From Nature:

Inside every ovary lurks a testicle just waiting to develop. So says a study in mice that further overturns traditional views of sexual development — and reveals that females must constantly suppress their masculine side.

Mathias Treier, a geneticist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and his colleagues deleted a gene called FOXL2 in sexually mature mouse ovaries. When they examined the ovaries three weeks later, they had switched sex and started pumping out the hormone testosterone. “The major finding is that females must actively suppress the male pathway inside the ovary,” Treier says. “Here is a gene that is not located on the sex chromosome that makes you stay female.”

More here.

Shadi Hamid in Democracy:

With Afghanistan, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sucking most of Washington’s limited attention, Egypt has faded into the background.

But Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world and still its pre-eminent cultural and intellectual center, is a bellwether for the region. American policy toward Cairo, its closest Arab ally and, since 1979, its second-largest recipient of foreign aid, has been in need of a facelift for some time. U.S.-Egypt relations have long been governed by an understanding that, in return for supporting American interests in the region, Washington would turn a blind eye to Egypt’s authoritarian practices. This bargain–interests in exchange for ideals–remained firm until the Bush Administration began to realize, in the aftermath of September 11, that the status quo was not as stable as originally thought. Support of Arab autocracies had boomeranged, producing a Middle East consumed by political violence and extremism. In her own Cairo speech, four years before Obama’s, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”

More here.

On June 12, 2009, I was among a hundred or so people standing outside a girls’ school in Mashhad, Iran, hugging the shade of a yellow brick wall. My friend N. and I were waiting to vote in the presidential election. It was Friday, the Iranian weekend. Stores were shuttered, intersections free of surging traffic. The mood was mellow—when a stooped old woman cut to the head of the line, several of us smiled. In the school parking lot, a Revolutionary Guard lounged on a chair, cradling his Kalashnikov. He waved us past garish instructional murals—the cornea of an eye; a red heart complete with ventricle—into a dim hallway strung with colored bulbs. Through an open door a radio blared; all morning the state network had broadcast patriotic marches and exhortations to vote. A slender man with gray hair and glasses held out a hand. I gave him my National ID Card. “Birth certificates only,” he said, returning it.

more from Gelareh Asayesh at the American Scholar here.

So Nicolas Sarkozy, responding to the minaret ban in Switzerland, admonishes us to practise our faiths with “humble discretion”. To be recommended humble discretion by President Sarkozy is like being counselled modesty in dress by Lady Gaga, or self-denial by a banker. But France’s mercurial president does have a point when he says, in his recent article in Le Monde, that it is not enough simply to condemn the Swiss referendum vote; we should try to understand what motivated so many Swiss, and what this tells us about Europe today. How is it possible that, in a country with just four minarets, 57% of those who voted, on a turnout of 53% – in other words, more than a quarter of the Swiss electorate – could vote for the constitution to be changed to include a blanket ban on the building of minarets? Were they responding to inflammatory posters showing minarets that looked like missiles all over the Swiss flag, together with the threatening figure of a woman in a niqab? Or to ludicrous arguments like that of the Swiss People’s party representative Oskar Freysinger, who said “the minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over”? By which logic, Spain and Britain are already Islamic countries. Was this an expression of rampant “Islamophobia”, finding different targets from country to country but basically the same poison under the skin? Or was it merely anxious people crying “this change in our societies has come so fast – tell us where it is all going to end”?

more from Timothy Garton Ash at The Guardian here.

Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight-
who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth,
ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
–Herman Melville; Moby Dick, Chapter 9

The Tao Te Ching —Verse 8

The highest good is like water
flowing down without intent
nourishing all things.

It’s content with the low places
people snub, so is like Tao.

In dwelling keep close to the ground.
In thinking keep it unadorned.
In conflict be just.
In governing beware of control.
In work follow your bliss.
In family life be completely there.

