The Week in Entertainment

Film: Mamoru Oshii's Avalon... Okay, this one is definitely odd. Oshii's style, themes, shot in Poland with a Polish cast ... blurring the line between reality and virtuality - RL and online worlds... Slow and beautiful, but confusing - I have a feeling I'll have to watch this one again, possibly several times again, before I really understand it, but I think it's worth the effort.

Live: La Bohème in Baltimore. Jeffrey Kneebone is rapidly becoming one of my favorite baritones. I must say, though, I can't remember when I've felt the orchestra to be so intrusive as I did during the first act last night!

TV: Dr Who and House, of course, and thanks to local UPN station I caught Veronica Mars tonight (I still can't believe the network moved it opposite House. What, don't they think anybody watches both?).

DVD: I started watching Planetes (thanks to The Tensor for the tip), a sci-fi anime series (or is that an anime sci-fi series? ... I keep telling people at work, 'anime is a medium, not a genre'). It's pretty darned good so far, though I've only seen a couple of episodes so far.

Read: finished Azazel. Read The Turkish Gambit, House of Wax (Kendaichi Case Files #13), and Jonathan Kellerman's latest, Gone. Also - finally got my copy of Colin Mark's revised second edition of Gaelic Verbs! Also, a nice facsimile of Taras Shevchenko's Mar'yana-Chernytsya (Mariana the Nun)

John Kenneth Galbraith, Dead at 97

John Kenneth Galbraith died today. Here's one of my favorite quotes from him: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

And here are a few excerpts from Bart Barnes's Washington Post article:

One of the most influential of his books was "The Affluent Society" (1958), which argued that overproduction of consumer goods was harming the public sector and depriving Americans of such benefits as clean air, clean streets, good schools and support for the arts. In the book, he painted a picture of epic opulence: "The family which takes its mauve and cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered, and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground."

...

Dr. Galbraith lamented what he believed to have been an excess accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public needs, and he warned that an unfettered free market system and capitalism without regulation would fail to meet basic social demands.

...

Dr. Galbraith was often in transit at airports all over the world, waiting for connecting flights. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald, he liked to browse in bookshops looking for examples of his own work. Once at LaGuardia Airport in New York, he asked a clerk if she had a copy of "The Great Crash," his 1955 analysis of the 1929 stock market collapse. "Not an easy book to sell at an airport," said the clerk, looking extremely sympathetic.

When the Truth Isn't Balanced, Should the Coverage Be?

From Coturnix over at Science and Politics, comes this heads-up:

Here is a great long essay on the current state of journalism, with Bob Woodward as an example of what is wrong, and Bill Moyers as an example of what is good. Here are some choice excerpts, but you have to go and read the whole thing - it is brilliant:

Fatal balance: An Ice Age falls on the newsroom by Hal Crowther.

One small excerpt:

"I am completely exasperated by this approach to the news," Silverstein wrote. "The idea seems to be that we go out to report but when it comes time to write we turn off our brains and repeat the spin from both sides. God forbid we should attempt to fairly assess what we see with our own eyes. 'Balanced' is not fair, it's just an easy way of avoiding real reporting and shirking our responsibility to inform readers." In a column headed "A False Balance," Paul Krugman of The New York Times mocked "journalists who believe they must be 'balanced' even when the truth isn't balanced."

As Coturnix says, it's brilliant and you really must go read it.

Atlantis

Last day of National Poetry Month, and here's one of my favorites: Atlantis by Wislawa Szymborsk (tr Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh):

They were or they weren't.
On an island or not.
An ocean or not an ocean
swallowed them up or it didn't.

Was there anyone to love anyone?
Did anybody have someone to fight?
Everything happened or it didn't
there or somewhere else.

Seven cities stood there.
So we think.
They were meant to stand forever.
We suppose.

They weren't up to much, no.
They were up to something, yes.

Hypothetical. Dubious.
Uncommemorated.
Never extracted from air,
fire, water, or earth.

Not contained within a stone
or a drop of rain.
Not suitable for straight-faced use
as a story's moral.

A meteor fell.
Not a meteor.
A volcano exploded.
Not a volcano.
Someone summoned something.
Nothing was called.

On this more-or-less Atlantis.

Speaking Truthiness to Power

Stephen Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner - and ruffled a few feathers, it seems.

Among his remarks, a dig at the 'reality-based community' (or was it? You Decide):

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.” He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.” [from E&P]

I missed it - went to the opera - but watched the clip. If you missed it - or didn't record it - you can see see it here at Salon (you'll just have to watch a very short ad first, no registering, no paying). Very funny stuff.

And if the reactions of some of the right are genuine, it proves they really don't understand satire. The Colbert Report isn't really pro-Bush.

The Moderate Voice has a good article on the address, called "Colbert's White House Correspondent Dinner Performance Underscores Irony's Power And Delicacy". Good stuff - besides the analysis - asking (and answering) questions suchs "Does the lack of laughter mean he bombed?" (No, in case you're wondering), lots of reviews from left and right as well as center, links, and comments.

One of which, from Mauer, nails the whole thing right on its pointy head:

Of course half of the audience didn't laugh! Colbert was not making fun of them. He was indicting them.

Updated 3 May to note that with the exception of the entertainment reviews, I haven't seen any mainstream media mentions of this. Typical. After all, as Mauer said, Colbert was indicting the media as much as the administration ...

Updated 4 May to note that at last the MSM are mentioning Colbert - mainly by saying "he wasn't funny." Richard Cohen even said he was bullying W. Sheesh. Mauer was right: Colbert's audience wasn't laughing, because the 'funny' was bitingly, scathingly, directed at them.

A few other folks are equally right when they suggest that Colbert wasn't "funny" because what he was talking about - this administratin and the media who have spent the last six years fawning over it, only just recently waking up - aren't funny. Not funny at all.

Updated 20 May: here's a link to the full transcript, including the Helen Thomas tape, courtesy of the Daily Kos

"We should all be secularists"

From Pharyngula - another essay from PZ Myers on why progressives should get along - the religious and the agnostic/atheistic ones alike. It's longish, and you should probably read it. Here's a bit to whet your appetite:

Here's another important progressive value: tolerance. There is much confusion about what tolerance means. It does not mean that you only allow people whose ideas you like in the party; quite the contrary, if you like and approve of them, it doesn't require the virtue of tolerance to accommodate them. Theists and atheists have mutually exclusive ideas about the afterlife, spirituality, deities, etc.—tolerance means learning to hold your nose and deal with people whose beliefs on intangible and irrelevant issues are incompatible with yours in order to make progress on other matters. Trust me on this, but atheists are quite used to holding their gorge back in the face of the daily, unthinking assault of religiosity we face in this country; it would be nice if the Christian majority would learn to return the favor.

Let's compromise. The liberal religious find our disbelief objectionable and uncomfortable. We atheists find their beliefs in the unseen and untestable silly and baseless. We can agree to detest each other's ideas about faith and an afterlife, and even berate each other publicly for each other's beliefs while still finding common cause in improving the world here and now; while our motives may differ, we all want to protect civil liberties, fight for economic equality, oppose the war, promote conservation and renewable energies, fund education and science, and even oppose religious discrimination.

As I've remarked before, it's hard to tolerate those who want you dead, but we progressives, don't we want the same thing? We ought to be able to get along.

(And to top it off - in case you're worried about elections - running to the right, religously or otherwise, hasn't been working, has it? We haven't exactly been electing Democrats who've rushed rightwards to the center. So there's no reason at all to do it.)

Royal Society Statement

A statement by the Royal Society on evolution, creationism and intelligent design

April 2006

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 by a group of scholars whose desire was to promote an understanding of ourselves and the universe through experiment and observation. This approach to the acquisition of knowledge forms the basis of the scientific method, which involves the testing of theories against observational evidence. It has led to major advances of understanding over more than 300 years. Although there is still much left to be discovered, we now have a broad knowledge of how the universe developed after the ‘Big Bang’ and of how humans and other species appeared on Earth.

One of the most important advances in our knowledge has been the development of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Since being proposed by Charles Darwin nearly 150 years ago, the theory of evolution has been supported by a mounting body of scientific evidence. Today it is recognised as the best explanation for the development of life on Earth from its beginnings and for the diversity of species. Evolution is rightly taught as an essential part of biology and science courses in schools, colleges and universities across the world.

The process of evolution can be seen in action today, for example in the development of resistance to antibiotics in disease-causing bacteria, of resistance to pesticides by insect pests, and the rapid evolution of viruses that are responsible for influenza and AIDS. Darwin’s theory of evolution helps us to understand these problems and to find solutions to them.

