faithfulness and vasopressin receptors

Interesting. It is becoming clear that some issues of morality are not simple questions of good and bad.

Recent work on male voles (small, mouse-like rodents) has shown that faithfulness, at least in that species, is dependent upon the number of vasopressin receptors on the nerves in a part of the brain. Those voles with few receptors in that area will screw anything; those with a lot of vasopressin receptors there will mate with a single partner for life and never stray.

If that research is found to generalise to humans then those who are promiscuous can't be blamed anymore than a color blind person could be blamed for an inability to see colors. Conversely those who are proudly monogamous can have no moral high ground from which to cast aspersions on others; it would be like a person with synaesthesia blaming others for not seeing colors with sounds.

Read more in this short article in Nature magazine. And a more informative article in American Scientist magazine. Some pictures here.

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Here is a weird site devoted to the hormone oxytocin. The site promotes a chemically induced paradise where we are all loving and happy.

Such a future would be nice, except that I notice that when I'm happy and all my needs are satisfied I am not very productive. When I'm a little unbalanced I produce the things that I most admire -- things that frankly mystify me later when I puzzle over how I could ever create such things.

Neil Gaiman's journal

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

There is also a LiveJournal syndicated feed site at officialgaiman that mirrors all(?) those posts, enabling us to add them to our friends list if desired. Neat.

I found this through the comic_creators community where a link to Neil's recent speech at the Harvey Awards was posted in which he says at one point "My first piece of advice is this: Ignore all advice." Heheheh :) nice.

The link on LJ is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/officialgaiman/129435.html?nc=12 and the same thing is on Neil's own journal at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/06/what-i-said-at-harveys.asp

Bush seems to be losing it

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4636.shtml

...the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy continues

You all know about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series created by Douglas Adams and that it subsequently became a best-selling series of books, and then a TV series.

Now the BBC is producing the last 3 books for radio: Life, The Universe And Everything, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish and Mostly Harmless. If you go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/index_new.shtml you can read more and download audio and video.

By the way Douglas Adams will be playing the part of Agrajag... posthumously. He had planned this project before he died and already taped himself in the part.