When you’re content to be
no more than yourself
without comparing or competing
you’ll have respect.

by Lao Tzu

from The Tao Te Ching

Richard Dawkins’s heart leaps up as high as any Romantic poet’s when he beholds a rainbow. But he has taken issue with Keats’s complaint that when scientists “unweave” a rainbow they spoil it. Mike King in Postsecularism ripostes that Dawkins is trying to “arrogate to science what is the proper domain of a quite different human impulse – the poetic and mystical”. The reason why the rainbow moves us is that it is “unexpected, vivid, and set, like music, against the counterpoint of landscape, whether natural or man-made in its specificity”. This domain of spirituality, to which belongs our sense of interconnectedness and the “grandeur of life” evoked by the rainbow, is, according to King, autonomous with regard to science. He accepts Stephen Jay Gould’s proposition that religion and science are “non-overlapping magisteria”, though he would add a third magisterium, that of the arts. He rejects “monoculture of the mind” as symptomatic of both religious fundamentalism and ultra-scientism.

more from Jonathan Benthall at the TLS here.

Juan Cole in Informed Comment:

The world has noted the irony that President Barack Obama is delivering his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize after launching an escalation of the Afghanistan war. Of course, the critique is a little misplaced, since the prize is for a specific policy success, not for being a pacifist.

Still, Mr. Obama was clearly given the prize to encourage him in the direction of peace. It is the tragedy of the sole superpower that it is unconstrained by peers and so can launch wars of choice and shatter international law at will. It can be counseled but not blocked. He was awarded this honor as a counsel.

So here are the things Obama can do to redeem his prize.

1. Get out of Iraq on schedule. We can't stop their low-intensity conflicts, and they are more likely to compromise with each other if we are not there.

2. Resist calls for Iran to be bombed. Such a raid would guarantee that Iran would start a crash program to develop a nuclear weapon, and there would be no way to stop it short of full-scale war.

More here.

Robert B. Talisse in This Side of the Pond (The Blog of Cambridge University Press):

Political commentary proceeds by means of debate rather than report today.

This is an understandable consequence of the new technology, which makes engagement easy. The heightened exposure to debate is a good thing, too. Open debate is democracy’s lifeblood. Yet popular political disagreement has taken on an odd hue. Rather than presenting facts and professing a view, commentators present views concerning the views of their opponents. Despite heated disagreements over Big Questions like healthcare, stem-cells, abortion, same-sex marriage, and global warming, we find a surprising consensus about the nature of political disagreement itself: All agree that, with respect to any Big Question, there is but one intelligent position, and all other positions are not merely wrong, but ignorant, stupid, naïve. A minute in the Public Affairs section of a bookstore confirms this: Conservatives should talk to liberals “only if they must” because liberalism is a “mental disorder.” Liberals dismiss their Conservative opponents, since they are “lying liars” who use their “noise machine” to promote irrationality.

Both views betray a commitment to the Simple Truth Thesis, the claim that Big Questions always admit of a simple, obvious, and easily-stated solution. The Simple Truth Thesis encourages us to hold that a given truth is so simple and so obvious that only the ignorant, wicked, or benighted could possibly deny it.

More here.

From Science:

We often think of memories like Polaroid snapshots, images frozen in time. But they're more like the fluid, melting pocket watches of Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory. Now scientists have developed a method that takes advantage of memory's malleability to block specific fear memories, which could someday lead to new therapies for anxiety disorders and phobias. Each time you recall the ice cream cake and clown from your fifth birthday party, the memory is subject to change. Information about the color of the clown's polka-dotted suit, for example, becomes “unfrozen” and could change from red to blue. This process is called reconsolidation, and scientists have blocked scary memories in rats–such as the association between a specific tone and a painful shock–during reconsolidation with drugs. Unfortunately, these drugs stop protein synthesis in the brain, which would lead to terrible side effects in people.