Many other explanations, some of them based on religious belief, have been offered for the development of life on Earth, and the existence of a ‘creator’ is fundamental to many religions. Many people both believe in a creator and accept the scientific evidence for how the universe, and life on Earth, developed. Creationism is a belief that may be taught as part of religious education in schools, colleges and universities. Creationism may also be taught in some science classes to demonstrate the difference between theories, such as evolution, that are based on scientific evidence, and beliefs, such as creationism, that are based on faith.

However, some versions of creationism are incompatible with the scientific evidence. For instance, a belief that all species on Earth have always existed in their present form is not consistent with the wealth of evidence for evolution, such as the fossil record. Similarly, a belief that the Earth was formed in 4004 BC is not consistent with the evidence from geology, astronomy and physics that the solar system, including Earth, formed about 4600 million years ago.

Some proponents of an alternative explanation for the diversity of life on Earth now claim that their theories are based on scientific evidence. One such view is presented as the theory of intelligent design. This proposes that some species are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and that therefore life on Earth must be the product of a ‘designer’. Its supporters make only selective reference to the overwhelming scientific evidence that supports evolution, and treat gaps in current knowledge which, as in all areas of science, certainly exist - as if they were evidence for a ‘designer’. In this respect, intelligent design has far more in common with a religious belief in creationism than it has with science, which is based on evidence acquired through experiment and observation. The theory of evolution is supported by the weight of scientific evidence; the theory of intelligent design is not.

Science has proved enormously successful in advancing our understanding of the world, and young people are entitled to learn about scientific knowledge, including evolution. They also have a right to learn how science advances, and that there are, of course, many things that science cannot yet explain. Some may wish to explore the compatibility, or otherwise, of science with various religious beliefs, and they should be encouraged to do so. However, young people are poorly served by deliberate attempts to withhold, distort or misrepresent scientific knowledge and understanding in order to promote particular religious beliefs.

The Panda's Thumb has started a good discussion on this: check it out.

Good Argument, Bad Writing

Over at Law Evolution Science and Junk Science, Joe McFaul takes on the Discovery Institute's "whine after the Dover bad beat" and says "

Entitled "Traipsing Into Evolution," it appeals to the court of public opinion. Appeal denied. This is a wretched book."

Now the absolute first thing I want to say is that this is a good article which makes excellent points. Please go read it after (or before) you read this. In fact, read many, or all, of Joe's articles on the law involved with scientific claims (being kind, here, to ID).

What follows is just a light stylistic criticism.

Further down in the article, he has this:

That means witnesses must answer questions from an attorney who is not sympathetic to the witness's own position. The witness cannot decline to answer and the witness must tell the truth. In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered: (1) out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

Factually, this is true. Stylistically, it's very awkward. His three points should all be the same thing, as they're all part of the same sentence. And they should all be direct objects (complements) of the verb "offer", since that's the controlling element of the list.

The ID side offered out of court press releases; [the ID side offered] proffered witnesses who.... and [the ID side offered] some of the ID witnesses got caught lying.

Now you could argue that 'proffered' in (2) isn't a main verb, but is a participle used as an adjective (What kind of witnessess who waffled did they offer? They offered proffered witnesses who waffled.), but I don't think you could make a strong case for it. I think McFaul was making "offered" and "proffered" parallels, saying the ID side "offered press releases" and "proffered witnesses". In which case, his colon should have come after "the ID side", and "proffered" should have led point (2):

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side: (1) offered out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined

But then there's point (3). There is no way to make point (3) line up with (1) and (2). Because (3) has a totally different subject - not "the ID side" at all. The sentence "The ID side offered some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath" is not a coherent, grammatically sound, utterance. Nor is "The ID side some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath", if you have altered the wording to make (1) and (2) coherent.

His three sentences are, as he has them written:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered out of court press releases. The Intelligent Design side offered proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined. The Intelligent Design side offered some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

What he wanted, and probably had before he started playing around with ()'s, was:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered out of court press releases; they proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

Putting that into the format he ended up with would take only minimal rewriting:

In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered (1) out of court press releases; (2) witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some witnesses who got caught lying under oath.

See? That's not so hard, now.

Number one ... but why?

So yesterday on NPR they announce that the Best City in the US for Business is ... Yuma, Arizona.

Why Yuma?

The guy they talked to (sorry, I missed whether he was with the folks who did the ranking or from Yuma) said blah blah globalization blah close to the border blah blah huge labor market...

Now is it just me, or does that sound like "large number of immigrants who will work cheap"?

I am deeply ambivalent about the debate on immigration going on now, but one thing I think I know for sure: as long as businesses can hire illegal immigrants (a) basically with impunity and (b) for much less money, we won't stop illegal immigration.

The uh, profits?

Item: the media have announced that all the oil companies posted record profits in this year's first quarter

Item: on NPR they announced that the top three oil companies mad sixteen billion in profit in that time

Item: the NYT reports that the CEO of ExxonMobil makes $13,700 an hour

I mention these because Jon Stewart had Kimberley Strassel, from the Wall Street Journal, on The Daily Show the other night (Wednesday, I think ... I caught the Thursday 8pm rerun), and she was defending the rise in gas prices. She went on about Congress's share of the blame with their silly ethanol mandate (forcing people to use product B as a direct cause of product A's getting more expensive...), and how the cost of production had gone up, and how the cost of crude had gone up ... Jon had mentioned the record profits, and she was ignoring it as hard as she could. Jon let her go on, quite a long time it seemed (and I was growling at the screen "Address the profits! Address the profits!"), until it became clear that she was just not going to mention them.

So he interrupted her and asked her point-blank about the record profits being posted. Wouldn't, he asked, if their costs were going up and so they were raising the prices, wouldn't their profit stay the same? (Since, you know, profit is the difference between what you take in and what you lay out?)

You know what? She wasn't able to answer that. She floundered around a couple of half-started sentences, but there was no way for her to spin that in a pro-big-oil-business way.

Now, Jon is, as he has pointed out before, not a newsman. He's a comedian, an entertainer, a fake newsman, and so he let her off the hook, suggesting that it must be hard to explain things to stupid people. To her credit, she let him stop her, but not by accepting his out, that it was too complicated to explain to the uninitiated. She merely said we don't want to stop the oil companies making money, since we need them to invest and explore and so on and so forth.

(Maybe we do. But that's not going to be recorded as profit. That'll be listed as r&d or whatever oil companies call it.)

Now I don't say that companies shouldn't make profits.

But I do wonder about companies that make billions and billions a year. I mean, just how much profit does anyone need? (And who's getting paid less, or deprived of benefits, or over-charged, to make those billions?)

And I don't have to wonder about companies that make record profits when the commodity they sell is in supposedly short supply.

Happy Birthday, Mary!

Mary Wollstonecraft, that is.

No, not Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, of Frankenstein fame. Her mother, author of, among others, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, The Wrongs of Women, and her most influential work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She also wrote novels, short stories, and travel books, and translated from the French and German.

My Lightsabre is ...

Cool. Though I'm not so sure I'm a Jedi (grins to Sithkitten)

What Color is your lightsaber?

Purple. Purple Crystals are very hard to find and are lucky to anyone who finds it. Both sides accept this color and don't mind seeing it often. It is a good color to stay if you are working undercover or you are not a Jedi or Sith, but you are force-sensitive and have it as a hand-me-down from one of your parents.
Take this quiz!

Bringing people to God - and then letting them down

So, as usual, I watched 'House' last night. The patient of the week was a 15-year-old faith healer - and I want to talk about him. Yes, I know he's fictional, but he's also typical.

See, he may well have actually believed he was healing people. Being the intstrument of God's love and mercy, as he put it. I give him that. I give him, too, that he really believed that God put a tumor in his head in order to talk to him. I give him his whole 'if God did big flashy miracles there wouldn't be any faith' argument, even though I really have a lot of problems with it - I'll give it to him as something he really believed.

But you see - then he went and lied to House. He told him, "God wants you to invite Dr. Wilson to your poker game." And he told him that when challenged to tell him something that the boy couldn't have found out from observing House; told him in a context where it explicitly meant, not 'God wants you to be nice to your friend,' but 'God told me about the poker game, that Wilson wants to play, and that you won't let him, and God wants you to invite him." And that wasn't true. He found out about the poker game and Wilson's desire to join and House's disinclination to have him from someone else and lied to House.

He lied to House to prove to him that God talked to him.

