The world is back to normal

That's right, now that I've gotten that brief, aberrational Bush-praising out of my system, I can get back to my regularly schedule government-loathing. It seems that the Bush Administration, not content to spy on Americans using the NSA, has resorted to using the private-sector to violate our civil liberties. See this AP Report for details:

WASHINGTON - Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.

These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.

Yes, that sounds more like the government we all know and love.

Thanks to Ed Brayton for the heads up.

Hey NSA, read this one!

Anybody who reads this blog knows how much I love to rag on President Bush for being a dishonest, incompetent hack, and for making a general muck of nearly everything to which he puts his hand. Well folks, it's time to buy an industrial strength raincoat and a very large umbrella because the swine are taking to the sky tonight (years from now, I predict that people will remember June 17th, 2006 as The Day It Rained Pig Shit); that's right, I'm about to say something nice about "Dubya."

Not being used to this sort of thing, I'm naturally having a hard time getting the words out, so I'll just say it as plainly as I can: President Bush did something really, really great this week. (I wonder if this means I have to turn in my "Arch Liberal, Destroyer of Freedom and Enemy of Liberty" credentials. I hope not; I think the signed glossy photo of Alec Baldwin simultaneously burning an American Flag and eating pages of the Bible has a high potential value as a collector's item) The Christian Science Monitor has the exciting details:

With the stroke of a pen, President Bush has established the largest ocean wildlife reserve in the world, centered along a string of islands, reefs, and atolls that stretch 1,400 miles northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands.

Other reef systems, such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef, are larger. But only a third of that UN-designated World Heritage reef is protected, analysts say, leaving far more of it open to exploitation.

The move comes from an administration not known as the darling of the environmental and conservation crowd. But it's drawing kudos from a variety of marine-conservation groups. The region's relative isolation has allowed it to retain some of the most pristine coral reefs in the world. The president's proclamation Thursday, which designated the area as a national monument, immediately created a reserve that covers some 140,000 square miles, more territory than all of America's national parks combined.

"This is just amazing," says Ellen Athas, ecosystems-protection director for the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, who served on the president's Council on Environmental Quality under Bill Clinton. "This is an important first step in protecting some of the world's healthiest reefs for future generations."

Way to go, Mr. President! Now if we could only convince you to give a damn about anthropogenic climate change. . .

Get thee gone from the gene pool!*

From the Seattle Times:

A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lion in a Kiev, Ukraine, zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said Monday.

"The man shouted, 'God will save me, if he exists,' lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said. "A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."

The Kiev authorities have ruled this a suicide, but I think that there is more to the story. It seems obvious to me that this was no mere suicide, but a propaganda stunt concocted by the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. The poor guy was only a patsy.

*Alternately titled: "In which I show a stunningly offensive lack of sensitivity."

A melodramatic movie review

I lead an exceedingly meaningless and miserable life; so dreadful is it that I am desperately willing to pursue nearly any activity—no matter how inane and boorish it may be—in order to temporarily escape the wretched drudgery of my daily existence. I would like to think that this really isn’t the case, but reason tells me that it must be so, for I can conceive of no other explanation for why I decided to go see the remake of The Omen this past Tuesday night.

To call this movie bad is to do a grave injustice to every truly bad movie that has ever been made. No, this movie was not bad; it was shit, pure and simple. I have watched hundreds of movies in my short life—many of them tremendously horrible pieces of film—but, by any reasonable standard, The Omen has set a new gold standard for ineptitude in filmmaking. It professed to be a thrilling supernatural horror flick, but it was neither thrilling nor horrifying (well, that’s not actually true; I did find myself continuously horrified by the poor acting and wooden writing). Instead, it was scene after disjointed scene of shear boredom and snooze-worthiness.

Let’s get one thing straight: I did not expect this to be a high-quality film. I fully anticipated that it would be a bad movie, but I did expect—foolishly, in hindsight—that it would at least somewhat interesting and mildly frightening. Alas, this was tragically not the case; nothing could have prepared me for the heights of craptitude that The Omen scaled. I’ve felt my heart pound harder while looking at things floating in my toilet, than I did during this movie. Speaking of things seen in a toilet, did I mention that this movie is shit?

Every few minutes I would think, this is the part where things will get interesting! It wasn’t. After a few more minutes I would declare to myself, Aha! Now the movie’s really going to get scary! It didn’t. And finally, as the movie and my hopes for humanity were nearing their end, I whispered in my head, as if in a prayer, I know there’s going to be something really crazy that happens here at the end, something so wildly unexpected that it will make the torturous boredom of the past ninety minutes all worth it! There wasn’t. What a fool I am.

As I left the theater, a few burning questions formed in my mind:

*Why does the son of Satan seem incapable of making any facial expression more startling than a slightly peevish pout?

*Why—Dear God, why?—was Julia Stiles in this movie? She is neither a good actor, nor an attractive looking person. Poor actor + not hot = should not be in blockbuster Hollywood horror show.

*Why does every horror movie made in the past five years use the same old camera tricks? They’re not scary, only boringly predictable.

*Why has President Bush not banished every person involved in the making of this film to the Russian Gulag, where they will spend the rest of their natural lives engaged in back-breaking labor?

As preoccupied as I still am with finding answers to these questions, I find myself haunted by a disturbing fact: I paid hard-earned cash to see this movie and, therefore, I helped to make The Omen happen. This is my fault. Because of me, more films as shitty as this one—my heart quakes at the mere thought of it—will undoubtedly be made. Please pardon me while I go hang my head in shame.

Delayed Reaction

I took a walk to the beach today and, as I strolled, my mind--for reasons it certainly did not see fit to share with me--wandered back into the days of junior highschool. Specifically, I recalled I the stream of insults and cruel taunts that I so often found being flung my way. I suspect that these verbal assaults are something with which most anybody at that age has to contend, but I found them to be particularly vexing. The reason I was so frustrated was not that I was shocked or dismayed by the fact that I was being belittled--to the contrary, at the time, I believed that the cruelty of one’s friends was a given, that it was simply a part of the natural order of things, and I did my best to make peace with this reality--but instead, my aggravation stemmed from the fact that the barbs used against me were always random and nonsensical in nature.

Instead of picking on some quirk of my personality or highlighting a particularly ugly physical feature (and I surely had plenty of both!), my tormentors chose alternatively to make up some unattractive quality out of whole-cloth, assign it to me, and then mock me for it (An especially perplexing example of this occurred after I wore a recently-purchased “Cookie Monster” T-shirt to school. After being spotted in this apparently ridiculous attire, my “friends” permanently labeled me as “a wuss.” To this day, I cannot understand their logic. To me, Cookie Monster is the very embodiment of testosterone-driven machismo: he knows exactly what he wants and he’s willing to consume anything and everything that stands between him and his desire. Cookie Monster looks at rules, restraints, and societal norms and says, “To Hell with that! Me want Cookies!” How he could possibly be associated in any way with “wussiness” I simply cannot fathom).

To me, this seemed egregiously unjust; if I was to be mocked, I wanted to be mocked for something I deserved, damnit! My assailants’ weapons of choice also had the unfortunate side-effect--and this, I suppose, is the reason for which they were chosen--of catching me so off-guard that, in the moment, I was left completely incapable of mounting an effective counter-attack (and, in these kind of situations, being able to react and respond “in the moment” is all that really matters). So, instead of responding, I simply forced a weak, ineffectual smile and pretended that I wasn’t bothered by what they said.

If the fact that, ten years later, I still find my mind drawn back to their taunting is any evidence, it seems to me now that I really was bothered. Perturbed or not, as I walked today, I finally found my voice; As I replayed these conversations in my head I was at last able to fashion a few retorts so sharp and biting that, had I found myself with the opportunity to use them “in the moment” I would have cut my antagonists to bloody ribbons (metaphorically speaking, of course), while at the same time cementing my own status as demigod of coolness. No bully could possibly have stood in the wake of my calm, collected onslaught. Alas, I fear that my new-found parrying skills have come a decade too late, and since I no longer inhabit the halls of junior highschool, they will be of no use except as a means to revel in pubescent glories that might have been. I suppose that I should simply be glad that, as an adult living in a moderately more mature world, I no longer find having a steady supply of cruel come-backs at-the-ready to be a necessity. On the other hand, should I happen upon a person who, in his abounding foolishness, thinks me a bit of easy sport, a patsy upon which he can effortlessly heap brutally absurd daggers, he will find himself sorely mistaken; the gloves have come off and I’m ready to rumble.

