In the argument about whether dogs are likely to leave some of their dinner for a stray cat who might come into the house later to eat it (let alone whether the dog knows the cat is pregnant and is feeding her because she’s pregnant…), someone linked to this interesting research that seems to show that rats can do altruism.

In the new study, Mason, Bartal and University of Chicago colleague Jean Decetyplaced pairs of rats in Plexiglass pens. One rat was trapped in a cage in the middle of the pen, whereas the other rat was free to run around. Most free rats circled their imprisoned peer, gnawing at the cage and sticking their paws, noses and whiskers through any openings. After a week of trial and error, 23 of the 30 rats in the experiment learned to open the cage and free their peers by head-butting the cage door or leaning their full weight against the door until it tipped over. (The door could only be opened from the outside.) At first the rats were startled by the noise of the toppling door. Eventually, however, they stopped showing surprise, which suggests that they fully intended to push the door aside. Further, the rodents showed no interest in opening empty cages or in those containing toy rats, indicating that a break out was their genuine goal.

In this first set of experiments, most rats seemed quite willing to help their peers, but Mason wanted to give them a tougher test. She placed rats in a Plexiglass pen with two cages: in one was another rat, in the other was a pile of five milk chocolate chips—a favorite snack of these particular rodents. The unrestricted rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves before freeing their peers or been so distracted by the sweets that they would neglect their imprisoned friends. Instead, most of the rats opened both cages and shared in the chocolate chip feast.

That’s pretty cool.

Mason’s new study is one of the most recent in a series of experiments changing how scientists think about empathy and altruism in the animal kingdom. At first, most people agreed that true altruism was a uniquely human characteristic requiring an awareness of one’s actions as selfless. Now it seems that many animals have evolved instincts to help others, even at a cost to themselves, and that we inherited these same instincts. “The bottom line is that helping an individual in distress is part of our biology,” Mason says. “It’s not something that develops or doesn’t develop because of culture.”

It’s a mammal thing. Oxytocin. Caring.

In earlier work, McGill University psychologist Jeffrey Mogil and his colleagues showed that mice recognize their peers’ pain—what researchers call “emotional contagion”—and spend more time with suffering cage mates. His team also developed a scale to measure pain expressed on the faces of mice.

Mogil was impressed with Mason’s study, but had some questions about the findings. “This is surprising because it’s not clear what the motivation for the prosocial behavior is, although the prosocial behavior is clearly there,” says Mogil. Both Mogil and Mason point out that because trapped rats squeak out alarm calls now and then, which stress out any fellows that hear them, the rats opening the doors might be trying to silence their peers. Mason thinks the alarm calls aren’t frequent enough to motivate the rats, but Mogil is not so sure.

So it could be just “stop making that noise.” Or it could be freedom, freedom, freedom.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This story is hugely popular on Facebook, and it’s a sweet story, but it seems extremely implausible to me. But I seem to be alone in that. I’m curious what you savagely skeptical people think.

My mother’s friend adopted this lovely dog after he was abandoned by his previous family. His name is Shaun.

Shaun had always been very good at eating all his food. Every last bit that was, he ate it.

One day he started leaving a little bit behind. He wouldn’t eat everything, no matter what. He always left a little behind.

Every morning when my mother’s friend checked Shaun’s bowl, the food was gone. That was very strange, because Shaun always spent the night by her side.

One night she decided to investigate the food situation. She waited quietly by the food bowl and then, in the middle of the night, a cat came through the window and ate the remaining food. She noticed the cat was actually pregnant.

She realized that Shaun had been saving his food for the mommy cat. A week or so later the cat came into her house and gave birth to six little kittens.

Shaun took care of them as if they were his own babies. My mother’s friend adopted the cat too (her name is Meow) and they took care of the kittens until they all found loving homes.

Nowadays, Meow and Shaun live happily together as a family and they each have their own bowls of food.

It’s the “She realized that Shaun had been saving his food for the mommy cat” bit that I don’t believe. I don’t think she did realize that, and I have a very hard time believing Shaun was doing any such thing.

What about you?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Creeping Refusal to Serve for Bad Invidious Reasons strikes again – a notary at a New Jersey bank yesterday refused to notarize some documents for Amanda Knief and Dave Silverman for, the notary said, “personal reasons.”