Lying for God. There is a certain type of religious person who does that a whole heckuva lot.

They justify it as 'bringing people to God'. (We'll ignore for now those who do it to attack those they perceive as their enemies; that's a different pathology.) They lie to people so that they'll start worshipping God, so that they'll have faith. Because, I guess, it's better for them to come to God any way at all than not to.

But that faith is based on a lie. In fact, it's not faith at all - it's based on proof. False proof, but proof. A person 'brought to God' that way - let's say, House believed God spoke to the boy and started going to church - has come because he's had substantial proof given to him that God is real. And then he finds out that it was a lie - House discovers Wilson's girlfriend told the boy, not God - and he discovers that what his faith was based on doesn't exist. The proof is false, so the premise is false. He rejects the messenger, he rejects God. He leaves. And, I gather, is lost.

After all, what is faith? It's believing without evidence. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we are told that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. Jesus told Thomas that they who have not seen and yet believe are blessed. So a person who comes to God because he's been given proof haven't come with faith, and thus when the proof is disproved he, having no faith, has no belief.

So when someone lies to bring a person to God, they're are setting that person up to leave.

So why do they do it?

Torture Is Unamerican

I don't do this much, but this is something I really do believe. I've already clashed with my big boss at work over her "whatever it takes" statement - I really don't think we deserve to be saved if we turn into monsters while we do it.

I have reservations about most on-line petitions, but I think this one is organized enough, and also requires enough info, that it will probably accomplish its purpose.

So - please, won't you do this?

If you agree with me that torture, indefinite detention and secret government kidnapping are un-American, I think you’ll be interested in a petition that I just signed.

These practices should not represent the United States of America. But today, two years after the truth was exposed about government-sponsored torture and abuse, the U.S. has failed to reverse the policies that led to this abuse -- and has yet to hold a single high-ranking official responsible.

After the horrors of World War II, our leaders helped draft universal principles that prohibit torture and protect human rights. I hope you join me in defending that legacy by signing the petition and speaking out against torture.

Please join with thousands of others and sign the petition today: ACLU Torture Is Unamerican Petition

Thanks.

Sweet Sweet Blues

From Radical Russ at Pam's House Blend comes this month's Bush Approval Map.

It's so nice, no words are necessary.

(Russ has some though - and as always they're well worth reading.)

Oh my gosh....

Over at Number 80 I found this link, to Freethought Multimedia.

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Pinker, Phil Plait, James Randi, Massimo Pugliucci, and Michael Shermer multimedia: interviews, panels, debates, and more. Lots of other freethought & skeptic multimedia presentations, too.

(You need broadband, of course.)

Happy Birthday, Hubble Space Telescope!

From Astronomy Picture of the Day, this celebration of Hubble's 16th birthday, M82: Galaxy with a Supergalactic Wind

I love the Hubble. There are others, but this is the one that caught our imagination and made astronomy and cosmology important and beloved to the nation, maybe the whole world. Remember when they said they weren't going to repair it? The outcries? We love the Hubble.

And there are many reasons ... the Hubble has made astronomy a bad target for the anti-science wingnuts. Look at M82, a cauldron of newborn stars, a galactic wind blowing dust for 10,000 light-years, 12 million light-years away. How can you say this is new? Or the handiwork of a small god trying to deceive his worshippers? Or of a demon, placing doubt?

M82 is quite simply gorgeous, and enough to send shivers down your spine. Think of it: millions of newborn stars, bright enough to see from Earth in a small telescope. And it's ours now, thanks to Hubble, ours to study and to marvel at.

Hubble brings us closer to the stars. I love that.

And look here at the Bad Astronomer's post on the day.

Dogwoods mean spring...

It's finally spring. Took a while to get here this year...

Top 10 Lies About Church and State

As presented by Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty and reported in the "The Baptist Standard - newsmagazine of Texas Baptists".

Yes, I know. Baptists on religious liberty. Texas Baptists, no less.

But actually, Mr Walker is right on the money. Seriously.

For instance, the first two on his list:

• “Our nation’s founders were born-again, Bible-believing evangelical Christians, or our founders were Enlightenment rationalists who worshipped the ‘goddess of reason,’ or our founders were Deists who posited a watch-maker God and were suspicious of religious ‘enthusiasms.’”

Generalizing about the founding fathers is difficult and dangerous, Walker said.

“Some were orthodox Christians, some were rationalists, yes, some were deists, and even an atheist or two thrown in,” he said. “We must acknowledge that, although most of them came out of a Christian heritage and tradition, our founders were a mixed lot when it came to their religion. But we can say with confidence that they were committed to ensuring religious liberty rather than enshrining their own particular religious opinions.”

• “We don’t have a separation of church and state in America because those words are not in the Constitution.”

“True, the words are not there, but the principle surely is,” he said. Similarly, the words “federalism,” “separation of powers” and “right to a fair trial” are not in Constitution, but those ideas are represented there.

Some critics have played down Thomas Jefferson’s use of the phrase “wall of separation” to describe the appropriate relationship of church and state. But Walker pointed out that James Madison, “the father of our Constitution,” wrote, “The number, the industry and the morality of the priesthood and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of church and state.”

And then there's this one:

• “The United States is a Christian nation.”

“This is a whopper!” he contended. “The United States of America is not a Christian nation—in law or in fact.”

Although no one can deny the nature of Americans as a religious people, the Constitution is a secular document, he said.

“We do not have a Christian theocracy,” Walker explained. “We have a constitutional democracy in which all religious beliefs are protected.

“And that’s good. The same Constitution that refuses to privilege any religion, including Christianity, protects the rights of Christians to proclaim the gospel to all who will listen. As a result, paradoxically enough, we are a nation of Christians because we are not a Christian nation.”

You tell 'em, guy!

If only more religious fundamentalists - of any creed - understood it as clearly as he does.

If he can convince the Texas Baptists, though, I'll believe there's hope for us all.

Wow. I'm the Nucleus

Well, I always take these things when I run across them on another blog (this time it was Science and Politics. Now I have a place to post them - and this one's better than being Amsterdam, let me tell you.

The Nucleus
You scored 43 Industriousness, 35 Centrality, and 3 Causticity!

Wow, this is a big one. You're the Nucleus.

You are the central storage location for almost all of the cell's genetic material (DNA), and also have a function in regulating reactions in your surrounding cytosol. All of the other organelles surround you, though you don't do much yourself.

In terms of real life, you tend to be the centre of all the action in life. Things always come your way - both good and bad. Remember, that's a lot of responsibility, and don't forget about the little people surrounding you! They're the ones supporting your posh lifestyle!

Link: The Which Cell Organelle are you? Test written by fading_shadows on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

The Week in Entertainment

Film: Kinky Boots - very funny! Formulaic? Yes, of course; nothing wrong with formula when it's well done, and works. You'll feel good when it's done! And isn't Chiwetal Ejiofor versatile??? Also Spy Kids 3-D - one of the worst movies I've ever seen - thank goodness I didn't actually pay any money to watch it.

TV: House! 2 episodes, since I got 'All In' from a co-worker in time to see it before this week's actual episode. Also Veronica Mars - and damn UPN for moving her to Tuesday at 9 - opposite House! Damn them. At least the local station reruns the eps on Sunday, so I won't have to wait till reruns to find out who blew up the bus, exactly how Aaron plans to frame Duncan for Lily's death, if Weevil will get caught for killing Thumper, and if Logan's really off the hook for Felix's death, and what happened to Cassidy, and what Logan is going to do about the sex tapes he erased... Also Doctor Who. Interesting end to the Daleks, if the script was a bit anvilicious. Christopher Eccleston is awesome as the Doctor.

DVD: Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, series 3. Also The Last Detective, a nice low-key Brit police drama starring Peter Davison.

Read: Still working on Azazel on my commute. Serenity: The Ones Left Behind - a lovely bridge between Firefly and Serenity, the movie. And started In Gods We Trust by Scott Atran - dense and academic and one I'll be working on for a while, among other things.

An interesting question

Jonathan Chait, in the Sunday LA Times, writes,

LAST WEEK, I WROTE in this space that John McCain is repositioning himself from Bush-smiting champion of the center-left to Falwell-feting champion of the loony right. I also wrote that that's not such a bad thing.

...

I suspect that if he emerges victorious from the primaries, he will have had to shed many of his ideals. It's not attractive. On the other hand, it's better than a Republican who didn't have to sell his soul to get the nomination. I'd prefer somebody who's uncomfortable in Karl Rove's Republican Party to somebody who genuinely likes it.