A public service announcement

I just finished reading Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. This is a book that should be reading by, quite literally, everybody. Go to your local library; go to your local bookstore. Beg, borrower, or steal a copy. Do it now; don't wait. Once you're done reading it, loan it to a friend and tell everybody else you know to read it as well. We all really need a wake-up call. Maybe this could be the start of one.

More primate (not monkey, darnit!) business

It may not have trickled its way onto most people's radars, but this provocative story has my corner of the internet all a-buzz:

Humans, chimps may have bred after split

Boston scientists released a provocative report yesterday that challenges the timeline of human evolution and suggests that human ancestors bred with chimpanzee ancestors long after they had initially separated into two species.

The researchers, working at the Cambridge-based Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, used a wealth of newly available genetic data to estimate the time when the first human ancestors split from the chimpanzees. The team arrived at an answer that is at least 1 million years later than paleontologists had believed, based on fossils of early, humanlike creatures.

The lead scientist said that this jarring conflict with the fossil record, combined with a number of other strange genetic patterns the team uncovered, led him to a startling explanation: that human ancestors evolved apart from the chimpanzees for hundreds of thousands of years, and then started breeding with them again before a final break.

''Something very unusual happened," said David Reich, one of the report's authors and a geneticist at the Broad and Harvard Medical School.

The suggestion of interbreeding was met with skepticism by paleontologists, who said they had trouble imagining a successful breeding between early human ancestors, which walked upright, and the chimpanzee ancestors, which walked on all fours. But other scientists said the work is impressive and will probably force a reappraisal of the story of human origins. And one leading paleontologist said he welcomed the research as a sign that new genetic information will yield more clues to our deep history than once thought.

''I find this terrifically exciting and important work," said David Pilbeam, a Harvard paleontologist who was not part of the Broad team.

Aside from the fact that the headline is technically not true--neither humans nor chimpanzees as we know them were around at the time of this alleged breeding; it would be more accurate to say that members of the lineages that eventually led to modern humans and chimpanzees may have interbred after these lineages split (Alas, accuracy is once again sacrified in the name of sensationalism)--this is a fascinating story. Rather than offering my own under-informed opinions, let me point in the direction of two immensely more-qualified resources on this controversial topic: the fascinating commentary of science writer extraordinaire Carl Zimmer and the tempered criticisms of John Hawks, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Unless your curiosity drive is malfunctioning--in which case you should seriously consider taking it into the shop--and you are somehow already bored by this fascinating topic, check out the posts by these two writers; they're delicious brain-food.

Oh, and if any kind, Nature-subscribing Samaritan who stumbles onto this blog feels a pressing desire to email me (someotherguy86@gmail.com) a copy of the paper, I certainly would be obliged; I'd love to read this one.

Score another point for our knuckle-walking friends

From ABC:

Apes Shown to Be Able to Plan Ahead

WASHINGTON May 18, 2006 (AP)— They don't bring along an umbrella or sunglasses that might be needed later, but researchers say apes, like people, can plan ahead.

Both orangutans and bonobos were able to figure out which tool would work in an effort to retrieve grapes, and were able to remember to bring that tool along hours later, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

In a series of laboratory tests the apes were shown the tools and grapes, allowed to retrieve grapes, and then removed from the area where the treats were available.

They were allowed back from one to 14 hours later and most were able to bring along the correct tool to get the treats, report Nicholas J. Mulcahy and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The researchers said the finding suggests that planning ahead arose at least 14 million years ago, when the last common ancestor of bonobos, orangutans and humans lived.

While the findings do not necessarily imply that the apes are able to anticipate a future state of mind, they are nonetheless groundbreaking, Thomas Suddendorf of the University of Queensland in Australia said in a commentary.

"By identifying what capacities our closest living relatives share with us, we can get a glimpse at our evolutionary past," Suddendorf said.

Frankly, apes are simply so incredible that I constantly find myself baffled by the shear number of people who react with vehemence against the idea--well supported though it may be--that humanity is related to these stupendous creatures. I know I'm delighted by the mere thought of it!

On other hand, I'm wildly confused about why ABC chose to file this story under "Politics." Weirdoes.

Disenchanted with U.S. Government, young man threatens to join “lunatic fringe”

Carlsbad, CA. (Reuters) -
In this wealthy bayside community unknown for its seditious and rebellious spirit, one reporter has learned of a young man who is fed up with the status quo. Preferring to go by the pseudonym, S.O. Guy, this 23 year-old voter has decided, once and for all, that he and the Federal Government are--as he put it--”on the outs:”

“I know that in some relationships, both parties are able to work out their differences and come to some sort of workable agreement, but, in this case, I just don’t see how the Feds and I could work out even an amicable separation, much less a solution to keep us together.”

He takes a long drag on a foul-smelling cigarette and states, “I wouldn’t say that I hate the Bush Administration or Congress. No, I think it would be more accurate to say that I loathe them both with the fire of a thousand suns. For that reason, I think it would be best for both of us if we went our separate ways. I’d love to end our relationship with a nice ‘it’s me, not you,’ but c’mon, we all know that it’s really them.”

“It’s not that I like the idea of joining a third-party like the Libertarians or the Greens; I think that many of their policies are misguided and their leaders are just bat-shit crazy, but I’ve come to the point where policies that are only misguided and crazy seems like a distinctly positive step away from the misguided, crazy, deceptive and corrupt line that this present government is towing.”

When asked whether the thought of a Democratic take-over of Congress in the next round of elections might possibly assuage his angry attitude, Mr. Guy looked pensive for a moment and then replied, “I’ll admit that the thought does give me some pleasure. I’d weep with joy to see Bush and his congressional cronies forced to take some real, honest-to-goodness responsibility for the myriad of disasters they’ve created in the past few years; I’d love to see them all run out of Washington on their hands and knees, but let’s be honest, are the Democrats really much better? Sure, they’re all about criticizing the President now that it’s politically expedient to do so, but where were they when he had a ninety-percent approval rating, when we needed them most? Where were they when the USA PATRIOT Act was passed or when Bush got the go-ahead to attack Iraq? With an administration like ours, we need an opposition party that’s willing to stand up for it’s so-called convictions on a daily basis, not simply when the last year of each election cycle rolls around and it becomes convenient for them to exercise a little chutzpah. To me, the Democrats all seem like cowards, except for that Senator Feingold from Wisconsin--that guy has balls the size of cantaloupes.”

On the topic of his immediate plans, the young Californian said, “Well, I definitely see myself wallowing in apathy for some time, but after that, if things haven’t improved, I suppose I’ll register with the Libertarians. I’m not happy with the idea, but I’ve had just about as much government intrusion as I can stomach. Besides, if they succeed in getting marijuana legalized, that’ll make things interesting, right? If I get tired of the unfettered capitalistic ways of the Libertarians, I can always balance things out with the Greens and their watered-down socialism. The way I see things, I’ve got plenty of options, but unless I see major changes, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have any picture in my future. I’d rather be a part of the irrelevant, lunatic fringe than a part of the problem.”

When asked to comment on this development, President Bush was indignant: “I don’t see why he’s blaming me for any of this. I just do what Dick and Karl tell me to do.” After being pressed to elaborate on this comment, Bush, overcome by a strangely blank and absent look, mumbled something under his breath that sounded distinctly like “Don’t mess with Texas” and wandered off to find some brush to clear.

Random Tolkien Quotation

"Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped."

-Treebeard, The Two Towers

English Writing Assignment #4: Research Project

The Evolving Religious Views of Charles Darwin
At last! After countless months of constant effort and toil, I had finally succeeded in acquiring a human cloning machine and the necessary genetic information to run my experiment. The story of how I managed to get my hands on such marvelous materials is a fascinating tale; unfortunately, it is also a tale that is outside the scope of what it is to be written here. I will say only this: certain national and international authorities—if they were made aware of what I had done—would no doubt be very unhappy. At the moment, the thought of future trouble mattered little compared with what was now in my possession: a sample of Charles Darwin’s DNA and the means to bring him back to life!

As I gazed at my astounding piece of technology like a king surveying his kingdom, I felt a riotous laugh begin to emanate from the back of my throat. I shook it off; this was no time for “Mad Scientist” theatrics. I had to keep my mind focused on the task at hand. Wasting no more time, I began to operate my machine. As I worked, I contemplated exactly what it was that I wanted to discuss with Darwin. Already well-versed in his scientific theories, I had no desire or need to talk about biology. No, I was much more interested in hearing about the man’s religious opinions. Even now, more than 100 years after his death on April 19th, 1882 (Clark 196), the significance of Darwin’s ideas was still felt like an unending echo in the halls of philosophical thought. The man had irrevocably changed the world, and I was determined to learn more about the religious views that underlined his work. He had lived in a heavily Christian society—had he himself been a Christian? What were the factors and experiences that shaped his beliefs? These were the questions on which I hoped to shed some light.

