Weekly Irony:

Art for July 4th

2009-07-04T09:53:00.000-07:00

Renaissance Art

Fresco Painting of the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo Davincci

Fresco Painting of the Battle of Anghiari by Michelangelo Simoni

Primavera by Sandro Botticelli

The School of Athens by Raphael Stanzio

The Last Judgement by Michelangelo Simoni

Whimsey for June 28th

2009-06-28T14:36:00.001-07:00

The Snoring Menace

*

This isn't the first time I have set out to capture the horrors of snoring in prose. I have, on several occasions, opined about the irony of the one person in the room, camp, bunkhouse etc... who is gluttonously enjoying a night of sleep, while at the same time depriving others of it.

Right now, my roommate is nocturnally wailing away like a large beast in the throws of death. I have been lying awake for the last forty-five minutes mentally crafting this letter, so decided maybe if I actually write it, I will finish tired enough to sleep through the storm.

It is a terrifying, discordant unmelody he is playing, as I imagine Satan's orchestra plays for newcomers at the gates of hell. There are several sections of his head involved. The whiny vibe of soft palate tissue is ever-present, and intermittently accompanied by snaps of saliva, howling winds rushing into his gaping maw, farting lip pulses and intensifying crescendos of vocal tones that sound too ghastly to be human.

The sound of a man struggling to breathe is putrid and unnatural, broken occasionally by the bassy snort that signifies a rare, effective gasp or the disconcerting silence of an apnea episode. Ten seconds... twenty... thirty seconds without a breath. Maybe I should check on him.

KKKWWWWWEEEEEEEEKKKTTTTTT!

Never mind.

Snoring really is an amazing sound, so rich and complete in its ugliness, like a baby's cry; except that it is an utter malfunction of the human body. It may be that it serves an evolutionary purpose, to make sure that some members of the tribe sleep light enough to notice a wolf or wandering camp-fire before it has a chance to run amuck. However this seems unlikely. The noises I am hearing right now are loud enough to carry for miles, and would attract predators were I not protected by the concrete walls of a room that, unfortunately for me, happens to have fantastic acoustics.

By god! Roll over on your side man!

I woke him, and told him he was snoring. He got up to take a piss, so it's a sprint to fall asleep first.

Art for June 28th

2009-06-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

It Might Get Loud

Music for June 28th

2009-06-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

The Penguin Cafe' Orchestra

I love them, and so will you.

Irony for June 28th

2009-06-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

Their Violent Oath

***

“First Sergeant, call the roll,” the officer in charge of the ceremony ordered. Wyatt rose along with the rest of his unit, which had gathered under the pall of recent events.

“Sergeant First Class Duranio,” First Sergeant Duggar began.

“Here,” Duranio responded, an air of bravery added artificially to the timber of his voice.

“Staff Sergeant Alexander.”

“Here Top,” said Alexander, and First Sergeant Duggar continued his roll down through the ranks, solemnly calling off the names of his soldiers. Byleck, Brown, Wolf, and Sokalowski rounded out the non commissioned officers. They were stoic in their returns, but some of the privates, Abdi, Rodriguez, Wilson, Leight, Beecher and Frank, whimpered. Wilson had even cried aloud, his face striped by tears. Wyatt’s name was up.

“Private Joyce.”

“Here first sergeant,” he answered as somberly as the non commissioned officers had. Then it was Captain Saragossa.

“Captain Saragossa…”

No response, but the tearful sputters of heroic men.

“Captain Saragossa…”

All remained silent, save the restless shifting in chairs of the assembly.

“Captain Deon J. Saragossa...”

Finally, the response came in the breathy drone of bagpipes playing a lonesome rendition of Amazing Grace. That despondent tune called for the spirit of Captain Saragossa to ascend. He was exulted by three volleys from the honor guard’s seven rifles.

“Ready, fire”

Bang-slap-click

“Ready, fire”

Bang-slap-click

“Ready, fire.”

Bang-slap-click

The rifle shots struck a crisp rhythm through the loose whine of the kilted piper, who never stopped playing. He just turned, and walked off until the heartache of his song, wending through the breeze, grew dim and intermittent then vanished away for good.