It's not attractive.

But it is a point of view.

Would a McCain - snuggled up to Falwell & Co but hating it - be better than a Bush-crony?

I know he couldn't be worse, but that's not the question. Would he be better?

Not to say I'd vote for him - I wouldn't - or respect him - I don't, any more, though I did once - but could I tolerate him if he won the nomination or - shivers down the spine - the presidency?

I don't know.

Happy Birthday, Will!

More poetry? Why not - you can't have too much poetry. Not the good stuff.

And anyway, this isn't for National Poetry Month; this is Shakespeare's Birthday!

Herewith, a couple of my favorite sonnets:

Sonnet XIX.

“Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws”

DEVOURING Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.


Sonnet CXVI.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Harrassing Dr Pianka ... That Horse Has Died

Over at "Heaven Is Not The Sky" is an interesting series about Denyse O'Leary and her ongoing, unravelling, and backtracking harrassment of Dr Eric Pianka, the heaven-sent "Dr Doom" who, allegedly and untruly, "advocated the agonizing death of 90% of the world's population."

Like much that is "heaven sent" it turns out that it's all in the ear of the listener. A lot of people heard what they wanted to hear, and O'Leary ran with it. Now that it turns out there's proof that he didn't say that, and in fact didn't say anything that even faintly resembles that, the whole witch hunt is coming apart.

It makes an interesting case study - in almost collapsed time, speeded up to the point of silliness and yet in real time!

(You can read Dr Pianka's own web site before you go over to Heaven Is Not....)

Hu and the Terrible, Awful, No-Good, Very Bad Day

Check out Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing" column for coverage of Hu's visit - and his very bad day. (It's called "Boo Hu" - very funny; I almost stole it for my post.) In the column Froomkin writes:

The most newsworthy aspect of the day came when Hu was heckled by a woman standing in the press area. She stole center stage from both presidents, shouting: "President Hu! Your days are numbered," and "President Bush! Stop him from killing!"

Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post: "It took so long to silence her -- a full three minutes -- that Bush aides began to wonder if the Secret Service's strategy was to let her scream herself hoarse. The rattled Chinese president haltingly attempted to continue his speech and television coverage went to split screen.

" 'You're okay,' Bush gently reassured Hu.

"But he wasn't okay, not really. The protocol-obsessed Chinese leader suffered a day full of indignities -- some intentional, others just careless. The visit began with a slight when the official announcer said the band would play the 'national anthem of the Republic of China' -- the official name of Taiwan. It continued when Vice President Cheney donned sunglasses for the ceremony, and again when Hu, attempting to leave the stage via the wrong staircase, was yanked back by his jacket. Hu looked down at his sleeve to see the president of the United States tugging at it as if redirecting an errant child."

Adds Milbank: "Then there were the intentional slights. China wanted a formal state visit such as [Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin] got, but the administration refused, calling it instead an 'official' visit. Bush acquiesced to the 21-gun salute but insisted on a luncheon instead of a formal dinner, in the East Room instead of the State Dining Room. . . .

"The meeting in the Oval Office brought more of the same. In front of the cameras, Bush thanked Hu for his 'frankness' -- diplomatic code for disagreement -- and Hu stood expressionless. The two unexpectedly agreed to take questions from reporters, but Bush grew impatient as Hu gave a long answer about trade, made all the longer by the translation. Bush at one point tapped his foot on the ground. 'It was a very comprehensive answer,' he observed when Hu finished."

Poor Hu. You could almost feel sorry for him...

This might have been really funny if it weren't symptomatic of W's complete inability to do diplomacy even when he wants to. It's one thing when he just decides we don't need to be diplomatic, as with the Europeans and others after 9/11, when a half-witted child could have exploited the world's sympathy and instead we ended up hated by virtually everyone. It's another when he tries to talk to someone about something, and can't manage it.

And by the way - what is it with Cheney and his dress sense? Remember him at the ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz?

a year's minimum wage in a hour

For the first time, someone who works full time on minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in America. Anywhere in America. Not unless they get government help. [source: NYTimes]

That is simply shameful.

Minimum wage is - let's not talk dollars an hour, who can do the math to make that a yearly salary? Let's talk yearly - $10,500 a year. Full time, remember. 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.

And meanwhile, the CEO of Exxon-Mobile makes $13,700 an hour. That's more in one hour than a minimum-wage worker makes in a whole year. The CEO of Halliburton makes $8,300 an hour - it takes him an hour and fifteen minutes to make a year's minimum wage.

The CEO of WalMart is comparatively poorly paid - he makes a mere $3,500 an hour. He needs three whole hours to make the annual salary of minimum wage worker.

And let's not forget that costs for housing, healthcare, education, and childcare have gone up 46% in the decade between 1992-2002 - and you know they're still going up.

This makes me ashamed to be an American.

If the Democrats need something to start to build on, try this, fellas.

More Than Stars in Their Eyes: Kalpana's Poem

One more for National Poetry Month ...

Kalpana Chawla, my favorite astronaut, looked out on January 28, 2003, and saw the sunset overtaking the day, and the light and dark sides of Earth together. This is what she said later about that moment:

In the retina of my eye,
the whole Earth and the sky
could be seen reflected.
So I called all the crew members one by one,
and they saw it,
and everybody said,
"Oh, wow!"

Earth Day

It's Earth Day!



Celebrate -

Caretake -

It's the only earth we have.

Comet's Fragment To Hit Earth....Not

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy had a piece a while back about the comet that's going to wipe out the earth come May.

A few months back, this "news" syndicator had a totally bogus article about a "chaos cloud" that was going to doom us all. The original source? The Weekly World News. Like it took a rocket scientist to figure out that was garbage.

Evidently, Yahoo!News is trying to top their own dumbosity. This time, they are reporting -- as straight news -- a story that on May 25 of this year a comet fragment will impact the Earth. Their source? the Exopolitics Institute, which studies UFOs, crop circles, and no doubt the Tooth Fairy and Bat Boy.

Needless to say, it's not going to hit us. It's not going to come anywhere close.

What's worrying isn't even that Yahoo!News ran the story - I mean, it was a press release, they were paid for it. What's worrying is that a lot of people will likely believe it.

Daniel at Wolverine's Den has a very nice article about the whole phenomenon. Check it out - the man makes sense.

"Manly role model"

So, this was in the Trib today.

Dear Abby: My husband, "Ron," and I are at odds over parenting our 7-year-old son, "Brett." My husband is very domestic. He cooks like a world-class chef and does more housework than any man I know of. I have read Dr. James Dobson's books on family. He clearly states that a father should be the manly role model for the son, to prevent the son from being homosexual. I'm concerned that Brett will learn feminine ways from my husband and turn out to be gay.

-- Worried Mom in Florida

Dear Worried Mom: From my perspective, you don't need to change a thing. Your husband is already a manly role model to your son. He is teaching the boy important survival skills. With luck, your son will turn out to be every bit the man -- and father -- that your husband is.

Abby is dead on. But she should, perhaps, have been a bit more forthright.

Worried Mom should hope her husband doesn't decide to become a "manly role model" who never lifts a finger around the house and slaps her silly for questioning him.

Oh, yes. One more thing.

Brett is going to be damaged far more by a mother who reads James Dobson than by just about anything his father could do.

Lovliest of Trees

It's National Poetry Month! It's also just past Cherry Blossom Festival, so here's my contribution.


Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

-- E A Houseman

Le Mot Juste: Anti-science

Richard Cohen reviewed "An Inconvenient Truth" today (18 April). He says we should all see it; he says it'll scare us to death; he says it's probably the most important thing Al Gore has ever done - or anyone, maybe, in case you're tempted to snark that comment.

Read the column for why the movie matters.

I want to focus on this bit of it:

You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. The contrast is stark. Gore -- more at ease in the lecture hall than he ever was on the stump -- summons science to tell a harrowing story and offers science as the antidote. No feat of imagination could have Bush do something similar -- even the sentences are beyond him.

But it is the thought that matters -- the application of intellect to an intellectual problem. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. For instance, his insistence on abstinence as the preferred method of birth control would be laughable were it not so reckless. It is similar to Bush's initial approach to global warming and his rejection of the Kyoto Protocol -- ideology trumping science.

This is as scary as anything in the movie - the drowing of Florida and Manhattan and Calcutta, the Katrina refugee crisis writ not just large but stunningly, hugely, devastatingly enormous.

Our President and his administration actively reject science. Whether it's because they don't understand it, or don't trust it, or truly don't think it matters, because the End Times are upon us, they actively attack science and all it stands for.

