The end of another week, my first full week in Chile. I am actually quite looking forward to this weekend, I am determined to try and forget about work related matters. The weeks leading up to leaving for Chile were pretty hectic and nothing really changed once I arrived, finishing off grant proposals and organising lectures. This week I finally submitted the NHMRC grant proposal to our research office, they will go through final checks and then submit it for us. There is a certain sense of relief that comes with having submitted it and knowing it is now out of my hands, all I can do is wait. The successful grants are announced mid October usually.
The quote above appeared in on my facebook newsfeed today and I thought it worth sharing. I was a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, and still am, even though he sadly lost his battle with oesophageal cancer late last year.   He was a person who was certainly was not afraid of controversy, he expressed his support for the Bush-Blair led war against Saddam Hussein and subsequently changed his political stance, he was a critic of Mother Theresa (and he did have a very good point) and more recently was known for his strong very public dislike of the supernatural nonsense that passes as organised religion. He was someone who helped me to begin to break free from the outdated belief system I was surrounded with as a child and young adult. I say begin because it is ongoing, it is extremely difficult to begin to think for oneself when it means going against something you were indoctrinated with as a child. It is quite simple to understand why this is the case, there is a clear evolutionary advantage to a brain that believes what it's parents tell it, especially when told the stakes are so high. Random mutations that produced brains that didn't believe would not have lasted very long on the Savannahs of East Africa 100,000 years ago, natural selection would have dealt its cruel hand. I have developed a keen interest in neuroscience and evolutionary biology in recent years and am amazed at what we are now in a much better position to explain with our increased understanding of the human brain and mind. My favourite example (courtesy of the neuroscientist Sam Harris I think) of evidence that our brains went through most of their evolutionary development 40-100,000 years ago is relatively straightforward. Why is it that for most of us city dwellers the sight of a spider sends us into a heightened state of anxiety (this is the case in countries where the spiders are not poisonous or the slightest bit dangerous) and yet we will jump in our cars everyday and quite happily cruise at 80 mph without an ounce of fear. It's obviously not an  analysis of the relative risk but something more primitive. Anyway,I could ramble on about this for much longer, but it's Friday afternoon and I want to go home.

Have a good weekend.
Andrew