Via American Atheists:

BREAKING: An important message from American Atheists Managing Director, Amanda Knief:

—-

I was just refused service — because I am an atheist. It was embarrassing, humiliating, and pissed me off.

A notary at a local bank, where I have gone more than a dozen times to have work documents signed, asked me to explain what we were having notarized. The documents were charitable organizations registrations for American Atheists in several states. So I told her what AA is about. She looked down, then looked at me and [American Atheists President] Dave Silverman and said she couldn’t sign the documents because of “personal reasons” and went to find another notary who was eating his lunch to come do the authentications. 

I have been called names, threatened, hated on and all manner of ridiculed because of my atheist activism, but I think sitting in a bank and having another professional refuse to do business with me because I am an atheist was the worst slight I have ever received.

In New Jersey, notaries are not required to abide by any code of conduct or ethics that prevents them from refusing service to people based on “personal reasons.” Even though we had a valid, legal document and valid, legal identification–she was legally able to refuse me service.

Time to write legislation that won’t let this happen to anyone else. Fuck this.

—-

The bank is question was the TD Bank in Cranford, New Jersey (where American Atheists national headquarters is located).

This is completely unacceptable, and far from over.

- Your friends at American Atheists

—
Become a member at http://www.atheists.org/membership

Support the cause at http://www.atheists.org/donate

Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/AmericanAtheist

Subscribe to our quarterly magazine athttp://www.atheists.org/magazine

 

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More to chew on – Mehdi Hasan talks to Mona Eltahawy in front of an audience in Oxford.

http://youtu.be/5vWHJczVRwM

A few pull quotes from Mona:

I’ve been a feminist since I was 19.

Moving to Saudi Arabia as a young girl was like the lights being turned off.

I consider the niqab an erasure of women.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh looky here, what do you know…From an article titled Scabs: Academics and Others Who Write for Free by Yasmin Nair.

I want to return to a thread I introduced in that earlier piece with much greater force: That those who write for free or very little simply because they can afford to are scabs.  This would include not just academics with tenured or tenure-track positions, but adjuncts, professionals (like paid activists and organisers), as well as, really, just about anyone who writes for places like Guernica, The Huffington Post,open Democracy.net, and The Rumpus (and this is a very, very tiny list).*

…

Guernica and openDemocracy are both 501(c)3s. Where, in the case of the former, does that money go if they’re not paying for writers like Tariq Ali, and guest editors like Clair Messud? Their labour is provided gratis, as a symbol of their entrance into the upper echelons of the writing world.

OpenDemocracy’s funders include The Open Society, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Apparently, not one of these highly reputable funders thinks it’s a problem that a publishing organisation asks for money but can’t be bothered to even pay the writers without whom it simply would not exist.  

Ah. Oh.

Well, fortunately, it turns out I’m not a scab, because I refused to treat the article I wrote at their request for free as a “draft” and their “editorial suggestions” as commands I had to obey despite not working for them and not being, you know, paid. I gather that means they won’t be publishing it, although I don’t know for sure, because they didn’t reply to my reply.

Which itself is interesting. Not only do they not pay despite all those funders, they’re fucking rude besides. I suspect that the fact that they don’t pay causes them (ah this is so obvious) to view writers with contempt. “We don’t even pay you, you’re not even worth being paid, so why the hell should we be minimally polite? Why should we answer your outrageous email in which you dare to refuse to do any more work for zero dollars? Who do you think you are? Out of our sight, peasant.”

I might as well share my reply with you.

No, sorry. Way too much additional work for an unpaid article. In any case I’m not interested in writing to someone else’s recipe; I don’t see the point. I tried to make it approximately what you asked for, but if you want something that specific and tailored…I don’t see why you don’t just use an algorithm. I don’t see the point of soliciting writers because you like their work and then trying to make them follow your particular recipe.

If I’d known about the funding from The Open Society, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and apparently others, I would have been much much ruder.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Watching that Newsnight segment again. One thing Maajid says in his film:

The media rightly sought to hear from the Muslim voice. But that voice tended to be male, middle-aged, and mostly conservative.

Then there’s a clip from Citizen Khan, then Adil Ray explains about Citizen Khan. I want Adil Ray for my new best friend. In the clip a guy asks Citizen Khan what he does and CK says “I’m a leader of the community.” Guy asks what that entails, exactly, and CK says “I lead the community.” I love that, because I’ve been putting “community leader” in scare quotes for years. If only the BBC would learn how idiotic that idea is.