This is where we live. At the moment, it's the only place we've got.

We must do better.

They found numerous Bibles at the crash site

The wire story has it all:

MEXICO: 65 KILLED AS BUS PLUNGES 300 FEET At least 65 people died and 2 were injured when a tourist bus plunged more than 300 feet into a ravine between Mexico City and the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz. The state prosecutor, Emeterio López Márquez, said the crash had been caused by excessive speed and the weight of the bus, whose capacity was 44 passengers. Authorities said they believed many passengers had been traveling to religious ceremonies for the Easter holidays; they found numerous Bibles at the crash site. ANTONIO BETANCOURT (NYT)

Later, more detailed stories just confirm it: 65 people, most with Bibles, died horrifically on their way home from Easter services.

I suppose they all went to heaven - though of course not the three badly injured children who survived the crash.

But - do you suppose they were praying as they went over the cliff?

Just the other day my father told me of a man he'd seen on television praising God for not killing him in the recent tornados. It's a point of view he doesn't get - nor do I. I suppose it's partly a "blame the victim" thing: I prayed and lived, so I'm worthy; they died, so they aren't... But Ambrose Bierce defined that kind of prayer neatly more than a century ago: asking that the laws of the universe be abrogated for a single petitioner self-avowedly unworthy. Does God really pick and choose among the prayerful - you three live, you sixty don't?

I can still remember the rage I felt when a guy on a bus I was riding on said something to a co-religionist of his (believe me, I've heard way more than I want about these guys, their personal lives, and above all their rather intolerant and inflexible religious lives). This was the day after that massive earthquake in Iran, and what he said was, "I wonder how many of them were brought to the Lord Jesus Christ while they were dying?"

Gack.

To me, this is the worst thing about religion - worse than the way it, in its more fundamentalist and inflexible forms, teaches its adherents to accept unquestioningly anything they're taught by their religious leaders and to reject anything that hints at contradiction, often with violence; worse even than the way it splits the world up into 'us' and 'them', and teaches 'us' that 'they' aren't - not just not 'us' but not quite human: religion teaches its adherents that life on Earth is less important than what happens after death. Many even believe that life on Earth is completely unimportant.

Life on Earth is what we know we have. What we should do is make that life the best we can for each other. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick (not just give them a clean place to die). Teach the ignorant. House the homeless.

Pray for them once you've done that. And then - only then - pray for yourself.

Kinds of Science Blogs

Coturnix at Science and Politics has put up a very comprehensive overview of the various types of science blogs out there, with the kinds of topics they cover.

If you're interested in science and fun; science and birds; science and politics; science and religion; science and, well, science; who's got a weekly feature and what it is (Birds in the News, Weekly Cephalopod); news and magazines and other reporting; and where you're likely to find pieces on lab life or research - check it out. It's a very good listing.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Syrian Bride - a fabulous movie. I loved the ending... and the whole thing was so funny and so tragic at the same time. One note, which made me re-evaluate a few things about the movie: the photographer is speaking Hebrew

TV: Veronica Mars (finally kicking into high gear); Doctor Who (a nice farewell to the Cylons); several eps of Cash in the Attic (Brit version); had to miss House (and set the VCR for the wrong channel, grrr) but will pick up a tape from a lovely coworker tomorrow, so 2 hours next week!

Read: Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett; Chaucer's The Parliament of Birds; and began Azazel (marketed in English as 'The Winter Queen') by Boris Akunin

Laura's Wall

Nice picture, isn't it? My sister took it...

"They"

This is a post I've had on my website, and I'm posting it here because the other day at work we got into it again...

"They" as the non-specific, genderless, English pronoun has a long and honorable history in English literary usage. Yes. Really. It does. Jane Austen used it all the time (even when it was pretty certainly a man she meant, as in the first example):

• Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?
  
• ...but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they may.
  
• [Mr. Woodhouse] was happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not to heat themselves.
  
• there is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry.
  
• I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly.
  
• It would be a pity that anyone who so well knew how to teach, should not have their powers in exercise again.
  

And here are some examples from other writers:

• and every one to rest themselves betake
  -- Shakespeare
  
  
• it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy
  -- W. H. Auden
  
  
• 'tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech
  -- Shakespeare
  
  
• a person can't help their birth
  -- W. M. Thackeray
  
  
• no man goes to battle to be killed. -- But they do get killed
  -- G. B. Shaw
  

The Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's Unabridged enter as definition no. 2 of 'they':

"Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex (=`he or she')."

So the authoritative dictionaries already recognize that in 'they', English has BOTH (1) a plural pronoun and (2) a specific-reference-free singular pronoun. 'Specific reference free' means that we use it, and have used it for centuries, to indicate that the person it refers to is no particular person we have in mind. (That, of course, makes it the perfect gender-neutral pronoun as well.) (And don't argue that one pronoun can't do double duty: 'you' does. Heck, 'you' doesn't even decline: it's singular, plural, subject, object, all in one.) Here are the examples the OED lists:

• Yf a psalme scape ony persone, or a lesson, or else yt they omyt one verse or twayne.
  -- 1526 Pilg. Perf.
  
  
• He neuer forsaketh any creature vnlesse they before haue forsaken them selues.
  -- 1535 Fisher Ways perf. Relig. ix. Wks. (1876)
  
  
• Every Body fell a laughing, as how could they help it.
  -- 1749 Fielding Tom Jones
  
  
• If a person is born of a gloomy temper they cannot help it.
  -- 1759 Chesterf. Lett.
  
  
• Nobody can deprive us of the Church, if they would.
  -- 1835 Whewell in Life (1881)
  
  
• Nobody fancies for a moment that they are reading about anything beyond the pale of ordinary propriety.
  -- 1858 Bagehot Lit. Stud. (1879)
  
  
• Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing.
  -- 1866 Ruskin Crown Wild Olives Sect.38 (1873)
  

I'm going to quote Geoffrey Pullum (Professor of Linguistics at UCSB and co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language) from one of his Language Log postings on the subject for what I hope (but have too much sense to think) will be the final word:

By all means, avoid using they with singular antecedents in your own writing and speaking if you feel you cannot bear it. Language Log is not here to tell you how to write or speak. But don't try to tell us that it's grammatically incorrect. Because when a construction is clearly present several times in Shakespeare's rightly admired plays and poems, and occurs in the carefully prepared published work of just about all major writers down the centuries, and is systematically present in the unreflecting conversational usage of just about everyone including Sean Lennon, then the claim that it is ungrammatical begins to look utterly unsustainable to us here at Language Log Plaza. This use of theyisn't ungrammatical, it isn't a mistake, it's a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators, and we don't buy what they're selling.

And now it's six

Six recently retired generals who want Rummy gone.

Richard Holbrooke in Sunday's Washington Post says:

First, it is clear that the retired generals -- six so far, with more likely to come -- surely are speaking for many of their former colleagues, friends and subordinates who are still inside. In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue. Recent retirees stay in close touch with old friends, who were often their subordinates; they help each other, they know what is going on and a conventional wisdom is formed. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who was director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the planning period for the war in Iraq, made this clear in an extraordinary, at times emotional, article in Time magazine this past week when he said he was writing "with the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership." He went on to "challenge those still in uniform . . . to give voice to those who can't -- or don't have the opportunity to -- speak."

...

They are career men, each with more than 30 years in service, who swore after Vietnam that, as Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs, "when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons." Yet, as Newbold admits, it happened again. In the public comments of the retired generals one can hear a faint sense of guilt that, having been taught as young officers that the Vietnam-era generals failed to stand up to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson, they did the same thing.

So - better late than never. And of course, Shinseki got fired when he spoke up before the war. (That's the problem so many places: people more interested in keeping their jobs than doing them. Samuel Goldwyn summed it up neatly: "I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs." Very true, that.)

True - Michael DeLong, a retired Marine lieutenant general who worked for Rummy until recently (and I mean worked for him; he was, in his own words, "the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war. ... I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years.") insists that "the people who needed to" get access to Rumsfeld "got it". He says Rumsfeld "carefully listened to our arguments", but even he has to add that " if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day" and that "Mr. Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either". Of course, DeLong then says this makes for a better army - it makes the commanders tougher.

Does it? Or does it make them decide not to get fired? DeLong doesn't address that issue.

But let's say that maybe DeLong is kinda sorta right, and maybe the other six just didn't understand that Rummy would in fact give in if they just fought him hard enough. And maybe not.