A few hours later, my experiment was complete. Lying on a cot next to my machine was a perfect replica of Charles Darwin as he was before his death. I had only to flip one more switch and he would awaken; I proceeded with eagerness. Immediately, he took a long and startled breath. As he blinked his eyes, I saw in them a mysterious spark of consciousness that had been absent just a moment before. I led him over to a table and, after offering him a cup of tea, I began our dialogue:
David Carlson (DC): Mr. Darwin, first let me say that it is an honor and a pleasure to meet you. I have the utmost respect and admiration for your work. In all honesty, I consider you to be one of my personal heroes.

Charles Robert Darwin (CRD): I thank you for your kind words, although I fear that having met me, you will come away with an altogether less impressive feeling about me. Be that as it may, I am happy to talk with you. What is it that you wish to discuss?

DC: What I’m most interested in talking about today is religion. Specifically, I’m hoping that you can explain to me what kind of religious beliefs you held during your life and, if possible, what factors influenced these opinions.

CRD: I will be happy to oblige you, but I fear that this topic is complicated to such a degree that I may have some difficulty giving you a straightforward answer. Perhaps you could start with a more specific question?

DC: Of course. Why don’t we start at the beginning? Could you explain to me what kind of influences your family had on your early religious development?

CRD: Certainly. My family came from a Nonconformist background and attended a Unitarian chapel, but, due to the social pressures of the time, we were also active in the Church of England (“Darwin’s Views on Religion”).

DC: Could you elaborate more on Nonconformists and Unitarianism? I’m afraid I’m only vaguely familiar with these terms.

CRD: Nonconformism was a 19th century Protestant Christian movement which emphasized freedom of thought and dissent from the “doctrines or practices of the established Church of England” (Britannica 754). Unitarianism, a part of the greater Nonconformist movement, was (and is) a Protestant sect that placed heavy emphasis on the use of reason and on moral living. Famous for denying the Trinity, Unitarian theology held that God, by nature, was a single person and viewed Jesus as human, not divine (Britannica 137). Compared to the Anglican Church, Unitarianism was much less formal and dogmatic. My father often joked that Unitarianism was simply a “featherbed to catch a falling Christian” (Browne 12).

DC: Thank you for the clarification. Please continue.

CRD: After my mother died when I was eight (Clark 6), my sister, Caroline, took responsibility for my religious instruction. She made sure that I learned the Bible and, favoring Anglicanism over my mother’s Unitarian roots, took me to St. Chad’s, the Anglican Church at which my siblings and I had been baptized (Browne 21).

DC: It sounds like Caroline had a large impact on your early religious formation.
CRD: She did, indeed. When I was a bit older and away attending school in Edinburgh, she wrote to me, encouraging me to pursue my faith, specifically emphasizing the importance of regular Bible-reading and scriptural meditation (Burkhardt 36-39). Later, as I began to make my way in life, the beliefs that I held were , at root, the beliefs that had been imparted to me by Caroline (Adon 64).

DC: Earlier, you mentioned your formal education. How did your schooling affect your religious beliefs as a young man?

CRD: In 1828, at the behest of my father, I began to attend Cambridge University; the eventual goal was for me to become an ordained into the Church of England (Bowlby 94).

DC: You, an Anglican priest? I would never have guessed it!

CRD: I had some reservations about the idea, myself. I was not sure that I could honestly proclaim my belief in all the creeds of the Church of England (Bowlby 90), so “I read with care Pearson on the Creed and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted” (Darwin 57). Nevertheless, some misgivings about the Anglican Church remained with me, but, this was the path that my father wished me to tread, so, deciding to take the “line of least resistance” (Bowlby 94), I obeyed his wishes.

[Darwin then paused to take a sip of tea, and I feared that he had grown weary of this subject, but just as I prepared to ask him a new question, he continued with his explanation.]

CRD: While at Cambridge, I was exposed to the philosophical writings of William Paley. These writings—including Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology—seemed to be wonderful and impressive in their logical power and, at the time, I was fully persuaded by the arguments Paley presented (Darwin 59). The goal of Paley and other natural theologians was to “use the characteristics of the external world to establish the existence of a divine creator, and to provide proofs of his benevolence, wisdom and power” (Browne 52). As a believer and a budding scientist, I saw natural theology as firm foundation on which to base my future investigations and I was enamored with the idea that “the study of nature [was] a divine quest: a romantic exploration of forces, powers, laws and truths that appealed to [me] at the deepest imaginative level” (Browne 130).

DC: If I remember my history properly, you joined the crew of a ship called the Beagle in 1831 (Bowlby 125). Were you able to complete your ordination before you left to see and study the world?

CRD: Actually, no; despite my father’s wishes, I eventually decided against a career as a clergyman (Browne 321).

DC: Was this decision based upon a change in your religious beliefs?

CRD: No, my religious beliefs in those days had not been lost or altered to any large degree. I simply found that my interests were leading me in the direction of science. This was not a rejection of Christianity—I still held to the natural theological beliefs that I had found so persuasive during my time at Cambridge—but was simply a change in vocational goals (Browne 321-322).

DC: Despite your career change, it sounds to me like you were a very devout believer during this time. Did your experiences on the Beagle serve to change this?

CRD: Before I answer your question, let me clear up a misconception: while my views at the time were quite orthodox—so orthodox that my acceptance of the literal truth of the Bible became, at times, an amusement to many of my Beagle shipmates (Darwin 85)—it would not be right to say that “religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me” (Darwin 91). For the most part, I followed the beliefs that were common in the predominantly Christian society I lived in, but, to me, religion was more about the acceptance of intellectual truths than it was about devotion (Keynes 47). So, despite my orthodox beliefs, devout was never an accurate description of my religious state (Bowlby 228). Getting back to your question about my time on the Beagle, I would have to say that, while my beliefs at this time began to change and slacken somewhat, they were not in a state of complete wavering. I slowly came to believe that the Old and New Testaments could not be taken as literal, authoritative historical documents. During this period, it was also starting to become difficult for my developing scientific outlook to accept any idea without evidence. I began to question the existence of miracles and had difficulties with the idea that unexplainable phenomena should be accepted simply on authority. Despite all of these doubts and shifting views, I still attended church services regularly while on the Beagle and considered my faith to be genuine, if conflicted (Browne 324-326).

DC: I think I can see where this line of thought may be leading. Did you end up losing your faith? If so, when and how did it happen?

CRD: I did end up rejecting the Christianity, but how this came about is not an easy matter to explain. My religious faith was something that I was very reluctant to give up, but despite some effort on my part to maintain it, my beliefs gradually left me (Desmond 623). I have already told you of the niggling doubts I had developed about accepting divine revelation and miracles, but these uncertainties were only the beginning. In the years following my return to England, while I was beginning to fashion theories from the observations and evidence collected during my voyages, my newly forming views on the nature and origin of species—including humans—led me “along the path of disbelief” (Browne 397). Contrary to my earlier views, I was beginning to regard the marvelous adaptations found in nature—which Paley had attempted to use to prove the existence of a benevolent God—as the products of natural selection, not divine design (Darwin 87). My thinking was beginning to change radically; in one moment of mischievous materialistic musing, I even speculated that affection and belief in God were simply products of purely natural forces (Desmond 250). As my doubts about Christianity grew, “I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me [of the truth of Christianity]. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete (Darwin 86-87). I realize that this is rather long-winded and convoluted answer to your question, but such is often the case with the truth. If you really must have a more simple answer, I will say this: I finally gave up my belief in Christianity in 1849 because I could find no evidence to support it (Keynes 134).

DC: Would I be correct in concluding that this disbelief is the position on which you settled?

GRD: Yes, after I finally rejected Christianity, I never again wondered if this decision had been the correct one (Darwin 87). In all honesty, “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine” (Darwin 87). Although I have heard it said that, while on my deathbed, I repudiated my evolutionary ideas and converted back to Christianity, this is only a legend; there is no truth to it (Clark 198-199).

DC: I realize that this may be a difficult topic for conversation, but could you tell me what kind of impact the death of Annie, your daughter, in 1851 (Britannica 997-981) had on your religious views?

CRD: As I have told you, my faith, by all reasonable standards, had ended two year previously, but Annie’s death was a resounding and painful punctuation to that ending. After she died, I could no longer believe in any sort of sense of cosmic justice, and the emptiness of Christian belief became evident to me (Desmond 384-387). I began to view God—in whose existence I continued to believe—not as a being of endless benevolence, but as a “shadowy, inscrutable and ruthless figure” (Keynes 243).