He introduces us to Dr Mohammed Fahim of South Woodford mosque, and notes that he recognizes that those who shout the loudest are those who dominate the debate:

Unfortunately Muslims are not used to discuss or to respect the other opinion. It is either my way or the highway.

Then Maajid says another thing I’ve been saying for years:

There’s an increasing number of Muslims who use their faith identity to advance a progressive agenda, yet we seldom hear from them.

Why do we seldom hear from them? Why is it always the anti-progressive ones who dominate the coverage and the debate?

Why didn’t the BBC invite any of them to talk on Newsnight instead of Mo Ansar and Mehdi Hasan? Why not Omar Kuddus whom Maajid talks to after he says we seldom hear from them. Why not Sara Khan whom he talks to after that? Why not Gita Sahgal, Tehmina Kazi, Maryam Namazie?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, he does talk to Maryam in this film.

More, BBC. More progressives, less of people like Hasan and Ansar.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hemant Mehta – the “friendly” atheist – has a post about a creationist complaining about not getting equal time with Cosmos. Mehta is scornful.

Of course, Faulkner has this crazy idea that Creationism and evolution are deserving of equal time even though only evolution is backed up by the evidence… and considering how little time is allocated to legitimate science programming these days, we should be seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson making the argument for equal time, not a Creationist.

Tell you what: I’m sure Cosmos will give you equal time on the show as soon as pastors start giving equal time to atheists in church. That makes just as much sense as whatever Faulkner said.

Or as soon as atheist bloggers start giving equal time to pseudo-secularists who campaign against abortion rights? While refusing to give equal time to atheists who defend abortion rights?

With friends like these…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ah good, there’s a longer version on YouTube.

This time, they actually show the cartoon. The one they made a big show of refusing to show in January, thus drawing even more opprobrium (and threats) down on Maajid.

Update: 5 minutes in he talks to Maryam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb1LR6887cc

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh dear god. At 8 minutes in, Jeremy Paxman asks, slowly and with deliberation because all three of the dudes suddenly stop shouting over each other to let Paxo have the floor – he asks, I say:

Why is it that we don’t see a broader range of Muslim spokesmen?

Why?? Because the BBC doesn’t invite them!

The BBC does invite Maryam occasionally, but not nearly often enough. It doesn’t invite any women often enough, especially not ex-Muslim women, secularist women, atheist women, liberal Muslim women.

The BBC should invite Maajid back and invite Tehmina Kazi and Maryam Namazie and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to talk with him. The discussion would be far more interesting and productive, and less shouty.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wo, here’s a gem – Maajid Nawaz, Mehdi Hasan and Mo Ansar going at it on Newsnight last night, with Jeremy Paxman presiding. The subject is That Tweet, the one about Jeus and Mo.

I’m four minutes in, and Mehdi Hasan has just said to Maajid, ”You have a long history of offending people in the Muslim community in a gratuitous manner.”

Mo Ansar said he doesn’t himself find the cartoon offensive. He’s meta-offended. What he finds offensive is Maajid tweeting something that other people would find offensive. It’s meta and pre-emptive. Also ridiculous – as Maajid points out to Mehdi H, some people are offended by campaigns against racism.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ok we allow women to do most things now, in Our Great Mercy, but there are limits. Women can’t be pope. Women can’t be intellectually active atheists. Women can’t be wait staff at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague.

The Nuclear Security Summit is in its second day in The Hague and has brought leaders from 53 countries together to discuss ways of combating nuclear terrorism. The catering company responsible for feeding the leaders and delegates has made a controversial staffing decision: No female serving staff are working in the plenary room where the main talks are being held. Instead, only men over 25 have been given the privilege of serving the working lunches at the World Forum. 

Gee, that is a new one. I thought serving food was one of the things women were allowed to do. Maybe it’s like cooking versus cheffing? Women are expected to do all the cooking, but men are expected to do all the cheffing. It’s easy to see why, when it’s lined up like that – cooking is something anyone can do, so women have to do it, while cheffing is skilled, so only men can do it. That’s how things are arranged. It’s not 100% accurate but by god it is simple and quick.

According to Dutch national newspaper the Algemeen Dagblad,the director of the catering company, Hans van der Linde, was looking to create a “uniform” look amongst his staff. They quote him justifying his decision in the following manner: “If 20 gentlemen are serving and three platinum blonde ladies, then that spoils the image.

“The personnel needs to act in as reserved a manner as possible, and you can’t achieve that by adding a couple of pretty, conspicuous ladies to the mix,” he added.

No, quite right. All women are platinum blonde and all are pretty and conspicuous, so obviously that is a very adequate and sensible reason for excluding them from the job of serving lunch.

In addition to the desire for uniformity, there may be other factors at play, says Jean-Paul Weijers, director of the Protocolbureau that is also involved in the summit. He believes that the decision for all-male staff within the main meeting area could be an attempt to prevent the world leaders from getting distracted. “Everything is taken into consideration when organising such an important gathering. That includes things like this.”

In addition, he says that the fact that there are world leaders from the Muslim world present may have influenced the decision making. “They understand that in the West there are different standards, but The Netherlands is a small country that is used to adapting quickly to bigger countries.”

Also very reasonable and adequate. There are many people – by which of course we mean men – who don’t want women around. It’s right and just for the Netherlands to take this natural desire into account, and exclude women from serving lunch.

In an attempt to clarify himself, van der Linde spoke to Radio 1 about keeping his female employees out of the plenary sessions. He denied ever mentioning hair colour, and told the station that he had initially come up with “the creative idea to only employ ladies to serve the world leaders, and to have them do that in little Delft Blue dresses.” His idea was apparently rejected by the ministry of Foreign Affairs, who made it clear that a more sober appearance would be appropriate. Van der Linde added: “We also have to go up a very steep flight of stairs, so little dresses wouldn’t be practical, as you wouldn’t be able to lift your legs high enough”.

You see, it just can’t be done. Van der Linde tried, he tried hard, but it can’t be done. You have them wear little Delft Blue dresses and then they can’t get up the stairs because they can’t lift their legs high enough. No matter what you try, women always have something wrong with them that makes the whole thing impossible.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Dan Dennett and Massimo Pigliucci talk to Laurence Krauss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tH3AnYyAI8

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Louis Theroux looks back on the accomplishments of Fred Phelps. Theroux knows more about the Phelps family than most people, because he did two BBC documentaries about them.

An eternity in hell is the fate of anyone who doesn’t get baptised into the WBC and travel the country waving hate-filled placards at political events, colleges and places associated – even in the most tortuously oblique way – with tolerance of homosexuality.

While I was with them, they had a regular local picket of a hardware store that sold Swedish vacuum cleaners. The Swedish government had imprisoned a pastor for homophobic preaching, and for the WBC that made the store a legitimate target for a ritualised Biblical smackdown. For the newcomer, these pickets were bizarre, not simply because of the venom of the signs, but also because they clashed with the banality of the family interaction. For the Phelpses, it was another day at the office – there was a water-cooler ambience of chit-chat. Meanwhile, everyone, even the youngest child, was carrying placards saying: “Thank God for 9/11″, “Your Pastor is a Whore” and “Fag Sweden”.

Fag Sweden and its Fag Vacuum Cleaners sold in the Fag Hardware Store. It totally makes sense if you look at it just the right way.

There is no question that their caravan of religious bigotry has made life miserable for thousands of people, many of them vulnerable mourners hoping to pay tribute to recently departed loved ones…

But the WBC also made life miserable for themselves and inflicted a distorted and poisonous view of the world on the youngest members of their own family, holding over their heads the threat that any deviation or failure of commitment (not going to a picket or socialising with outsiders) would result in a lifetime of banishment. Ex-members – of whom there are quite a few – can have no contact with the church.

Fred’s children, Theroux says, are nice people. The picketing is a performance as opposed to an expression of their character. But Fred was a different story.

Pastor Phelps was a different story: he was a hater by instinct.

I’m proud to say he took against me from the moment we met. I asked him how many children he had. He disliked this question – I think he found me trivial. The interview was cut short. Over subsequent days, we continued filming but I hardly saw him. I had the feeling he was hiding from me. We eventually crossed paths again, in church one Sunday after his sermon on the subject of America’s coming tribulations, in which he bellowed: “You’re going to eat your babies!” One-to-one, Gramps still had the remnants of a folksy, plainspoken charm, but underneath was a bitter contempt for humanity in general and me specifically. I asked him how he could possibly know that the WBC members were the only people bound for heaven. “I can’t talk to you – you’re just too dumb,” he said.

Poor guy – he probably would have been happier and more fulfilled as a hater on the Internet.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve been so grumpy today…

From @CuteOverloads

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Author alerted us to this fine rant by Harlan Ellison on the theme of, “Pay me, motherfuckers.”

Pull quote:

I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers? What, is Warner Brothers out with an eye patch and a tin cup in the street? Fuck no!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Scalzi to scabs:

But of course the other reason to do it this way is that I have a voice and an audience, a non-trivial portion of whom are writers and other creative people, and I think it’s useful for someone who’s had a reasonable amount of success in his chosen creative field to say this sort of stuff out loud. The sort of person who expects work for free, and/or preys on creative people by trying to convince them that working for free “is how it’s done” benefits when creative people are publicly silent about this sort of crap. So this is me saying to creators: Guys, in fact this is not how it’s done, and you deserve to be paid for your work. It’s also me saying to people who prey on creators: Fuck you. Pay me. Pay us.

4. Also, of course, some people think that way I said it wasn’t nice. Bah. It’s as nice as it should be. You want me to do work but you don’t want to pay me? What sort of response should you expect? A hug? Fuck you! Pay me!

Pay us.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

As G Felis reminded me on Facebook – Scalzi has already written about this. Beautifully.

But what about charity and/or friends and/or [insert what you think is a good reason not to take money here]? Well, what about them? I’ll note that when I approach friends about doing work for me, I typically pay them for their time. I mean, you don’t think Paul & Storm or Jonathan Coulton wrote those songs for me for free, did you? No, I paid them. Do you think Jeff Zugale did that awesome Unicorn Pegasus Kitten painting out of the kindness of his own heart, or the writers of Clash of the Geeks did it for nothing? No, everyone was paid. Why do I pay them? Because when I do work, I like to get paid, so I assume my friends who are creative people like to get paid too.

As for charity, well, if it’s the actual charity group, the organization probably has a budget, and my work falls under that. If I do the work pro bono, then I get a nifty tax deduction, which counts as compensation for my time, but a charity would be foolish to assume that I should expect that to be the entirety of my compensation. Alternately there are times when I’ll decide to do something for a charitable reason without getting paid for it, but that’s me deciding to do it, not the organization asking me to; typically the organization is surprised when I show up with money for them because they didn’t know it was coming.

As for any other reason you might think of, look: When I want to write for fun, then I do it. But when people come to me — especially people I don’t know — looking for writing, they’re asking for work. The work might have the potential to be fun, or interesting, or morally edifying or whatever, but it’s still work, and the bright line for work is this: You want work? You have to pay. Because it’s my skill and talent and expertise and time you are asking for, and they are all worth something.

Yeah.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I learned something today, or re-learned it. (I learned it once before, several years ago, but the learning faded, or the circumstances were different enough that I didn’t apply the learning.)

I learned that if someone asks you to write something for their website, for free, and you don’t really want to…don’t do it.

I didn’t really want to because I have other deadlines already, and because the request was oddly specific – it should have this quality, and this, and this. But it was for a branch of Open Democracy, and I like Open Democracy, so I asked if I could also post it here and was told yes, so I said ok.

But the specificity was a problem, and made it hard to write, so it took up space over several days because of the difficulty. But I wrote it and sent it – and the editors sent it back requesting lots of detailed changes, including ones that would make it fit better with their line (but not with anything I ever write about).

I’m writing about it here because it’s an issue of workers’ rights, of scabbing, of the rights of writers. It’s not just me. This is one of those things – like modeling, like journalism, like a lot of coveted jobs – where people get exploited because there are a lot of people who want to do that kind of work. I don’t think people who run websites should take advantage of that.

I think they asked for way too much for a piece they weren’t paying for. Maybe I’m spoiled; in all three of the columns I write I’m used to deciding for myself what I write about and how I write about it. But I’m not spoiled to think that if I’m going to write something to other people’s specifications, I should be paid for it.

The section of OD is called Transformation. It has a whiff of the spiritual and a whiff of the touchy-feely…so I’m not sure why they wanted me to write for them in the first place. Anyway, quite frankly I think they should transform their way of dealing with writers first of all.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)