Some human beings are capable of quite extraordinary feats. Here’s one such example: the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei. Me, I get winded running to the corner of the road. I also don’t carry a cord of death.

Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, quite rightly questions the assertions by Bruce Hood that ‘the battle by scientists against "irrational" beliefs such as creationism is ultimately futile’ because magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force. 

 

While it’s quite possible that the need for religion is hardwired, professor Hood’s experiments actually seem to be showing the effect of something else, namely sentiment, not religious belief. A classic case, as Ophelia points out, of "bait and switch". On this showing, the professor will have to do better than this if he is to demonstrate that he is doing good science rather than fatuous comparisons.. 

PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula, draws our attention to an animation of the inner workings of a cell. The animation is available here, together with some background. Since I am not conversant with molecular biology, I could have done with some more explanation of what I was seeing. But there are some arresting images, like the motor protein that looks like an alien tightrope walker pulling a huge balloon (apparently, a large bag of lipids).

Some awesome time lapse photography of the night sky here. I particularly like the fact that the sequence of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann has picked up a passing meteor on one of the frames. Great stuff!

 

(hat tip to Seed magazine)

I’m often struck by how evocative our sense of smell is. Today, for example, I was taking the dog out for his lunchtime walk through our local woods. While July this year was marked by a heatwave, this August has been one of the wettest on record. So the woods are pretty damp underfoot, and this has released various scents. At one point I smelt something that was a dead ringer for the smell of fresh plasticine – something I haven’t smelled for nigh on fifty years. But instantly, I was back there in my childhood, opening the box containing strips of plasticine in different colours and smelling that same smell.

 

And of course, the human sense of smell is nothing compared to that of a dog. There he was, running around, snuffling and smelling heaven knows what all around me. He was clearly experiencing a symphony of smells, while all I was getting was a one-note samba. Still, it was a very loud note – and it did enable me to remember and revisit a time in the long gone past, so I am not complaining.