DC: It seems to me that an experience as traumatic as the death of a young child could very well drive a person to atheism; after rejecting the existence of the Christian God, did you ever give up your belief in the existence of any sort of deity?

CRD: I can say that I have “never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God” (Desmond 636). There seem to be some good arguments to be made for the existence of God—not the least of which being the “extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving of this immense and wonderful universe [. . .] as the result of blind chance or necessity” (Darwin 92). But at the same time, the conclusion that the origin of the universe must have some sort of intelligent First Cause has been, at times, difficult for me to fully accept. While we seem naturally inclined to accept the First Cause argument, I feel that there could be good reasons why the intuitive expectations of our brains—which developed over time from a much more primitive state—should not necessarily be trusted as accurate guides in these matters (Darwin 92-94). For this reason, I fear that the question of God’s existence may remain permanently unanswered and that I “must be content to remain an Agnostic” (Darwin 93-94).

DC: Mr. Darwin, I want to thank you for your willingness to share your thoughts with me. I can see now why your views on religious matters have been referred to as “complex and ambiguous” (Miller, 287), but I feel that I now have a better understanding of your views and how they came to be what they are. Based upon what you have told me, it seems that your religious beliefs evolved quite a lot over the course of your life; equally, it appears that your scientific outlook played a large role in shaping the course of this evolution.

CRD: Yours seems to be a fair assessment of the matter. I did not go about my life’s work with the goal of discrediting religion, but in the end, I was forced to give up my Christian faith based upon my perceptions of the scientific evidence (Clark 57). I am truly glad if my explanations have been of some assistance to you; although, I must admit to being rather mystified at your interest in these matters, as I have always felt that my personal beliefs were “of no consequence to any one but myself” (Desmond 635).

DC: If I could just keep you for another moment, I would like to ask one final, self-indulgent question. Having returned from the grave, you must know the answer: Is there life after death?

CRD: Ah! If I could be granted any wish, it would be the chance to stay here and write a book answering that very question. What a commotion I could make! The controversy that Origin stirred would pale in comparison to what I could say now! Alas, there are some things that simply cannot be comprehended by living minds. Besides, my time has passed. For now at least, the great mysteries of life will have to remain mysterious.
After Darwin finished saying this, we both knew that our conversation—and his short return the land of the living—had come to an end. I led him back to his cot and, as I reversed the procedure, I saw again that fleeting glimmer of consciousness in his eyes and watched it disappear as I pulled the last switch. Could human consciousness be merely the natural product of an incredibly complex brain, or was there something far more incomprehensible at work? To this question I had no definite answers. I only knew that a great man was gone.

Works Cited

Adon, Cyril. Charles Darwin. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2002.

Bowlby, John. Charles Darwin: A New Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1990.

Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Burkhardt, Frederick and Sydney Smith, Eds. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

“Charles Darwin.” The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 2005 ed.

“Charles Darwin’s Views on Religion.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 16 Feb. 2006.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 12 April 2006.
.
Clark, Ronald W. The Survival of Charles Darwin. New York: Random House, 1984.

Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: 1809-1882. Ed. Nora Barlow.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958.

Desmond, Adrian and James Moore. Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist.
New York: Warner Books, 1991.

Keynes, Randal. Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution. New York: Riverhead
Books, 2001.

Miller, Kenneth R. Finding Darwin’s God: A
Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. New
York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.

“Nonconformist.” The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 2005 ed.

“Unitarianism.” The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 2005 ed.

A theoretical physics joke

Q: What does one Zombie M-Theorist say to the other Zombie M-Theorist?

A: "Branes! Must have Branes!"

....

Well I thought it was funny.

The GPL Manifesto

It rained again recently. As is often my habit after a hard shower, I took a walk to my favorite gastropod-observing slab of sidewalk. I was not disappointed; the snails were out in full force, frolicking in their wonderfully slimy fashion upon the wet concrete. My heart was contented by this happy sight.

A few hours later, I returned and my life changed irrevocably. Instead of a sea of snails moving lazily across the walkway and grass, I found a graveyard of broken shells and crushed bodies; every last snail was dead, killed by the brutish, bustling feet of negligent humans. My mind was overwhelmed by the shear destruction that had taken place in such a small amount of time.

Over the coming days, I struggled hard to discern the meaning of this molluskan holocaust. I searched my soul, desperately seeking some small sense of solace in the face of senseless tragedy. For a long while, no answers were forthcoming—I saw in this design only the hand of the pitilessly indifferent universe. No cosmic justice for my lost friends could be found. It was then that I realized my mistake. The universe was not responsible for this tragedy! No, this was the work of humans, specifically human feet. I knew then that if justice was what I sought, it would have to be justice of my own making. As I pondered this thought, I vision came to my mind and I knew what my next step would have to be.

This is what I know now: The time for pondering—of querying the universe in a futile attempt to the answer to the eternally unanswerable question, “Why?”—is over. There can be no answers except for what we make for ourselves, and I have chosen this tragedy to be the last, the one that will put a stop, once and for all, to the endless genocide of snails by careless human feet. To this end, I have formed The Gastropod Protection League (GPL). Our mission is captured by a simple motto: "We seek, by all means necessary, to remove the boot of indifference from the backs of the innocent."

GPL will have one main one goal, pursued using two distinct strategies. The goal is the protection of all Snail-kind by the banishment and destruction of all hard-soled foot attire. Our logical is simple: people step on snails because the sole that they wear protect them from feeling the true sensation of murder. Remove the shoe, and we will remove the destruction—for no one will again step on a snail once they have to feel slimy, crunching horror of their actions.

Our first strategy is that of political activism. We will lobby Congress, form Political Action Committees, organize protests, and call for work stoppages in the name of our cause. We will not stop until an Amendment is made to the United States' Constitution, banning all forms of footwear with rigid soles. Progress on this front will be slow and difficult. Of this I have no doubt. But if our cause is to have any lasting impact, we must have the power of legal force. In time, I am convinced that the American people, ignorant and selfish as they may often be, can be convinced of the wisdom of the changes we seek to implement.

Our second and most immediate strategy is one not of words, but of actions. We will form a paramilitary wing of GPL whose sole purpose will be the removal and destruction of as many pairs of shoes as possible. While our lobbyists and activists make changes to the law, this group will make changes on the ground. Let the purveyors of destruction know this: Your shoes are no longer safe. Your pumps, tennies, heels, high-tops, cross-trainers, wing-tips, flip-flops, and steel-toed boots have become our targets. When you wake up in the morning and find your Doc Marten's missing, you will know that we have been there. We will leave no calling-card save that of an empty-shoe rack, but this alone will be enough to get our message across.

This is my mission and these are my plans. I make no secrets of my tactics because I have justice on my side. To those reading this who envision this justice as I do, I say to you that, if you are willing to do all that is necessary to protect our shell-excreting friends, you will find a welcome place at my side in the Gastropod Protection League . Our goals will be achieved; nobody will stand in our way. I only pray that every action we take may be a small answer to the endless cries of "Why?" that, to this day, continue to emanate from the tiny lips of the dead and dying.

A "Devotional" from Edward O. Wilson

Periodically, my friend Shane posts quotes from various writers and thinkers as devotionals on his blog. In this spirit—by which I mean to say that I’m ripping off his idea—I present this “devotional” from the concluding paragraphs of Edward O. Wilson’s The Diversity of Life:

The evidence of swift environmental change calls for an ethic uncoupled from other systems of belief. Those committed by religion to believe that life was put on earth in one divine stroke will recognize that we are destroying the Creation, and those who perceive biodiversity to be the product of blind evolution will agree. Across the other great philosophical divide, it does not matter whether species have independent rights or, conversely, that moral reasoning is uniquely a human concern. Defenders of both premises seem destined to gravitate twoard the same position on conservation.

The stewardship of environment is a domain on the near side of metaphysics where all reflective persons can surely find common ground. For what, in the final analysis, is morality but the command of conscience seasoned by a rational examination of consequences? And what is a fundamental precept but one that serves all generations? An enduring environmental ethic will aim to preserve not only the health and freedom of our species, but access to the world in which the human spirt was born.