“First Sergeant, let Captain Saragossa’s name be stricken from the roll,” said the officer in charge.

Wyatt was not given to emotional outpouring, but he could feel the heavy gloom of the ceremony drawing metal from his stoicism and adding it to the lead weight in his stomach. He imagined how his family would endure The Final Roll Call.

Private Joyce…

Private Joyce…

Private Wyatt D. Joyce…

***

Hayden,

Please apologize to your mailman on my behalf as I hear depressing letters are heavier to carry than letters containing good tidings.

I write you with great concerns about my future. Remember our “forgotten soldier” hypothesis concerning the reason I haven’t been deployed yet? It’s about to be tested by top brass. I am still in Korea, and it is safe here. But for how long I can't tell. I read a newspaper article called, Every Soldier to War, today. It was about an effort by Human Resources Command to root out soldiers who have somehow missed this war, and to send them to deploying units. If they find me, I will be involuntarily extended to spend the next two years training up and fighting in Iraq.

This would be a cruel twist for me. I’ve been waiting to become a civilian again for the majority of my enlistment. Now, at the very end, I may be delayed. In an imposition that would be illegal by all rights of contract law outside of the military, I could very well become a ‘stop-loss’. I’ve searched myself and asked God; no answers yet as to whether I could bear another two years of waiting for my real life to begin.

That said, I feel compelled to reassure you my fears are not for my own personal safety. They’re for my principles. I've become a devout humanitarian. I have tried both philosophical stances on this war, and settled on the fact that I can not in good conscience endorse it. I would sooner vow to never again call another person “enemy” than redeem my oath to defend against, “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” In the five years since I swore to that rhetoric I've come to believe, above all, a man deserves to abide his own code, no matter what entity claims ownership of him.

I have to warn you about a trend you will soon notice in my letters: sunrises. I’m writing by the cool hued light of an amazing one right now. Dust from China blows across the Korean peninsula this time of year. It picks up pollution along the way, so the locals wear surgical masks. They call it the “Yellow Sands”. I’ve seen satellite pictures of the clouds, and have to say, they’re an impressive ecological event. However, sitting here, watching the Sun born anew, all I notice is that they make for an amazing light show.

Tomorrow I’m going to a place called Nightmare for a training exercise. I’m not sure how it got that name, and I really hope I don’t find out. Expect more pictures soon, and keep sending them to mom.

Tell, Jen she better still be in school when I get home. Tell her I never stop thinking about her, and I love her.

Take care brother, and write me soon,

Wyatt

***

Their assurances- the rows of tall men and the artless cadence of marching feet- their violent oath: Your dreams are not safe, nor the tender operas in the sky, nor their promise that the Sun is close by.

***

“Freedom isn’t free,” they told him. He seemed to remember when it was, a youth in which his boundaries extended throughout all of space and time to the edges of his back yard, an infinite garden, a flawless timepiece that would never corrode or need winding. That chapter of his life was so vivid, a wonderful schizophrenia, imagination and reality blended seamlessly into an impossibly vast world. Those memories were a Jackson Pollock painting, hazy and undefined, but beautiful none the less. He thought he was entitled to freedom then, but apparently he was running a debt.

Wyatt dreamed about the Eden of his youth, drifting in and out of the harsh tangibles around him- the sand bags and machine guns, the roaring knife of January wind invading his ears and storming his inner voice. He could feel the inquisition of the man next to him, peering over his shoulder and into his mind, questioning his dreams, “What you thinking bud? Thinkin’ about Sally rotten crotch? Cryin’ ‘bout goin’ home I bet,” no privacy, not even in his imagination, “Thinkin’ ‘bout your fag journal? Your little girl diary,” Wyatt hushed his thoughts to a secretive whisper.

I hate stand to- so dark and cold. Why does it have to be so damn cold? He thought. The moment before the Sun comes up is also the moment in which it has been down the longest.

Stand to was that vulnerable slice of the clock, just before sunrise, when the enemy was most likely to attack. All men must come to arms during stand to, and take up position along the perimeter. This was an important strategy, handed down by the likes of Alexander and Napoleon.