A different approach to diminishing fear is called extinction training. In experiments with rats, scientists keep playing the ominous tone without a shock, and over time, the animals stop getting scared by the tone. Therapists use a similar method called exposure therapy to help people overcome debilitating fears, such as claustrophobia. But these methods aren't as long-lasting as the dangerous drugs. Earlier this year, scientists reported a happy compromise that worked in rats. They timed extinction training to when the rats' brains were reconsolidating the fearful tone memory, erasing that memory in the process.

More here.

From Nature:

New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees. This contradicts a widely accepted theory of how speciation occurs: that species are continually changing to keep pace with their environment, and that new species emerge as these changes accrue. Known as the 'Red Queen' hypothesis, it is named after the character in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There who tells a surprised Alice: “Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

The Red Queen hypothesis rests on the idea that species must continuously evolve just to hang on to their ecological niche. That gradual evolution is driven by the constant genetic churn of sexual selection. A consequence of this is that all of the species in a particular family, or genus, gradually evolve to form new species at the same rate.

But Mark Pagel and his team at the University of Reading, UK, challenge this idea.

More here.

Fascinating article by 3QD friend Adam Waytz in Scientific American:

Of course, status differences are not simply relevant to economic standing, but they appear to be on our minds at all times. As renowned neuroscientist, Michael Gazzaniga, has noted, “When you get up in the morning, you do not think about triangles and squares and these similes that psychologists have been using for the past 100 years. You think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers.” Between CEO and employee, quarterback and wide receiver, husband and wife, status looms large. Recent work by social scientists has tackled the topic, elucidating behavioral differences between low-status and high-status individuals, and the methods by which those at the bottom of the totem pole are most successful at climbing to the top.

Psychologist PJ Henry at DePaul University recently published an article demonstrating that low-status individuals have higher tendencies toward violent behavior, explaining these differences in terms of low-status compensation theory.

More here.

Hello,

The voting round of our politics prize (details here) is over. A total of 286 votes were cast for the 46 nominees (click here for full list of nominees). Thanks to the nominators and the voters for participating.

Carla Goller has designed a “trophy” logo that our top twenty vote-getters may choose to display on their own blogs. So here they are, in descending order from the most voted-for:

1. MF Blog: Is the Obama administration still worth defending?
2. 3 Quarks Daily: Embers from my Neighbor’s House
3. Elizabitchez: Middle class values don't solve poverty
4. 3 Quarks Daily: America, the Cold War, and the Taliban
5. 3 Quarks Daily: Is Obama About To Become Just Another War Criminal?
6. News From the Zona: Republican Virtue and Equality
7. Justin E. H. Smith: On Criticizing Israel
8. 3 Quarks Daily: May our Gods be angry: Celestial politics in Bas Congo
9. Wisdom of the West: Blunderbuss
10. Once Upon A Time: Tribalism and the Destructive Politics of Demonization (I): The Largely Unrecognized Possibility for a New Coalition
11. Tom Paine's Ghost: Should scientists speak their minds?
12. Black Agenda Report: The Great Black Hajj of 2009
13. 3 Quarks Daily: Who ended the 6-month ceasefire in Israel/Palestine?
14. Chapati Mystery: Will Pakistan Become a Theocracy? III
15. Black Agenda Report: Liar, Liar!! Barack Obama's Secretary of War
16. Glenn Greenwald: Greg Craig and Obama's worsening civil liberties record
17. Lenin's Tomb: Rwanda, the RPF, and the myth of non-intervention
18. PH2.1: Zero Global Zero
19. The Cedar Lounge Revolution: The market and high incomes
20. I Hate What You Just Said: Thomas Paine, Teabagger

The editors of 3 Quarks Daily will now pick the top six entries from these, and after possibly adding up to three “wildcard” entries, will send that list of finalists to Tariq Ali on December 11. We will also post the list of finalists here on that date.

Good luck!