Intelligent Design and Christian Theology

Threads from Henry's Web has an interesting post on Intelligent Design and Christian Theology. Here's an excerpt:

In talking to Christian groups, I frequently find people who are shocked that I don’t support ID. “How can you not believe the universe is designed?” they ask. My answer is that I don’t accept ID precisely because I believe that the universe is designed. However it is disguised, however many chapters of mathematical formulas are provided, however many pious statements are made (whenever someone is not trying to pretend this is not theology), ID does not prove, and is not attempting to prove that the universe is designed. It is, in fact, attempting to prove that some elements are more designed than others, i.e. when we deal with specified complexity as a test of design, it means that we distinguish things that could happen randomly, and things that happen by design. Right or wrong, evangelical Christians are generally very uncomfortable with things that happen randomly. They are not looking for Paley’s watch on the seashore to prove that the watch is designed, but rather to prove that everything is designed.

That's a perspective I don't see too often. Very interesting.

No love for atheists

Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (3/20/2006) -- American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings.

Fascinating. Disgusting.

The best thing about California

When it rains, instead of having sidewalks and streets covered by worms—as is common in the midwestern states with which I am most familiar—we get sidewalks and streets covered by snails. And, as everybody knows (well, they should know anyway), snails kick ass. Most pro-Caifornia propaganda is centered upon the ocean, the weather, Hollywood, the economy, and the smug sense of self-superiority that people seem to get by calling themselves Californians. These things are all well and good, but I think more focus should be placed upon our wonderful and enormous populations of snails. You can keep the traffic, the pollution, the Hollywood politicos and the "Two-Buck Chuck," but give me the gastropods!

In praise of a master

I’m rather proud of myself at the moment. This week I accomplished a major undertaking: I finished reading The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by the late Stephen Jay Gould. I had been reading this 1300+ page tome for quite some time (I refuse to say precisely how long because I like to think of myself as being a fast reader, but the speed at which I read this book was anything but fast) and now I’m finally done. I’ll present a short summary for those people who, unlike me, are not interested enough—or not insane enough—to spend countless hours reading dense discussions of obscure evolutionary topics.

At its most basic, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is an epic summation of the ideas and concepts that Gould spent most of his well-celebrated career researching and discussing. In particular, he presents three central features of Darwinian theory that he feels are in need of revision:

1. The individual organism as the sole unit of natural selection—in other words, the idea that natural selection focuses only upon the differential reproductive success of individual organisms in shaping the history of evolutionary change. Gould contends that natural selection works at a hierarchy of levels—from the gene to the clade (groups of species)—and that the various levels of this hierarchy must all be recognized as “Darwinian individuals” (a concept that he differentiates from individual organisms). He especially focuses on natural selection working at the level of the species where he feels that differential levels of birth (speciation) and death (extinction) hold strong sway over long-term evolutionary trends. He bolsters this concept with evidence from the theory of punctuated equilibrium—a controversial and contentiously debated paleontological concept developed by Gould and Niles Eldridge in the 1970’s which states that, based upon the evidence of the fossil record, the fate of most lineages throughout geological time is primarily that of stasis (ie. little evolutionary change). It is their belief that most long-term evolutionary change takes place through comparatively quick (in geological terms) events of speciation. To Gould, since most species seem to primarily exhibit stasis throughout their “lifetimes” and speciation events are therefore responsible for most lasting evolutionary change, natural selection working at the species level becomes a topic of paramount importance.
2. The supremacy of natural selection over internal constraint. Gould presents a long-standing argument between two competing camps of evolutionary biology: the structuralists, those who believe that internal are responsible for most evolutionary change, and the functionalists (also known as adapationists) who believe that natural selection is the main force responsible for evolutionary change. It is Gould’s belief that the modern Darwinian consensus is too focused upon natural selection as an all-powerful force. He uses evidence collected from recent discoveries in the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology (lovingly known as “Evo-Devo”) to show that internal forces of development are important for both setting limits to evolutionary change and also for channeling change in particular directions. With this in mind, he cautions researchers against assuming a priori that all well-functioning organismal characteristics are adaptive features shaped soley by the power of natural selection.
3. The extrapolation of small changes over enormous amounts of time to explain all long-term trends. Gould states that it has been all too common for both biologists and geologists to succumb to the temptation to explain long-running trends simply using small, presently observable changes. It is Gould’s belief that not all trends of macroevolution (change above the level of the species) can be adequately explained simply by microevolutionary change (change at or below the level of the species) extrapolated over tens or hundreds of millions of years. He also states that the same principle applies to geologists who attempt to explain all geological trends using small, gradual changes. Gould particularly focuses on the extinction of the dinosaurs which was formerly thought to have happend gradually, but is now considered by most paleontologists to have happened relatively quickly due to the catastrophic impact of a giant meteor hitting the earth. Gould uses this highly relevant example—without the demise of the dinosaurs, mammals (including humans) would most likely never have come to dominate the world—as evidence that sometimes macroevolution and large-scale geological change are best explained by forces other than extrapolated short-term changes. He especially hightlights what sees as the potentially important roles that catastrophes and unpredicatable contingencies have had to play in shaping the history of life on earth.

I must admit that I, with my complete lack of formal evolutionary training, often got bogged down by and had a difficult time completely comprehending the minute details that Gould uses to support his arguments, but I do believe that I was able to grasp the major points he attempted to make. While I certainly think that the book was at times overly self-indulgent and could definitely have benefited by a less lenient editor, I certainly don’t begrudge Gould the opportunity to present us with his magnum opus just as he wants it. By all accounts, Gould had a exemplary career and if he, as the most public voice for evolutionary biology for the past thirty years, wants to be a little self-indulgent with his final work, who am I to gainsay him?

Time and again, I was amazed at Gould's ability to thoroughly examine the logic of an idea. He has the enviable ability to truly understand the implications of the concepts with which he works. He seems to be able to take an idea, examine it with a fine-toothed deductive comb, and then bring forth a treasure of interesting and important ramifications. Interestingly, this is something that he often praised Darwin for, and I can’t help but feel that he deserves no less praise. Apart from Gould’s ability to think, he is simply a brilliant writer. While much of the book is written in a fairly technical (and verbose!) style, every now and then one of his characteristic flourishes of beautifully striking prose shines through. The final pages, in which—after spending hundreds of pages explaining why he feels that some of Darwin’s ideas are fundamentally deficient—he rejoices that the field of evolutionary biology has as its primary (or at least most important) founder a man as fascinating in character and powerful in mind as Charles Darwin, are especially evocative.

Its astounding how much you can learn about the inner workings of a person’s mind after reading 1300 pages of their thoughts and ideas. After I finished the book, I was struck by a sense of sadness and finality. Because The Structure of Evolutionary Theory was Stephen Jay Gould’s last major work before his death, when I reached the end, I felt almost as if I was saying goodbye to a friend. But what a way to go! Goodbye, Dr. Gould. Your writing has has been (and continues to be) an inspiration to millions and I fear that we will not see your equal for many years to come. You are missed.

English writing assignment #3: Essay response

This one's long and kind of boring and really only relevant to those who have read the essays I'm responding to, but I'm posting it anyway:

Choices of the Living and the Dead

In “The Handicapped” by Randolph Bourne and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up” we are presented with two very different attitudes towards life. While both authors have faced difficulties of varying kinds and degree, the experiences they have had are quite disparate, and the philosophies formed by their life-histories could hardly be farther apart. Bourne, faced with the challenge of being physically impaired, but mentally fit, has embraced a compassionate, life-affirming outlook, while Fitzgerald, beset by a middle-aged disillusionment towards his life, has cast off the shackles of hope and kindness in favor of a philosophy of misanthropic selfishness and despondency. This essay will explore the wide gap between these two perspectives on life and the circumstances that helped create them.

Both Bourne and Fitzgerald have fashioned their modi operandi for living out of their differing life experiences. For Bourne, the foundation of his attitudes is the constant presence of his physical handicap and the hardships that have resulted from it. From forming relationships to merely surviving, nothing has come easily or simply for Bourne. He illustrates the difficulties he faces with an apt metaphor: “The doors of the deformed man are always locked, and the key is on the outside. He may have treasures of charm inside, but they will never be revealed unless the person outside cooperates with him in unlocking the door” (59). Bourne constantly has to contend with the fact that his physical handicap is severe enough to make life difficult, but not severe enough to completely incapacitate him and keep him from having aspirations and ambitions that are nearly impossible for him to fulfill. To continue Bourne’s metaphor, his mind is trapped and struggling to free itself from behind the locked door of his physical reality. These struggles form the basis for the humanistic attitude that he presents later in his essay.

