewable energy sources failing to keep up with world demand for electricity, finding an effective way of capturing and storing the carbon dioxide produced by power stations is one of the most important challenges we face. Investment in carbon-capture technologies has been slow to pick up, but governments around the world are starting to understand the importance of funding this research, and promising new technologies are already emerging.
9. Biochar
With predictions of climate change getting increasingly urgent, we desperately need cheap, simple and fast ways of reducing greenhouse emissions. One idea is to sequester carbon as biochar, a charcoal made from burning agricultural waste in the absence of air. Biochar is exceptionally stable and can be stored underground for hundreds of years without releasing its carbon into the atmosphere - and it improves the fertility of the soil.
10. Biogas stoves
Deforestation is a complex issue, and it's looking more and more likely that we will have to pay people to maintain forest lands. But until such a system is up and running, we will need to focus on technologies that reduce the need to cut down trees. One such technology is biogas stoves, powered by methane released from rotting organic waste, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. Leading the way is China, which is heavily promoting the use of biogas technologies.

War against Jihadism

With a hat-tip to Alan Hirsh for finding this in an article by...

George Weigel called Faith, Reason, And The War Against Jihadism: A Call To Action. ..

* Lesson one: The great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological
* Lesson two: To speak of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the “three Abrahamic faiths,” the “three religions of the Book” or the “three monotheisms” obscures rather than illuminates. These familiar descriptions ought to be retired
* Lesson three: Jihadism is the enemy in the multi-front war that has been declared on us
* Lesson four: Jihadism has a complex intellectual history, the chief points of which must be grasped in order to understand the nature of the threat it poses to the west
* Lesson five: Jihadists read history and politics through the prism of distinctive theological convictions, not through the lens of western assumptions about the progress of dynamic of history
* Lesson six: It is not “Islamophobic” to note the historical connection between conquest and Muslim expansion, or between contemporary jihadism and terrorism. Truth-telling is the essential prerequisite to genuine interreligious dialogue, which can only be based on the claims of reason.
* Lesson seven: The war against jihadism is a contest for the human future that will endure for generations
* Lesson eight: Genuine realism in foreign policy takes wickedness seriously, yet avoids premature closure in it’s thinking about the possibilities of positive change in world politics
* Lesson nine: In the war against Jihadism, the political objective in the middle East and throughout the Islamic world is the evolution of responsible and responsive government, which will take different forms given different historical and cultural circumstances
* Lesson ten: in the war against global Jihadism, deterrence strategies unlikely to be effective, because it is almost impossible to deter those who are committed to their own martyrdom
* Lesson eleven: Cultural self-confidence is indispensable to victory in the long-term struggle against Jihadism
* Lesson twelve: Islamist salami tactics (also known as the salami-slice strategy, a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition) must be resisted, for small concessions in the name of a false idea of tolerance inevitably lead to further concessions, and into further erosions of liberty and security
* Lesson thirteen: We cannot, and will not, deserve victory (much less achieve it) if we continue to finance those who attack us, therefore, a program to defund jihadism by developing alternatives to petroleum based transportation fuels is a crucial component of the current struggle
* Lesson fourteen: Victory in the war against global jihadism requires a new domestic political coalition that is proof against the confusions caused by the Unhinged Left and the Unhinged Right
* Lesson fifteen: There is no escape from US leadership

At least it gets past the impossible 'war on terrorism': which will never be one this side of Kingdom Come; it's a methodology not an enemy! But let's get away from the war metaphor shall we? It's bound to cause trouble.How about 'repurposing' Jihadis? Or, how about this from left-field: doing good to those who despitefully use us (after all these ones are responding in kind to perceived despiteful use, arguably)? So While I agree with the first two (and think them insightful), I'm concerned that the war metaphor is a spoiler. There can be no victory: only reconciliation (this is true for any conflict except genocidal ones), so let's not frame it that way. If we are to win anything it is hearts and minds: any other objective is bringing down the roof on ourselves. That said, I'd go with 6, 8, 10 & 13.