Either way, the man at the top is ultimately responsible, isn't he? He sets the tone for the whole organization. And in this case, that organization - the US war on terror - is fatally flawed. Doesn't Rumsfeld have to take at least some of the blame for it?

Not in this administration, apparently. In this administration, you get medals and kudos and DoD memos defending your piss-poor performance.

Because here, loyalty trumps competence.

If nothing else, it's time for Rumsfeld to go because he's lost the confidence of the people. They say in Washington that he's offered to resign and W won't accept the offer. That's typical of a president who is only comfortable with cronies.

Some might say, why not surround yourself with your friends? Don't most of us do the same thing? Sure. But most of us aren't the President of the United States. And most of us can't lead lives insulated from the incompetence of our cronies - and most of us don't have cronies whose incompetence leads to the deaths of thousands.

But Rummy isn't Brownie. He actually was qualified for the position when he got it, wasn't he?

As they say, that was then...

In the NYT today Frank Rich takes a look at Rumsfeld's past and concludes he's the wrong (kind of) man to be in charge of an actual war:

Unfortunately, we've learned that though Rumsfeld is a perfect warrior for peaceful times, his virtues turn into vices during wartime. War is nothing but a catalog of errors, and in fluid, unpredictable circumstances, the redundancies of the World War II style of organization actually make sense. When you don't know what you will need, sometimes it is best just to throw gigantic resources at a problem. You can adapt later on.

Rumsfeld the reformer never adjusted to the circumstances of wartime. Once the initiator of new ideas, he now strangles ideas. Once the modernizer, he's now the dinosaur. Amid the war on terror, he has unleashed a reign of terror on his subordinates.

If you just looked at his résumé, you might think he was the best person to lead the Pentagon in time of war, but in reality he was the worst because his whole life had misprepared him for what was to come. He was prepared to fight organizations. He was not prepared to fight enemies.

Now the bureaucracy he assaulted is rising up against him. In other times their enmity would be a mark of accomplishment, but now it's a symptom of failure. He has become a past-tense man.

Prof Jones: Why Creationism is wrong...

I see from PZ at Pharyngula that Professor Steve Jones from the Royal Society's lecture on "Why Creationism is wrong and Evolution is right" is available for our listening pleasure.

Here's the intro:

Science is about disbelief. It accepts that all knowledge is provisional and that any theory might in principle be disproved. Some theories are better established than others: the earth is probably not flat, babies are almost certainly not brought by storks, and men and dinosaurs are unlikely to have appeared on earth within the past few thousand years. Even so, nothing is sacred in 1905 classical physics collapsed after a seemingly trivial observation about glowing gases and the same is potentially true for all other scientific theories.

Many biologists are worried by a recent and unexpected return of an argument based on belief by the certainty, untestable and unsupported by evidence, that life did not evolve but appeared by supernatural means. Worldwide, more people believe in creationism than in evolution. Why do no biologists agree? Steve Jones will talk about what evolution is, about new evidence that men and chimps are close relatives and about how we are, nevertheless, unique and why creationism does more harm to religion than it does to science.

Steve Jones won the Aventis Prize for Science Books (then known as the Rhone-Poulenc Prize) in 1994 for 'The Language of the Genes'. In 1997 he was awarded the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize - the UK's foremost award for communicating science to the public

Jump over and check it out, why don't you?

Happy Easter

Easter is upon us: a Christian holiday laid down on a much older celebration of spring and returning life. As the world (well, the northern half of it) moves into spring, perhaps a moment's reflection by us all on what we truly value is in order.

Just a quick link here, to DarkSyde's reflection on "If I Were a Christian".

Hating for Jesus

Over at Red State Rabble is a good piece on fundamentalist hypocrisy: Hate Spech: What Would Jesus Do?. In brief

Do policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians? Ruth Malhotra, a senior at the Georgia Institute of Technology says they do. The school has a policy that bans hate speech based on sexual orientation. Malhotra has gone to court to overturn the policy, which she sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression.

RSR muses on the problem on infringing on anyone's freedom of speech - a problem we all have to wrestle with (see my post below Tolerating the Intolerant), at least that 'all' of us who actually want actual tolerance and freedom of speech, that is, of course. He points out the fundamental hypocrisy of people like this:

At the same time, they bray loudly about the discrimination against Christians. Sensitive to the even the smallest slight, they even claim that when stores put signs in the window wishing everyone a "Happy Holiday," they are participating in a war against Christians.

All too true. People like Malhotra want to be free to say all kinds of vicious and hateful things against people who aren't members of their little club - and yet they howl when anyone says anything that they can perceive as an insult. Of course, they have a moral right to demand everyone be nice, or better yet subservient, because they are right, after all. If they insult someone, it's deserved; if they're insulted, they've been maligned.

It's a key concept of religion, after all: the creation of a super-family. It's a way of gaining (or compelling) trust and cooperation in a group too big to be related, or known individually. But this creation of a larger 'we' comes with a serious price: a larger 'them' to fight against. And considerably more vituperation along with it.

Today's fundies are more scared than they've been in a long time: they know they're losing priveleges they once had, and they're angry about it. And they can see that soon enough people they despise will be on an equal footing with them, and that makes them angry as well as scared. (And scared they are: they know how they treat the 'Other' so why should the 'Other' treat them any better?) After all, an equal footing is a come-down from the top...

In the end, Red State Rabble reluctantly concedes that this is a fight ought perhaps not to have. He says he

doesn't believe we should ban hate speech -- vile as it is -- by Christian fundamentalist. We do believe it is imperative confront these bigots forcefully and expose them for the hypocrites they are.

And in the end, I (reluctantly) have to agree with him. Much as I hate and, yes, fear the notion of giving these people license to be foul - something I fear they'll take as license to persecute - free speech is too precious.

I might be persuaded to believe that schools - certainly public schools, where we require kids to be - should be made havens of safety. Forbidding hate speech there is not on the same level: children are already 'deprived' of some rights adults have. We accept that they aren't adults, with full adult rights, and that they need us (adults) to protect them until they're grown. That would include protecting them from hate.

But in the wider world? Free speech is too precious, and hate speech is part of the price we have to pay to have it.

But we must call them to account for their bigotry and their hypocrisy. We must - all of us, especially those among Christians who despise this as much as we do - we must not let them think we for even a heartbeat agree or approve of what they say.

It's the least, the very least, we can do.

How Much????

From Pam's House Blend, some news to boggle your mind.

Think Progress passes along news that makes you want to hurl (or riot):

Average Americans are struggling to keep up with persistently high gas prices, now approaching $3 a gallon. Testifying before Congress last November, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond blamed the problem on "global supply and demand" and assured the public that "we're all in this together."

Last year, Raymond made do with "a total compensation package" of just $69.7 million or $190,915 a day, including weekends.

Oh, and guess what? Look at his retirement package, as you fill up your tank and sell your first-born (ABC):

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

What do you say behind that sh*t?

I can't think of anything to say at all, Pam. Nothing at all...

PZ's "The Proper Reverence"

Number 80 mentioned a post by PZ over at Pharyngula that I want to urge you to read.

It's called The Proper Reverence Due Those Who Have Gone Before and it's beautiful.

[Yes. Atheists can know reverence, and do it when it's called for.]

Marriage for some, unions for all

I have this suggestion to end all the rancor about gay marriage vs the sanctity of marriage. It's simple, and I think it'll work.

We start off by acknowledging that there's some confusion arising from our using the same word for (a) a civil contract with legal ramifications and (b) a religious rite.

After all, you have to get a civil marriage license and be married by someone with "authority vested in [him] by the state" before it's legal. And all those people back in the Sixties who kept saying they didn't need "a piece of paper" weren't complaining about the church. Any church. And lots of religions allow kinds of marriages the state doesn't. And lots and lots of people get married without bringing any church into it at all. Not to mention all those who get married to people churches don't want them to marry.

To say nothing of those who can't have children (which keeps on being mentioned as the real reason, if not the only reason).

So - let's just say that marriage is this sacred, sanctified, religious institution. And let's call the civil, legally binding one... oh, say, a "civil union".

There. You can have your "sacred, sanctified" institution. Just don't expect the state to give you any tax breaks or inheritance breaks or community property on it. It's religion, after all. And we'll have our civil contract with power of attorney and so on, and we won't ask anybody to call it sacred.

And if someone wants both ... hey, no problem.

Just like now.

Only better.

Tolerating the Intolerant ... and the Intolerable?