Fitzgerald, on the other hand, is not faced with the same challenges that afflict Bourne. A successful writer and prominent literary figure, he is blessed with a level of prosperity that would be foreign to Bourne. In contrast to Bourne, Fitzgerald does not seem to have much difficulty in making ends meet or achieving his goals. He observes, “Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered by both” (139). For him, life was not filled with the constant rejection and disappointment that Bourne knew. Fitzgerald states that he “saw the improbable, the implausible, often the ‘impossible’ come true” (139). Yet, despite his achievements, Fitzgerald seems fundamentally dissatisfied with his life and one cannot help but wonder if his mental state is approaching that of serious depression. It is this mental affliction, rather than his achievements, that seems to be the driving force behind Fitzgerald’s views on life.

Due at least in part to their dissimilar backgrounds, Bourne and Fitzgerald form very different philosophies towards life that can be seen in the rules for living that they present in their essays. For Bourne, one of these rules is the importance of compassion and empathy towards his fellow humans. He knows what it is like to be discounted, rejected and cast out by his peers, and this awareness has provoked a sense of empathy towards those that, like him, are struggling. He explains, “We are perhaps too prone to get our ideas and standards of worth from the successful, without reflecting that the interpretations of life which patriotic legend, copybook philosophy, and the sayings of the wealthy give us are pitifully inadequate for those who fall behind in the race” (63). Here, Bourne is expressing his discomfort with the common social wisdom that we should unquestioningly judge a person by the level of success he has reached. Furthermore, he states that he would much prefer to try to understand rather than judge a person that society has branded a failure: “Instantly I want to know why he has not succeeded, and what have been the forces that have been working against him. He is the truly interesting person, and yet how little our eager-pressing, on-rushing world cares about such aspects of life and how hideously though unconsciously cruel and heartless it usually is” (63). These comments are excellent examples of the compassion that Bourne holds for the underprivileged, but his compassion extends further. He seeks to have a gracious understanding of humanity as a whole—not simply its weakest members—and to see our species engaged together in cooperation. He declares, “Really, to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development—to call for and expect much from men and women, and not to be disappointed and embittered if they fall short—to try to do good with people rather than to them—this is my religion on its human side” (65). Put simply, his desire is to comprehend our common nature as human beings and, with this knowledge as a starting point, to pursue unified collaboration instead of arrogant condemnation. Bourne has a generous attitude toward humanity, indeed!

Fitzgerald, by contrast, cares nothing for compassion or empathy. He has excised all kindness and generosity from his being and replaced them with an all-encompassing selfishness. He states baldly, “I would cease any attempts to be a person—to be kind, just or generous[. . .]There was to be no more giving of myself—all giving was to be outlawed henceforth under a new name, and that name was Waste” (149-150). Fitzgerald’s attitude toward humanity is pitiless indifference and he gives a hypothetical example that reveals the disturbing extent of this apathy: “And if you were dying of starvation outside my window, I would go out quickly and give you the smile and the voice (if no longer the hand) and stick around till somebody raised a nickel to phone for the ambulance, that is if I thought there would be any copy in it for me” (151). In Fitzgerald’s admission that he would not lift a hand to help a fellow human in need—the voice and smile he refers to are gestures more of self-satisfied mockery than of caring—and would only bother coming to observe the dying person if he thought that the scene would provide useful fodder for his writing, he demonstrates that his attitudes on charity and kindness towards his fellow human being are antithetical to Bourne’s.

In addition to his desire to have a more empathic attitude toward humanity, Bourne believes in the need for social progress and justice. He holds with religious fervor that the prime directive for our species should be a constant striving to improve the lot of every individual. He boldly proclaims, “For this is the faith that I believe we need today, all of us—a truly religious belief in human progress, a thorough social consciousness, an eager delight in every sign of promise of social improvement, and best of all, a new spirit of courage that will dare” (64). Bourne idealistically states that social progress is the “first right and permanent interest for every thinking and truehearted man or woman” (64). In saying this, he makes clear that progress is not just a good idea, but that it is a (possibly the) goal that we should all be working to achieve. In effect, Bourne is issuing a “call to arms” in which he invites every member of the human species to participate in his grand pursuit of social amelioration.

Based upon his earlier show of apathy, it comes as no surprise that Fitzgerald lends no support to the idea that all people should work for the improvement of society. In a poignant and revealing passage he repudiates the need for social progress:
Let the good people function as such—let the overworked doctors die in harness, with one week’s ‘vacation’ a year that they can devote to straightening out their family affairs, and let the underworked doctors scramble for cases at one dollar a throw; let the soldiers be killed and enter immediately into the Valhalla of their profession. That is their contract with the gods. A writer need have no such ideals unless he makes them for himself, and this one has quit (151).

Fitzgerald sees himself simply as a writer, not a social activist, and he finds absolutely no reason to trouble himself over the suffering of others. As he readily admits, he has no use for the ideals that lead people like Bourne to pursue changes for the betterment of society. Instead, as Fitzgerald demonstrates in the above passage, he is content to allow those around him to live or die—and for him, life seems to resemble a Hobbesian existence that is “nasty, brutish and short”—as is their fate.

Another aspect of Bourne’s approach to life is a hope that, despite the hardships he has endured, his existence can have some sense of meaning. He is cautiously optimistic that his fate entails more than just pain and suffering and that his limited capability will not keep him from accomplishing something of value, especially in the realm of the arts. Bourne’s hope is palpable to the reader when he compares his abilities to that of a stronger, more attractive person and finds no reason for sorrow: “I at least can occupy the far richer kingdom of mental effort and artistic appreciation[. . .]Indeed, as one gets older, the fact of one’s disabilities fades dimmer and dimmer away from consciousness” (67). Here, as he begins to fashion a niche in which he may find success, it is clear that Bourne’s picture of reality is beginning to be shaped less by his debilities and more by abilities. As he concludes his essay, the contrast in tone from his opening statements is remarkable. A recognition of his limitations is still present, but genuine confidence and belief in his abilities are what shine through as he inspiringly pronounces, “But if I am not out of the wilderness, at least I think I see the way to happiness. With health and a modicum of achievement, I shall not see my lot as unenviable” (70). These are not the words of a person who has been defeated by the challenges of existence; on the contrary, Bourne has used his hardships to make himself a better man.

In light of Bourne’s belief in his own future, Fitzgerald’s pessimism is all the more striking. He seems to have taken Dante’s advice to “abandon all hope” and embraced his own misery. Fitzgerald’s rejection of happiness as a viable state of existence is absolute: “This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is qualified unhappiness. I think also that in an adult the desire to be finer in grain than you are, ‘a constant striving’ (as those people say who gain their bread by saying it) only adds to this unhappiness in the end—the end that comes to our youth and hope” (151). The implications of Fitzgerald’s thinking are clear: the end of hope and happiness is as inevitable as the end of youth, and any attempts to fight the onset of despair only increase a person’s grief, so why fight at all? If Fitzgerald truly believes this—and he gives every indication that he does—it is no wonder that he has chosen to reject so many of the things that give meaning to the lives of people like Bourne. What solace is hope when one believes that all hope is false? Fitzgerald’s renunciation of happiness is most evident in his final, disquietingly tragic statement: “I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand” (152). If Bourne has made himself a better person, Fitzgerald has, at least in a metaphorical sense, shed his humanity.

In their respective essays, Randolph Bourne and F. Scott Fitzgerald present drastically differing views of life. So different are these two that the only thing they seem to have in common is the trivial fact that they both have rules for living. Bourne has chosen to walk a path of compassion, idealist social development and hope. Painting a stark contrast to this view, Fitzgerald has chosen to espouse a philosophy of self-centered apathy and remediless despair. Both men have undoubtedly had their views shaped by their experiences, and whether these experiences or something else altogether are the final causes for the theories on living they uphold, the distinction between the two is clear. Bourne has joined the ranks of those who celebrate the joys of living while Fitzgerald has already placed one foot out the door into the bleak night of inevitable death.

Donald Rumsfeld gets owned...

...by radical Islamic cleric Moqtada Sadr!?

Mr Sadr also criticised US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who had said last week that Iraqi troops, not US forces, would intervene if civil war broke out in Iraq.

"May God damn you," Mr Sadr said of Mr Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere."

In celebration of introversion

It's high time that we introverts start getting the respect that's rightly due to us. Now is the time for the quiet minority to rise up and cast off the shackles placed upon us by a society that neither understands nor appreciates our mute, pensive power! The future is ours!

In this spirit, I am linking to an insightful and hilarious article called Caring for Your Introvert by Jonathan Rauch. Here's a teaser:

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."

It's well-worth reading, but please....do it quietly.