It was a wasteful way, Wyatt thought, to spend a sunrise. Slouched against the sandbag wall of his fighting position, peering through his M-16’s iron sights, he studied the crest of a distant roll in the landscape, pretending to scan it for the spearhead of an imaginary attack- enemies he knew would never come.

“Joyce, Private Wyatt Joyce,” the hard toned voice of Wyatt’s first sergeant was detuned from years of overuse, and startled him back to life.

“Here. Moving Top,” Wyatt responded, slinging his weapon and crawling out of his fox-hole.

He thought First Sergeant Duggar looked too old for the digital camouflage on his uniform. He was a ruthless cuss, indoctrinated, institutionalized and enslaved for the majority of his life. Wyatt suspected he suffered a condition, one in which every time he did not comprehend, he hollered; thus he was constantly hollering.

“You’re getting curtailed Joyce. Know what that means?” First Sergeant Duggar barked, leading Wyatt into a tent.

“That I’m getting cut short in Korea first sergeant,” Wyatt answered, ducking through a pair of olive-drab, canopy flaps and shifting his gaze to the ground to hide his fearful understanding of “curtailed”. The debt collectors had found him.

First Sergeant Jones’ long stare fell flat, “You’re going to a deploying unit, Fourth Infantry Division."

"But my contract is up in three months First Sergeant. I'm supposed to be getting out."

"Well you're not. You're contract is being involuntarily extended. We have stop loss papers you need to sign,” he said the words 'stop loss' without remorse. Wyatt tried to stifle his shock, his repulsion, and sensed a condescending scorn in First Seargent Duggar’s eye.

He looked out through the tent flaps, out across the perimeter and the low, dirty expanse beyond to the jagged Korean mountains. They slouched, relieved of their majesty and marred by defensive, military structures. From their tops the ancients had long ago surveyed a vast forest of natural wonders, but with age it had become a broad, screaming dystopia.

The Sun was up, fully visible above the craggy horizon. Wyatt had missed it.

***

From 32,000 feet the Earth’s grand arc had noticeable shape. It hinted to Wyatt of the planet’s dimensions and its membership in the greater cosmos. He had embarked on a twelve hour flight to visit his family in Minnesota for ten days, after which he would soldier on to Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, then the desert war zone.

As his flight path bent northward, above the Arctic Circle, Wyatt watched the Siberian tundra become a rolling sea, and took special notice of its transition from a liquid ocean to disjointed ice shores, and finally the solid polar cap. He felt like an astronaut orbiting Jupiter’s icy Europa.

Wyatt thought of his brother and how many times he had tasted the world from such a Godly perspective. Hayden had been a professional helicopter pilot for nine years, so Wyatt guessed he had made perhaps thousands of ascents into the heavens, freely mocking the jealous masses that slogged the ground below.

He remembered the flight they had taken together. The doors of their chopper had been left behind for a cooler day, and as they dangled beneath the whirling blades, Hayden had silenced the raucous chop-chop by piping an opera into their headsets.

“What is this?” Wyatt had asked as serene tones soothed his nervous ears.

“I took some guy and his girl out past Taylor’s Falls on their anniversary. He had me play it for them. I told him I liked it, so he left it for me. I have no idea what it’s called. Beautiful though,” Hayden had answered.

“It really changes the mood.”

Then, for a long while, no words had been exchanged. With esoteric heads, they had soared, skirting under scant clouds and genuinely enjoying the lay of creation, its breadth spread out like a map.

“An eagle,” Hayden had finally said over the intercom, reaching across Wyatt’s body to point out the stately bird. It had swooped in to investigate them, a kindred spirit, and had joined their flight path for a short while, before departing with an easy, wings-left roll, soaring on to some favorite hunting grounds in its wild, northern kingdom.

The unspoken comfort of brotherhood, the Earth and the opera, the eagle and the utterly splendid magic of the sky- Wyatt remembered that eternal moment, and realized Hayden still lived in the garden of their youths.