Abbas

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The Darwinian controversy continues, but some things should be clear. If Darwin gives comfort and even delight to atheists who claim him as a patron, they are mistaken in their choice of hero. He never even divested himself entirely of a certain qualified belief in a Master Designer, though he rejected the sweetest blandishments of natural theology. For all his brilliance, he was prone to confusion about the most serious matters, including the far-reaching ramifications of his own theory. It was a robust confusion, however, the conflict of an austere intellect, a sense of the marvelous, and a lacerated heart. Compassion guided him toward his theory, and an icy mind confirmed its truth. That truth remains dubious for many, whether simple religious believers trying to live righteous lives or scientists and philosophers viewing life through the lens of intelligent design. To try to settle the questions they raise is far beyond my powers, although the simple and righteous who maintain the literal truth of Genesis do not figure in a serious discussion. But in any case the wonder of Darwin endures, that of a man who searched the world’s pain and tried to comprehend it, who like a great novelist truly bore in his mind and heart as much earthly life as they could hold. There is rich matter for all who seek it in his life and works.

more from Algis Valiunas at The New Atlantis here.

Americans would like things to be better. According to public opinion surveys in recent years, everyone would like their child to have improved life chances at birth. They would prefer it if their wife or daughter had the same odds of surviving maternity as women in other advanced countries. They would appreciate full medical coverage at lower cost, longer life expectancy, better public services, and less crime. When told that these things are available in Austria, Scandinavia, or the Netherlands, but that they come with higher taxes and an “interventionary” state, many of those same Americans respond: “But that is socialism! We do not want the state interfering in our affairs. And above all, we do not wish to pay more taxes.” This curious cognitive dissonance is an old story. A century ago, the German sociologist Werner Sombart famously asked: Why is there no socialism in America? There are many answers to this question. Some have to do with the sheer size of the country: shared purposes are difficult to organize and sustain on an imperial scale. There are also, of course, cultural factors, including the distinctively American suspicion of central government.

more from Tony Judt at the NYRB here.

In 1987, the singer David Yow and the bassist David Sims were at loose ends after their band, Scratch Acid, broke up. Based in Austin, Scratch Acid was a volcanic, loopy, and virtuosic group led by one of the few singers who can convincingly claim Iggy Pop as an influence. Yow and Pop both use their bodies as much as their voices to transmit information, and that information always includes the message “Anything goes.” Pop was famous for cutting himself and smearing himself with peanut butter; Yow, at the one Scratch Acid show I saw, in the eighties, pulled what looked like peanut butter, or worse, out of his pants and threw it into the audience. (It was flour, water, and food coloring.) Yow is less herky-jerky than Pop—he throws his body around without any particular rhythmic predictability, seeming to engage with an invisible opponent. Sometimes they do a jig; other times he crouches as if grabbed from behind, or kicks as if shaking off the pincers of a persistent crab.

more from Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker here.

The Pillow

The pillow said:
at the end of the long day
only I know
the confident man’s confusion,
the nun’s desire,
the slight quiver in the tyrant’s eyelash,
the preacher’s obscenity,
the soul’s longing
for a warm body where flying sparks
become a glowing coal.
Only I know
the grandeur of unnoticed little things;
only I know the loser’s dignity,
the winner’s loneliness
and the stupid coldness one feels
when a wish has been granted.

by Mourid Barghouti

translation Radwa Ashour
from Midnight and Other Poems
Publisher: Arc Publications, Todmorden, Lancashire, 2009

From The Washington Post:

What an act of faith for novelist Mary Gordon to imagine that her new book, “Reading Jesus,” has a prayer. She admits upfront that she's not a Bible scholar; in fact, she had “never actually read the full Gospel” until she began this audacious plan to record and publish her reflections on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. She fears scriptural scholars will find her approach “naive to the point of irresponsibility,” and she knows that conservative evangelicals who regard the Gospels as the literal expression of God's truth will scoff at the musings of this damnably liberal, feminist intellectual. But off she goes anyhow, girded only by her considerable intelligence and disarming sincerity, determined to look squarely at the Gospels, how she reads them and how she maintains what she calls her “hopeful faith.” “I am trying for a tone that is personal and self-questioning,” she says, “a tone and diction that neither shouts nor threatens. . . . Above all, I have no interest in making a doctrinal point, no desire to convert.”