I am now an advocate of Intelligent Design

From a letter to the Black Hills Pioneer:

Teach intelligent design

The atheists believe in unintelligent design. Darwin said, we came from a monkey or an ape. Some God believing people would like to have intelligent design taught in schools as well as evolution. If people came from an ape, how come they still don't come from an ape? Why did the ape stop evolving into people? The DNA from an ape is not the same as people.
I think they should teach Almighty God design as well as evolution. Maybe Darwin might be wrong and a wise and wonderful God did create all things. If a man had one eye and one half of a brain, he could see that we were wonderfully made. We are also made to be co-creators with God. Everything is made to reproduce (that didn't just happen).
The elephant didn't crawl out of the ocean or come from a bird or a fish. I am sure a horse didn't come from a monkey.
It takes more faith to believe in evolution then it does to believe that God created all things. I don't know why some people do not want intelligent design taught in our schools.
Some people want to take Christ out of Christmas and God out of government. If the atheist does not want to believe in God (I could care less). But why do they want to push their Godlessness on the American people who do believe in God?
Swan "The Swede" Loften,
Galena

How can any evolutionist can stand in the face of that logical tour de force? Mea culpa, Mr. Loften. Your superior rhetoric and vast empirical knowledge have swayed me.


(In case anybody's wondering, yes, I'm feeling very snarky at the moment. I had one of those days. Can't a guy use a little sarcasm to blow off some steam?)

A revealing juxtaposition

President Bush speaking on September 1st about Hurrican Katrina: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield briefing the President (among others) on August 28: "I don't think anyone can tell you with confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very great concern."

(from CNN)

I smell burning denim.

Primates are cool, mmmkay?

From the NZ Herald:

Remarkable video clips of wild chimpanzees using "tool kits" to dig out termites from their underground nest have been recorded by scientists who believe it is the most sophisticated culture yet observed in great apes other than man.

Although chimps are known to use long twigs as simple tools to fish for termites - a nutritious delicacy - this is the first time that a far more complex behaviour involving two different kinds of tools has been observed in the wild.

Crickette Sanz of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and David Morgan of Cambridge University make the video with the help of hidden cameras trained on termite mounds in the tropical forests of the Congo that chimps were known to frequent.

They filmed the chimps using a thick stick, which they had previously prepared by stripping it of its leaves, to push a long tunnel about a foot deep into the heart of the underground termite nest. Once they had removed the stick, they pushed a far more delicate twig that had been deliberately frayed at one end down the tunnel and into the heart of the nest, said Professor Andrew Whiten of Edinburgh University.

Sweet. I've been flirting with the idea of pursuing a career in Primatology for a few months now. Stuff like this really makes me want to go for it (once I get the whole education thing going again, of course).

And one more important point from the story:

However, the primatologists warned that the study of primate culture is getting more difficult because all species of great ape are threatened with extinction.

"On a daily basis we're losing the opportunity to document culture in wild gorillas because these populations are disappearing faster than we can actually study them," she said.

Our closest cousins (especially Mountain Gorillas, Orangutuans and Bonobos) are in serious danger of extinction due to a variety of factors including loss of habitat due to deforestation and the bushmeat trade. This is a real tragedy that I hope can be averted, but I'm fairly pessimistic about our chances. If I could devote my life and career to saving as many of these incredible animals as possible (ala Jane Goodall), I would consider it time well spent.

English Writing Assignment #2: Narrative

Little Shop Class of Horrors

As a pre-pubescent twelve-year-old, I loathed and feared the idea of vulnerability. Who could blame me? The harsh environment of most junior high schools, where the weak are preyed upon by the strong and the smallest sign of frailty can result in an atomic wedgie or worse, is enough to give even the most ardent Social Darwinist pause. The school I attended, Dassel-Cokato Middle School, was situated in the country between two very small towns. Some people might think that my school, with its rustic atmosphere, would have a more generous, kind-spirited attitude than its suburban counterparts. They would be wrong. Surrounded on all sides by miles of corn and bean fields, many of my classmates seemed to turn to cruelty and viciousness simply out of shear boredom. Whatever the reason, life at my junior high school was like life at most junior high schools; in other words, it was terrible. I was generally a good student and I had some friends, but I was nowhere near the top of the social pecking order and simply maintaining my low position required constant effort.

In the midst of this struggle, I was thrust into a daunting new environment that threatened to shake the core of my already anemic self-confidence: shop class. In order to churn out well-rounded individuals, my school required that each student take two quarters of the “Industrial Arts.” Most boys my age seemed delighted at this prospect, but for me it was a nightmare. In my mind, the ability to work with my hands was a skill that I was content to leave in a state of permanent atrophy and I wanted to learn to use power tools about as much as I wanted to go to prison. But I was not given a choice, so, on one brisk winter morning, I found myself attending the first day of shop class.

The teacher, Mr. Osborne, did nothing to inspire my confidence. He was tall and skinny with a flushed face and a shock of wispy white hair on the top of his head. When his mouth closed, his lips formed a condescending sneer that seemed to say, “I’m helping you because I’m being paid, not because I care about you.” It was this ugly mouth that I was watching on the first day of class. Mr. Osborne had gathered us in a rough semi-circle around one of the jigsaws and was explaining the safety rules for using the machine.

He pointed to the thin, vertically-aligned blade of the saw and stated, “This is not a toy and you will not treat it like one. The blade is designed to cut through wood, but it can just as easily cut through skin and bone if you’re not careful.”

He held out his thumb, directed our eyes to the top joint and said, “Always keep at least an inch between your fingers and the blade. In all my years of teaching, only one student has had an accident with a saw. He was messing around, not paying attention to what he was doing and you know what happened? He cut the tip of his index finger off. He had to have it sewed back on. There was blood everywhere.”

During this lecture, I happened to be standing next to a girl named Rose. She had moved to my school the previous fall and I did not know her well, but she was tall, husky and had a reputation for being a bit of a bully. While Mr. Osborne was telling us his “Parable of the Inattentive Student,” I noticed a change come over her. I saw all of the color drain out of her face. I do not know exactly what physiological responses cause a person’s skin to become suddenly and immediately pale, but it looked as if the blood in her veins had been replaced by liquefied chalk. To me, it appeared that death was near. Then, as if to confirm my suspicion, her eyeballs rolled into the back of her head and she staggered backward against the table she had been leaning against. Then, without warning, her muscles shut down and she crumpled onto the floor like a pair of discarded pants. I watched this astounding event unfold from a distance of one foot.

Mr. Osborne stopped his speech and went to Rose. He seemed more annoyed than worried, but he called the school nurse who quickly came and helped Rose out of the class. After they had left the room, Mr. Osborne picked up with his lecture, but his audience had become distracted. While the air around me hummed with a mixture of shocked murmurs and amused snickering, I stood in silence. In my head, I watched Rose collapse in a repeating slow-motion replay that paused each time to focus on the ghostly blank stare of her sightless eyes. As Mr. Osborne continued to explain to us the terrible things that would happen if we misused his machinery, I was overwhelmed by nausea. My eyesight blurred and I began to see a company of tiny black ants dance along the edges of my vision. All at once, my pores exploded with sweat, but I felt like the room temperature had dropped ten degrees. I cannot personally attest to what transpired next, but afterwards I was informed that my skin took on that familiar white-death hue and I proceeded to perform a nosedive onto the polished granite floor. Unlike Rose, who had the grace to simply collapse in a heap, I toppled head-first, my body as straight and inflexible as a two-by-four.

Ten seconds later, I regained consciousness and found myself lying on the floor. I had no idea what had happened, but I could sense that things were amiss. The world was spinning and I could not see clearly, but I noticed that my glasses were mysteriously bent and lying next to me, instead of on my face. Mr. Osborne called the nurse and, for the second time in less than ten minutes, she came to escort a sick student out of shop class. Even with her assistance, I barely managed to make it through the door before I collapsed against the wall and had to bury my head as far into my knees as it would go. Eventually, the gyrating of the world slowed enough to allow me to get back on my feet and, small step by small step, we continued the long trek to the nurse’s office.

I was placed down on a cot next to Rose who, amused at our combined infirmity, proceeded to make me feel even more miserable than I already did. She looked at me and said, “Well, I guess we both just have weak stomachs. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Her words were meant to comfort me, but they had the opposite effect she intended and I resented her for it. I did not have a weak stomach! Maybe her stomach was unsound (and as far as I was concerned there was something wrong with that!), but mine most certainly was not. I was just as strong and normal as anybody else and I certainly had not been bothered by the teacher’s graphic descriptions. I was a boy and that meant that I enjoyed discussing gruesome topics like losing digits and bleeding profusely, right? The real reason I had passed out was that I had seen Rose do it first and my body had, for reasons unknown, been forced to mimic her. In other words, all of this was her fault!