Wyatt looked back down at the receding polar ice cap, and put his hands to his temples, feeling the flanks of his hairline where age had begun to cause retreat. He opened his laptop, and wrote a letter.

***

Riding the escalator down to the baggage terminal, Wyatt peered ahead, searching through the crowd of weary travelers for Hayden. When he found him they made eye contact, and at first there were only stoic head nods. The nods were an unconscious Minnesota tradition, chin up not down. Soon goofy grins were erupting from their faces. A chuckle escaped from Wyatt’s composure, and as they met to greet, Hayden hugged him unabashedly.

“How was the flight?” Hayden said softly in mid-hug. His voice had always been wise and handsome, but seemed to have a rich timbre Wyatt had either forgotten or never noticed before.

Wyatt backed up a step, and proclaimed, “Juniper!”

“What?”

“Juniper! Just remember it,” Wyatt said slyly.

“I don’t understand.”

“You may never know, but remember it- just in case.”

“Okay Wyatt- juniper.”

“Juniper,” said Wyatt.

“Another game.”

“You don’t like my games?” Wyatt asked, feigning hurt feelings.

“Ha-ha Wyatt, I love them. I highly approve sir.”

“Okay then, where is she hiding?” Wyatt asked.

“Jen? You think she’d come to see you?”

“Come on man, where is she?”

“Jen’s home with the flu, but she wished she could come,” Hayden said, and Wyatt searched his face for a lie, unable to confirm or deny it.

Then they milled around the baggage carousel for a while, talking about their family, and their jobs, genuinely pleased with each other’s presence. When they left the terminal Hayden asked very assertively, “Are you going to Iraq? It’s not a foregone conclusion you know.”

Wyatt didn’t answer. He had not thought of it that way yet. Nor did Hayden insist on a response. They both fell silent, allowing the question to hang ominously.

As they drove out of the city and headed north, towards their mother’s home, Wyatt observed that the Sun was already setting. “I somehow missed the sunrise from the plane," he said. "I lost a whole day I guess. I wish Jen was here. Where is she?”

“I told you she’s home sick Wyatt. You’ll see her soon enough,” Hayden said.

“Huh, I just wish she was here. I miss her,” said Wyatt, suspicious. Where was she? His imagination hurried to concoct jealous explanations the same way it had raced to assemble an impossible love story the first time he met her.

“So Wyatt, you don’t have to go you know.”

“Yes, I’m in the army. I have to follow orders, and think about it. This isn’t why I’m going, but they’d send me to jail if I didn’t.”

“Wyatt, Gary is setting up shop near Toronto. He’s got two birds up there, 44’s, and he offered me a job flying for him. You can come.”

“I can’t. I’m not like that, not like you.”

“Listen to me Wyatt. I know they filled your head with a bunch of nonsense and guilt about having to serve your country, but you’ve paid your dues. You’ve paid yours and probably mine too. You don’t owe them a thing if you ask me. It’s not your war. Part of Gary’s operation is going to be an aerial photography service, and they need a mechanic. It’d be something nice for you to do. Something you would like. A man deserves to abide his own code right? You don’t have to live your life in an army barracks, or in a trench or a foxhole.”

Wyatt thought about it, abide his own code, his own words had more weight when Hayden said them.

“It’s just too much- to move like that, to just… disappear. That's called AWOL. I don’t want to wreck my future, just to run away from my duty. And what about Jen?” he said.

“Jen is madly in love with you. She shot me down while you were gone,” Hayden joked. “She’ll follow you. I promise. And at least if you come with me to Canada, you know you’ll have a future. There’re no guarantees about that in Iraq.”

“I don’t know. It’s a big… It’s a huge decision. I didn't even know I had a choice until now. I hadn't thought of it that way.”

“I know. But you do have a choice, and you have ten days before you go. Just give it some thought.”

They got to their mother’s house late, after midnight, and both crept to their old bedrooms to sleep. Wyatt remained awake with a head full of jetlag and conflict. He pained over the fork ahead, unable for the longest time to answer even simple questions for himself. What was the most important thing?

Wyatt relived a private moment he and Jen had shared, stolen away from Hayden and his girlfriend in canoe, drifting across a northern-boundary lake.

“You think we’re in Canada?” Jen had asked, slouching back on her elbows in the bow of the canoe.

“Maybe; have you ever done it in a foreign country?” Wyatt had asked her, unhanding his oar to move close to her, playfully, and to trace the silk curve of her knee up towards her hips. Jen didn’t have to shave her legs. There was only the softest baby hair on them, so fine it could just be detected by the closest inspection. He ran his finger over her thigh, balancing along an imaginary line, one which he could never accurately predict whether she would or would not allow him to cross.

Jen had jumped, startled, and shrieked, “A moose!”

Nope, not this time, Wyatt had thought as he turned to see the massive creature. It had been larger than any magazine or nature program could ever fully convey. Wyatt had thought it was as big as a dinosaur, and later used that term, “dinosaur big”, to describe it to Hayden. The beast had lumbered across the shoreline, knee deep, refreshing itself in cool September water. This was his home, the whole world, all of nature and survival. It was completely unbound.

“You think you could protect me from him?” Jen had asked, coyly.

“He’s an animal. He’s wild.” Wyatt had not detected the intimate promise of Jen’s tone.

“You’re a wild animal too.” She had said, pulling him into her.

***

The Sun was still down, and it was black and frozen outside when Hayden got out of bed to let Jen in for the surprise that morning. He led her to Wyatt’s room where she was to crawl into his bed, careful not to wake him.

But Wyatt was gone. He wasn’t sleeping there in the room, or in the house or in the state. He had snuck off to war, and only left behind a letter in an envelope that bore the label, “Open when you see me again.”

Amid his confusion and the disappointment that lingered in the room, Hayden wondered about Wyatt’s game, Juniper?

***

It was ten months later that Hayden finally opened Wyatt’s letter, and read it aloud.

“First, to Hayden, I’d like to apologize for the mysterious nature of this letter. It had to be this way. You would never have accepted it had you known it was a…” Hayden paused for a breathless moment, than heaved himself back into Wyatt’s words. “…had you know it was a death letter.”

The despair caught back up to him, and Hayden shuddered. His face twisted uncontrollably with grief. The sorrow in that room was unyielding; the audience, a grey sea of anguished faces, was casting waylaid gazes upon him in a tide of miserable, irresistible pain. He succumbed, and joined those who were openly sobbing. Wyatt was gone forever, snuffed out in his sleeping hut by a lucky mortar round, and no other would ever be quite like him.

Hayden released a shuddering sigh, and gathered his faculties, tenderly resuming his oratory posture at the podium:

“I also must apologize for leaving you, and mom and Jen, so suddenly. I didn’t want to be convinced. You may or may not understand, but now it’s too late for that. I know this must be hard for you, but I ask that you share these words with whoever knew me well enough to be saddened by my death. Any method will be fine, but if I have a say, I’d prefer whichever causes the least pain.

“Do you remember picking me up at the airport? I said something which probably seemed out of place at the time, but which upon reading this will gain great meaning.

‘Juniper’

Reminds of Jennifer,
The smell of juniper,
I remember to pledge,
My endless love to her.

If she’ll be mine today,
I’ll swear my life to her,
So keep close to my heart,
My lovely Jennifer.

“This may seem an odd little game, but then weren’t they all? You were an inspiration, and I have admired you completely in these last few years. You have not forgotten to live wild, as we did together when we were kids. Continue to do so, and always bring me along on your journeys.

“Mom, you know you were my muse, my first inspiration. Without you, I would never have written a sentence or snapped a picture. You bring truth to the old saying, ‘Mother knows you better than you know you,’ and you have brought an endless depth and love of beauty to my life. Thank you.

“I don’t have much to regret, and everything I have ever wanted, I have now: a loving family, friends and the last word. You should have known I could never leave this world without having it.

“As to the cause that drove me out of this beautiful life, well, I presume there is no satisfaction down that road. I take full responsibility, as I should. I have made decisions, promises: I've made too many of them. Now I'm paying back what I owe by leaving behind the world, my loved ones, forever.