One more old - though you could hardle tell it:

And now the Dutch are in trouble. I'm not sure what's going on there, in a country thought of as a bastion of liberalism and tolerance. A Dutch politician (I didn't catch her name, sorry) was on the BBC World Update yesterday (10 Nov). She said she thought that the Dutch weren't really all that liberal. "Just because we allow gays to marry, and have legalized drugs in our constitution, and permit people to choose when to die," she said (though I'm paraphrasing), "that doesn't mean we are all that tolerant of people who are different."

Maybe that's so. Maybe the Dutch aren't so much tolerant and liberal as they are in lockstep in a mindset that doesn't accept dissension, and just happens to include so-called 'liberal' values. I don't know. I'm not Dutch (I don't even play one on TV), and the closest I've been to the Netherlands is Brussels.

But what I think is happening at least includes the essential liberal paradox:

How do you tolerate those who want to destroy you?

We try to accept everyone, say everyone's right, let everyone think and feel and believe as they wish. But some people - and not just radical Islamicists, either; fundamentalist Christians are damned good at it, too - what they want is for everyone to be like them. So the problem we have, which they will never have, is: how do we accept them and let them be what they want to be, when what that is, is to hate and destroy us?

I'll tell you the truth: I don't know the answer. I suspect (with dread) that the only way to even half-way succeed is to stop trying and be more like them. I suspect that's one reason we don't win the arguments with them, the classic joke of the liberal always saying (as Roy Blount, Jr, says) "you know, you have a point...".

And I'll tell you something else. I'm going to stop saying that. I'm going to stop enabling them to destroy us. I've always said the difference between us is that while we want everyone to do as they please (exagerration, but you follow), they want everyone to do as they please. The mindsets aren't compatible. And frankly, if it comes down to it, I'd rather be a little bit intolerant than not (not be, I mean), when what I'm being intolerant of is so repellent.

It's like that thing about the stickers in the Georgia schoolbooks - if the truth "may hurt some people's feelings" then some people just have to have their feelings hurt. Telling them lies to keep their fragile little psyches undamaged is wrong.

And dangerous. To all concerned.

Life and the Family?

Another old one -

So, you want the church in charge? You want a good moral government? Here's how Italy's new law on assisted fertility works:

The present law, passed last year, restricts the provision of fertility treatment to stable heterosexual couples and excludes single women or same-sex couples. It also restricts surrogacy and research using human embryos, forbids sperm and egg donation, and limits the number of embryos created with in-vitro techniques to three.

All you people enslaved to your Darwinian urges, insisting on only a child with your genes - and a lot of you refusing to understand or even believe the urges driving you, an enormous irony - think about that for a minute, and then ask your clinic if they're creating more than three embryos to get you pregnant...

The rest of you, the ones who get sperm or egg donors, read the writing on the wall.

"Addressing the bishops, the Pope said that easing restrictions on assisted fertility treatments would pose a threat to life and the family."

That poor fragile thing - life and the family.

Look - if you don't want to raise other people's children, fine. If you want to remain childless and bitter about it, fine. If you want feel superior, fine.

But keep your religion out of other people's lives.

Shaming the Shameless?

Another from the recent past:

I just saw "Shake Hands With the Devil" (I have a new hero) - a movie I whole-heartedly recommend, though it's not much fun and is incredibly intense.

At one point, General Dallaire says that he failed Rwanda because he failed to shame the world into action.

I have to say this: you can't shame the world, Roméo - the world is shameless. Just look around.

Addendum: I've just finished reading his book (same name as the film). I recommend it as whole-heartedly.

Something Different: Translation

Thought I'd change the subject a bit and share this with you - an article I wrote to introduce translation. The examples are from Russian, but the principles will hold good no matter what language you're working in.

How to translate

First, read the article all the way through once. Don't worry about the words you don't know, keep on reading.

When you get to the end of the article, summarize it. In your head or - better - on a piece of paper. What is the article about - not just the facts, but the purpose? Every article - every piece of communication - is an attempt to convey an idea from one person to another(s). Is the article a summary of events? A plain news story? Or is it an analysis of them? Is the author pro or con? If con, is he merely attacking, or does he have countersuggestions? If pro, is he merely praising, or is he trying to convert the naysayers? Is he plain-speaking, sarcastic, lofty, casual, formal, passionate, detached, or angry? Why did he write the article at all? Knowing that will help you translate it.

The next thing to do is - if you have time, which, granted, you may not - go onto the Internet and plug a few key words or concepts into Google. Find yourself a few articles that will explain the background for you. It's much easier to translate an analysis of a political speech if you know what the speech actually said, and the political circumstances in which is was made - and who made it. A speech by Putin is rather different than one by Zhirninovsky, or Bush or Schroeder for that matter. An argument over the future of Chechnya is easier to understand (and thus translate) if you know what's been going on there for the past decade - or even century. You don't have to make yourself an expert, but you need some grounding.

And that, parenthetically, is why you need to read widely in not only Russian, but English. It's hard to be able to deal with level 3 texts (opinion and suasion, with hefty helpings of shared cultural assumptions) in Russian if you don't read them in English, and the more reading you do, the more you'll understand not only the facts of a situation, but the rhetorical devices and styles used by writers in all languages.

Once you have a fairly good handle on the topic, go back to your article. (Another reason to read often: you can have a good handle on things even when you don't have time for special research.) Read through it again, this time underlining or otherwise marking the words you don't know. Once you've gone through the whole article, you can start looking up words.

Be careful to make sure you get the right meanings. Note the verb with its arguments - the case of its object or the prepositions it takes. Vyvedit' iz is different from vyvedit' v; ozhidat' with genitive is different than with accusative; s with genitive very different than with instrumental. Make note of the -sya ending turning transitives to intransitives: did the vandals show no interest in anything, or did they present no interest at all - that is, were they bored, or boring? Even more important, make sure you are in the right subject area: if you're dealing with the power failure of 2005, magistral probably means main power line instead of highway, for instance, and razryad isn't a category or rank but spark discharge.

Now you can begin translating. Keeping in mind the purpose and the tone of the article, keep the English as close to that as you can. If the original was light and breezy, stay away from pomposity or overly formal phrasing; conversely, if the original was careful and deliberate, stay away from slang and casual terms. Watch for words in quotes: Russian authors tend to use them to mark slang, or figurative usages, as well as actual quotations. This can be helpful: S 1991 gosudarstvo nauchilos' "kidat'" svoikh grazhdan, for instance, translates to "Since 1991, the government has learned to "throw" its citizens". This makes no sense and should not be left like that. The quotes point you (or should point you) to a dictionary of slang, where you will learn that kidat' means "to cheat".

Style is important. Try to reproduce the author's, whether formal or casual. It's part of the message. Be formal, be wordy, be casual, be elegant - whichever the author was. It's very important to remain transparent - don't impose your own feelings on the author: if he calls them "freedom fighters" don't you call them "terrorists", for instance. Tell your readers what he's trying to tell them.

When you come to a difficult spot, take the sentence apart clause by clause. Match the verbs with their arguments - subject and complements - in each clause, and then link the clauses together. Complementizers subordinate entire clauses to other clauses - relatives and other embedded clauses play roles within the sentence. "Due to, because of, after, before" - all of these will show you how the compound sentence is joined. The complex sentence will often have prepositions followed by to, chto, whose function is to make the clause introduced by chto, chtoby, kak into the object of the preposition, in the case of the to. Do togo, kak oni priekhali is simply "after they arrived" - since oni priekahli can't be put into genitive. Also watch for words in one case intruding into a string of words in another: these are often modifiers than will have to be moved in English: the prepared by the fatfaced scumbag Zhdanov decree" has an instrumental 'intrusion' that must be repositioned, yielding "the decree, prepared by the fat faced scumbag Zhdanov".

Account for particles. Are they emphasizing? Creating a tense (uzhe and eshche are often making English perfects (have arrived, had gone), for instance)? Whatever they're doing, you can't leave them out; they're there for a purpose. Reflect that. And make sure you keep them in the right place, too: "Even John can pass this course" is a very different thing than "John can pass even this course". The same with adverbs; as neither they nor particles show any grammatical agreement, they must modify what they're next to, unlike other words which can be separated from the rest of their phrase as their grammatical endings point the linkages. Use those endings; they're your best friends.

This works on the larger scales, as well. Bear in mind that no one writes in individual sentences, meant to stand alone. All sentences in a coherent text are linked to each other, sometimes just by virtue of following each other but more often by conjunctions and complementizers that overtly join them. Look for things such as "then, later, because, moreover, on the other hand, thus, but, as well as": these will give you the article's flow.

Once you have finished your first draft, go over it again, rewording it so that it's English in its structure. Make sure all heavy modifiers, especially fronted participial phrases, are moved to follow their nouns, for instance. Be careful that instrumental predicates have not become subjects – is it "MTS subscribers have become victims" or “victims have become MTS subscribers”?

Once you've done that, there's a step you should take if you have the time: put the translation aside for at least an hour, a day if possible. If you don't have that much time, at least take a few minutes. Then read it again, as if you'd never read the original. Does it make sense? Does it cohere, argue a point, and hang together? Is it stylistically unified?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to these questions you can be confident you’ve done a good job.

First Words (Here) on Evolution...

Evolution. Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism.

These words terrify a lot of people - and those people are wielding a lot of clout.

Here's a letter I wrote last year:

Re: Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens


By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 14, 2005

Sir: I am distressed that nowhere in your article did you address the fact that there is NO controversy about evolution in science. The only people you quote on this point are the creationists of various stripes, and the article leads a reader to believe that there is some merit to the position that evolution is just like "any other belief that a kid in class has. It should all be okay," to quote one of your sources. (I reserve the right to doubt how "okay" she'd find it if her kid had to sit through some other religion's creation myth, such as, say Changing Woman, but her hypocrisy is not the point.)

The problem - beyond forcing their religion down the nation's throat in this disguise (necessary because forcing it as religion has failed) - is that "evolution's boosters" are the scientific community. Where was a quote from a biologist? The closest we got was a medical professor, who doesn't favor teaching ID (yet works with those who does). You quoted Eugenie Scott, but not on the merits of evolution, and you quoted Barry Lynn - and both of them were addressing ID/creationism. Both of them were addressing the religious issue. Where was any quote from a scientist to put this in perspective?

The fact is that, as Richard Dawkins puts it, evolution is biology's Grand Unified Theory. No scientist of repute doubts evolution - the most they do is argue about some aspects of it. Stephen Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium is not an alternative to evolution, it is a refinement of it. But you never said this in your article, quoting not one single biologist.

Instead, you spent the entire article quoting those who believe that creationism and its offspring ID are of equal stature as "belief systems" with evolution. But evolution is not a "belief system". Evolution is as close to a fact as we can get (that's what "theory" means in science. Like the "theory" of relativity. Or gravity. It's not a "guess" or a "notion" or a "belief system". Especially not that last.) and there are no grounds for replacing it with ID.

Intelligent Design is not science. It's not even a theory (even in the lay use of the word). It's dogma.

You say that advocates quote polls that show most Americans believe in creationism. Even if that's true, it doesn't matter. There was a time when most people believed the world was flat - that didn't mean the world was. Science isn't a democracy; you don't pick reality. Reality exists whether you believe in it or not.

Next we'll be teaching that geology's dating of the world is "just another belief" - the world only 6000 years old as a valid "belief" to be offered to our children as equal to the world billions of years old. Or that the sun can be stopped to make the day longer, and the earth actually does have corners - cosmology is "just a theory". Or that what color your goats are depends on what their parents saw when they bred - the "laws" of genetics are "just a theory". Or perhaps that leprosy can be cured by smearing animal blood on the patient - bacteria are "just a theory". Heck, the Bible thinks pi *does* equal three - shall we teach that instead of real math? Why not? What's the difference between that and ID versus evolution?

Evolution is a grand, sweeping, and exciting thing. But it's not a religion. It doesn't have anything to say about the existence of God. (It does of course have a great deal to say about the book of Genesis, but that book can't stand scrutiny on many levels, not just this one. Surely God is too big to be bound up in that book.) Your medical professor says, "To say God did not play a role is arrogant. It's far beyond the data." Precisely. Evolution properly does not address that point at all.

Buried at the bottom of your article is a statement which sums up the whole thing: "If evolution's boosters can be forced to back down, he [Terry Fox] said, the Christian right's agenda will advance." Once ID's in the door, the rest of the camel will follow, and we will live to see the US become a second-rate scientific country, teaching only those things that don't have the Religious Right up in arms. I leave you with this thought, from Richard Lederer: There was time when all people believed in God and the Church ruled. It was called The Dark Ages.

Mr Slevin answered me. His letter said: "Thanks for your letter. You make a good and important point. Had I been doing a longer story, or a different story, I would have addressed the science more. I thought asserting the strength of the science of evolution and quoting the likes of Barry Lynn would be clear enough. I'm sorry if the story disappointed you. A number of people did write in to say they were glad to have a story that focused on the links between groups on the other side of the debate, which would not have been possible, I don't believe, in a story that delved deeply into the scientific debate. There will be other chances to do that story."

I appreciate his points, as well. But he's managed to miss mine.

There is no scientific debate. (*see below)

If these people had chosen to begin their attack on science and reason with the age of the Universe, or the claim that all the wonders shown us by the Hubble and Chandra are either (a) lies constructed by the Devil to make us disregard the clear statement in Genesis that the sun, moon, and stars are there to "give light upon the earth", (b) falsely created at great age and distance from the earth by God, to "test us", or (c) created as if they were old and distant by God ditto, would we give them time in our class rooms?

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

This account is clearly at odds with everything we know about cosmology. The rest of the Bible isn't much better - witness Joshua "stopping" the sun to make the day longer, for one thing.

But most Americans are totally intrigued and fascinated by deep space and the Hubble, and attacking on this front would be somewhat unproductive. The same is true of attacking plate tectonics - especially after the December tsunami, which so dramatically demonstrated the theory in action - even though it too contradicts Genesis (dramatically).

Even Americans who believe in praying for the sick would probably balk (well, most of them would) if they lost modern medicine and had to start treating illness by smearing themselves with lamb's blood.

But evolution? That's different. For some reason that I can't fathom at all, this piece of science is fair game. On all fronts: not just schools. As Bob Parks says in "What's New"

The 2003 IMAX film "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," sponsored by NSF and Rutgers, would seem to be just the sort of documentary that science centers thrive on. Not exactly. It was turned down by a dozen Science Centers, mostly in the South, because of a few brief references to evolution. There goes the profit margin. The result is that IMAX films just aren't made if the science might offend the religious right. It's worse in schools. Even if there is no prohibition on teaching evolution, teachers leave it out rather than listen to all the complaints. In the 1925 Scopes trial, Clarence Darrow said, "John Scopes isn't on trial, civilization is on trial." It still is. And it's losing.

So while we think we're winning a victory in one place - because stickers have to come out of a book - we're losing on others we can't even fight. How to make IMAX, or Discovery Channel, or PBS stick to the truth? Can't be done if they're too afraid to do it. And with Congress more and more on their side...

Lou Dobbs feels free to say, on a CNN program which was allegedly a fair debate (2 creationists, 1 guy against teaching creationism as science, and Dobbs) on the origins of life, "The fact is that evolution, Darwinism, is not a fully explained or completely rigorous and defined science that has testable results within it." That's not only out of line for the 'moderator', it's flatly untrue. For instance, the National Academy of Sciences considers evolution "the central unifying concept of biology" and "one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have."

CNN obviously feels the creationists are so powerful, they don't even need to pretend to be objective. Imagine a discussion on the origin of the universe in which Dobbs would say, "The fact is that astronomy is not a completely rigorous science..." and offer his opinion that the Ptolemaic Earth-centered universe should be taught beside the modified Copernican model. Hard to believe? But what many people, including the NAS, call "the central unifying concept of biology" is fair game.

And if they win this one, they won't stop. If they defeat reason and science (which means "knowing") on one front, they'll come around and attack on another, and from strength.

No? Bush is on record as saying ID should be taught in schools - so's Bill Frist. And John McCain. In fact, all politicians are starting to say it, pandering to the power of those whose faith is more important than their reason.

That scares me. I don't want to live in a country where reason is subordinate to dogma, where science (which means, for those of you who believe in argument from etymology, 'knowing') is subordinate to religion (which means 'to tie down'), ruled by people whose faith is so tenuous that mere exposure to a competing idea is fatal.

As Giordano Bruno said, in 1600 when he was burned alive for espousing the "anti-faith" theory of his day, that the Universe is infinite, the Sun is a star, and other stars have their own planets: "Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it."

But I'm scared enough.

So, I'm doing my bit. It may not be much, but it's what I can do. See The Ridges' Emory Valley for things I've collected.

* Footnote: See, just for instance, Project Steve, where more than 500 scientists have signed a statement saying

"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate scientific debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism of evolution. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of the public schools."