These were the lies that I told myself in an attempt to reestablish a sense of invulnerability, if only in my own eyes. Certainly I would be teased about blacking out (“Hey kid, did you have a nice trip? How was your fall?”), but if I could convince myself that personal weakness had not been the true cause, maybe it would not hurt as badly. Armed with this strategy, I went back to shop class the next day and managed to survive. I almost always wished that I could be anywhere else, but I did my time without further incident or embarrassment.

Looking back on that day with a decade of hindsight and a bit more maturity, I can see the dishonesty in the things I told myself while in the nurse’s office and I realize now that Rose was right about me. I do have a weak stomach. I have not passed out since that day but I’ve come uncomfortably close quite a few times. Even today, a particularly grisly discussion may occasionally send me searching for a place to sit down and hug my knees before waves of vertigo sweep me under. I have learned to live with these infrequent, but unpleasant experiences. I also know that Rose was right about something else; we are all weak and vulnerable at times and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Self-hating Jews Promote World Peace

This is too funny:

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!
“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

As the old cliche states, this idea is "so crazy it just might work."
Here's hoping.

English class writing, #1

I'm currently taking an English class at a local community college? Why? Because, UCSD told me that I needed another college-level english writing classes to be eligible for transfer, that's why. My first assignment was to write a self-portrait from the neck up. I post it here, not because I think it was particularly stellar or terribly relevant to this blog, but simply because it's something that I wrote:

What’s in a name? If William Shakespeare is to be believed, a name does not say much about its owner. A face, on the other hand, says quite a lot. A person’s face is the first feature to be seen and the last to be forgotten. It is the most enduring physical impression that you or I have to offer. I hope - and it will soon be clear if my optimism is justified - that mine puts me in a comfortable position somewhere between Quasimodo and Johnny Depp.

Lounging on my head is a mat of finely textured brown hair. The sides and back are shaved short, not short enough to garner me any military discounts, but close. The top, with the exception of an Alfalfa-like patch near the rear that refuses to bend to the forces of gravity or human will, is pushed down and forward, while the front is spiked up like a fortress wall guarding my scalp against the onslaught of an army of combs. Highlighted by a pale complexion and under close scrutiny, my forehead is a lined, scarred and pockmarked testament to historic battles instigated by the forces of chicken pox and acne against my poor, defenseless epidermis. In addition, three horizontal fold lines have formed across my temple, possibly indicating that I spend too much time alternating between astonished excitement and furrowed disapproval.

My eyebrows, which are of a similar hue to the hair on my scalp, are thick and may often aspire to and sometimes verge upon unruliness, but I have never found them to be unmanageable. A centimeter lower, two narrow dark blue rings circumscribe the outer edges of my irises. Inside these borders are two fascinating amalgamations of sapphire, jade and gold that, when gazed into for a long time, appears to dance and shimmer from the surface of my eyes all the way to the back of my head. These jewels are, I think, one of my better features. Conversely, my nose is unquestionably my least tolerable feature. Overly large and uneven, it seems that I may have opted for the super-size when I should have ordered a medium! To make matters worse, the skin on and surrounding my schnozzle consistently manages, in seemingly paradoxical fashion, to be both dry and oily.

My lips are full and evenly matched, save for when they are pursed and my upper lip seems to be swallowed by its bottom partner. Often in need of ChapStick, but rarely in possession of it, they tend to be parched and cracked. My jaw line is firm but rounded and is hidden by a scraggly, auburn-shaded beard. These glorified whiskers are constantly threatening to creep and crawl down my collar and are often encouraged in this endeavor by my inconsistent shaving habits. My neck is thin and unremarkable except for a single lonely mole that, like a rose in the desert, seems curiously, but not unpleasantly, out of place.

As the most noteworthy and identifiable of physical characteristics, our faces have interesting things to say about who we are. Not for nothing does the old maxim remind us to “Put our best faces forward.” My best face may not be perfect and there are certainly things that I would change about it if I could, but my mug is generally satisfactory and could, I like to believe, be loved by more than just my mother.

Senator Russ Feingold on warrantless wiretapping

From TPMCafe:

"This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law."

Mhmmmm....makes me proud to say I was born in Wisconsin.

The metaphysical implications of cross-pavement poultry movement

Skeptico, in hilarious fashion, answers one of life's timeless questions. Go read it. Now.

In which I prove to be too cool to live up to my commitments

I have decided to put my Apocalyptic literature plans on the back-burner, at least for the moment. Why am turning my back on this lucrative career move? Well, my reasoning goes something like this:

1. I tried to think of something funny to write.
2. Nothing came to mind.
3. I got bored.
4. I quit.

No doubt this decision is for the best. I'm far too sophisticated for that sort of pulp fiction anyway. I think I need to focus my attention on more high-class forms of artistic expression....like comic books and professional wrestling!

In which I reveal certain ethical shortcomings and prove to be a misanthrope, part 1

I had a "moment of clarity" the other day. I was driving home from work and listening to a news story on All Things Considered regarding the escalating situation between the US/EU and Iran on all things nuclear. My first thought, "Wow, this sounds like an extremely volatile situation," was quickly followed by, "....That is just begging to be exploited!" And just like that, I received a revelation.

I quickily came to see that my life's goal, no, my life's calling is to become fabulously rich by churning out Eschatological fiction geared towards fundamentalist Christians (isn't that where all of it is geared anyway?). While possibly not the noblest of missions, I submit that, in monetary terms, my plan is virtually flawless. I base this on three fundamental (pun intended) premises:


1. Fundamentalists generally have poor taste in entertainment (as evidenced by the success of the Left Behind Series, The Prayer of Jabez, and Pat Robertson).

2. Fundamentalists are generally ignorant of the world around them (as evidenced by the success of the Left Behind Series, The Prayer of Jabez, and Pat Robertson).

3. Fundamentalists generally have a fair bit of cash available for discretionary spending (as evidenced by the success of the Left Behind Series, The Prayer of Jabez, and Pat Robertson).

Yes, as long as I can consistently pound out 300 pages of that lovable combination of violence, cultural egotism and self-absorbed religiosity, I can't help but become disturbingly successful! Sure, my books will be pure dreck. Sure the characters will all be one-dimensional and completely unlikable. Sure, I'll be writing about things that I have little to no knowledge about, but those are nothing but technical difficulties, mere irrelevancies! As long as my incompetent, one-dimensional dreck appeals to the base emotions of my chosen demographic, they'll eat it up!

Though still in early draft form, I've tentatively titled my first book AD 2007: The Year of Our Lord. While I'll be including an excerpt of what I promise will be a thriller "ripped straight from the headlines(!)" in my next post, let me first set the stage:

It is late January, 2007. After nearly a year of tense fruitless negotiations, the leaders of Iran have decided to defy the Americans and proceed with their plan to continue uranium-enriching experiments. They claim to want enriched uranium for "purely peaceful, domestic purposes" but the NSA has uncovered evidence to the contrary. After a leak to the hardliner Israeli Prime Minister, an aerial strike on Iran is ordered. Thousands of Iranians die in one fateful night and their leaders promise vengeance. As the situation deteriorates and the world stands at the precipice of Armageddon, The U.S. sends a crack squad of Navy Seals into Iran in a desperate attempt to gain some control of this spirally situation.

It is here that we meet our protagonist, Ryan Rand. Ryan is a former atheist who became a Christian during a long talk with Pastor Jack Golde, minister of Grace Valley Community Baptist Church. After his arguments were defeated and his worldview was shown to be worthless, , Ryan opened his heardened heart to Jesus. Now a member of the Navy Seals in Iran, Ryan has been captured and imprisoned by Iranian authorities. He still remembers that inspring talk with Pastor Jack, but in this dark place it seems like a lifetime ago. Ryan is about to learn that if faith is to be proven true, it must be tested by fire....in his case, gunfire.

To be continued...

Excuses, Excuses

I haven't blogged in over a month because:

- I was stranded on a desert island.
- My dog ate the internet.
- I developed a debilitating disease that has since gone into remission.
- My hands were horrifically mutilated in an industrial accident and I've spent the past month in intensive rehab.
- I've been on a non-stop bender (actually, I'd probably be blogging more if this was the case).
- I was kidnapped by the U.S. government and forced to find and subsequently destroy the cures for cancer, AIDS and the common cold (hint: they're the same thing!)
- I spent the past month training for a Dance Dance Revolution battle against Hugo Chavez.

All of these (and more!) are true. My blogging absence has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness.