I listened to "Science Friday" (USA-NPR) last friday; on the program was a neuroscientist talking about his research and a new book of his. There was a link to his article in the 2011 Ideas section of the Atlantic Monthly. I read the article, mainly about his 2011 book, and was impressed.

The article was about brain injuries and diseases that caused weird and sometimes anti-society behavior, and about how these people had no choice to act that way. It went on to describe modifications to our criminal justice system to get the non-dangerous people out of prison and teach them to modify their behavior and not recind. Also we should get the mentally ill out of prison and into a hospital setting to treat them. It these are dangerous to themselves and/or others, have them locked up in the hospital. If they never become "safe", let them stay locked up.

I just read, "Requiem for a Heart - Part 1 of 3" by Drea DeM; it's about a minister misunderstanding and prejudging his TG child and also about how this man is very compassionate to his church membership, but much harsher with his own children. I thought about commenting and mentioning this article, then decided to link to the article in a blog.

I think this might say something about us, but more so about legal guilt or innocence. I think this can also apply to sinning or not sinning, as in Drea's story.

I thought some might like this excerpt:

>> Who you even have the possibility to be starts at conception. If you think genes don’t affect how people behave, consider this fact: if you are a carrier of a particular set of genes, the probability that you will commit a violent crime is four times as high as it would be if you lacked those genes. You’re three times as likely to commit robbery, five times as likely to commit aggravated assault, eight times as likely to be arrested for murder, and 13 times as likely to be arrested for a sexual offense. The overwhelming majority of prisoners carry these genes; 98.1 percent of death-row inmates do. These statistics alone indicate that we cannot presume that everyone is coming to the table equally equipped in terms of drives and behaviors.

And this feeds into a larger lesson of biology: we are not the ones steering the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe. Who we are runs well below the surface of our conscious access, and the details reach back in time to before our birth, when the meeting of a sperm and an egg granted us certain attributes and not others. Who we can be starts with our molecular blueprints–a series of alien codes written in invisibly small strings of acids–well before we have anything to do with it. Each of us is, in part, a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history. By the way, as regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They are summarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male. <<