…

She's not always the devil's advocate, but such pugnacious statements electrify her book. After all, this isn't Christopher Hitchens burping up an objection that any first-year theology student could dispel without breaking a communion wafer. Although Gordon is a confirmed believer, she admits, “There are at least as many good reasons for being appalled by Jesus as there are for being drawn to him.” She wants to read the Gospels while acknowledging her own bafflement, her own sense of disappointment and betrayal. What of those “embarrassing,” “cringe-inducing” miracles that make Jesus sound like some TV charlatan? How can Christians tolerate Jesus's rejection of his family, his lack of respect for the dead? Or the moral despair inspired by his demand that his followers be perfect? And aren't Jesus's efforts to confound his listeners a sign that he's “adolescently churlish, at worst punitively sadistic”?

All those difficult challenges lead up to a brief but stinging examination of anti-Semitism in the Gospels. Laid out here in the starkest terms is the real torment any Christian must confront. How much misery must a text cause, she makes us wonder, before we no longer can consider it sacred? As a well-trained literary critic, Gordon is interested in how we read, how we form meaning from these stories “through a glass, darkly.” And she wittily points out that orthodoxy isn't the only colored lens between the text and us. Most adult Christians, she notes, come to the New Testament contaminated with all kinds of vague, wildly misleading impressions from childhood, when the words were “inscribed on the soft wax of our consciousness.” Reading from the King James Version about Jesus healing the multitude of “divers diseases,” I remember being surprised that so many ancient people had the bends.

Gordon admits that she's constantly tempted by the example of Thomas Jefferson, who took scissors to the New Testament and simply cut out those parts that weren't in harmony with his Enlightenment rationality. But she won't let herself stoop to such violent bowdlerizing. She's drawn to the ambiguities; she agonizes over the contradictions rather than ignoring them. “I am committed to the questions,” she says in closing, “unsusceptible to final answers.” If you're looking for revelation, look elsewhere, but if it's enlightenment you're after, Gordon is a thoughtful and stirring guide.

More here.

From Science:

Testosterone has a reputation for causing violent and antisocial behavior. But that's a bad rap, according to a new study. Women given the hormone acted more fairly in an economic game than did those given a placebo. Interestingly, however, women in the placebo group were more antisocial if they thought they had received testosterone, indicating that our negative attitudes toward the hormone have a powerful sway on behavior. Scientists led by Ernst Fehr, a professor of neuroeconomics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, suspected that testosterone is really about gaining and maintaining social status. And although status concerns lead to aggression, they theorized that testosterone does not necessarily make a person more self-seeking.

The team tested this idea by recruiting 121 women in their 20s to play a game that tests fairness. Two players, A and B, have to agree on the division of 10 money units, in this case Swiss francs. A proposes a division; B can only accept or reject. If B rejects the offer, neither gets any money. All the women were given a dose of either testosterone or a placebo under the tongue. Then 60 women designated as A played the game three times with three different partners, communicating through a computer. A “fair” offer would be a 50-50 split. So, according to common wisdom, A would make more unfair offers if she were high on testosterone. The status hypothesis predicts the opposite: An unfair offer is more likely to evoke a rejection, which is an affront to A's status. So A is more likely to make an offer that B will accept.

The status hypothesis won. The women given the testosterone made significantly higher offers on average, the group reports online today in Nature: 3.9 francs versus 3.4 francs for the placebo group. “Our interpretation of this finding is that testosterone renders concerns for social status more prominent,” says Fehr.

More here.