“And that is the hardest part Jennifer, for I have broken my oath. I can’t imagine a deeper pain than losing you, a pain which I will never suffer. I am the one who has abandoned you, and in doing so, left you to bear that burden alone. Nothing can be a more desperate guilt than that. It seems trivial to say, but I am sorry. Know that if there is an afterlife, sometime, some way I will find you there to hold and to watch the sun rise. I love you.

“Goodbye,

“Wyatt Joyce”

Science for June 28th

2009-06-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

A Lay-Person's Guide to Evolution:

Read it Yo' Damned Self!

“This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it has been solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet.”

-Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

This essay is written in the same conviction. We now know, to a remarkable degree of accuracy, what we are and why we are here. Darwin’s and Wallace’s solution is an astonishing and wonderful revelation, a brute fact, and it runs directly counter to its antecedents. Not only did we have it wrong before Darwin and Wallace, we had it dead wrong, wrong to the core, and we had been deeply committed to our wrongness. Nearly all of our current ethical assumptions are derived from pre-Darwinian thinking. To acknowledge this is to face up to the harrowing fact that nearly all of our current ethical assumptions are derived from a completely false understanding of what we are and why we are here. In an age of nuclear weapons, runaway population explosion, global civilization and industrial strength climate change, this should be considered an ethical emergency. This essay is written in the conviction that because of the Darwinian theory of evolution and scientific reasoning in general we are eminently better able now to formulate a useful system of ethics than we were 150 years ago, and if we do so, we shall be even more able yet after another 150 years.

Before continuing, I'd like to address the most common allegation I hear Darwin's theory indicted with, the aesthetic objection. I fully agree that, ostensibly, the implications of evolution are essentially tragic. The earliest known work of fiction is The Epic of Gilgamesh, a bizarre lamentation of human mortality. As a species, annihilation is our first and greatest fear, the arch-Freudian nightmare. We now know just enough to understand that it's much worse than we could ever have guessed. Not only will we each cease to exist before we really have a chance to live, not only will humanity cease to exist, erasing all chance for immortality through posterity, the universe will cease to exist, erasing all evidence of all works. Everything that ever flickered across the cosmic page will someday be nothing, most likely consumed in black holes then spewed homogeneously through an infinite, empty expanse of space-time in the form of cold, entropic Hawking radiation. Then the black holes will be gone, and there really will be nothing - as evangelicals say, "Nothing, not something-nothing, nothing-nothing." To the nature of the human mind, this repulsive tragedy is nearly too horrible to think about. Never-mind the cruel, mechanical sieve that burped us up only by sending parasites to rasp away at the insides of degenerates, predators to slaughter them and famines to starve them. The theory of evolution (in the broad sense that includes inflationary cosmology creationists usually mean) makes the ideas of eternal meaning and universal purpose untenable. I have to admit, I've struggled with the weirdness and tragedy of it almost as often as I've marveled at the sheer beauty and truth of it.

Of course, all that this means is that our deepest nagging suspicions about God and man's hubris are validated: God is the ultimate confirmation of man's hubris. The postulation of an infinitely wise, powerful and loving creator, who created us in his image and will take us to an infinitely good place for an infinitely long time after we die can only be the product of infinite hubris. Knowing about evolution is not to know that we are nothing. It only knocks us off of our natural delusion of grandeur. The fact that it's such a long fall is the result of the soaring height of our solipsism, not the depravity of reality. Indeed, the preceding paragraph is evidence of this hubris. It is a whiney declaration of tragedy because the universe doesn't care about me personally, because my memory will not last forever. That's a bit like complaining that Brunelleschi didn’t dedicate the Basillica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (and thus the exposition to the Renaissance) to me, only worse - cosmically worse. So what; the universe doesn't care, so we had better care about each other. As Hitchens says, only after we understand that there's no divine authority looking out for us do we realize that we might have to abolish slavery ourselves.

And there’s the beauty of it. The meaningless, purposeless world of evolution painted by those who object to it on aesthetic grounds doesn’t exist. It’s a bleak fantasy. Whatever the means of production, ours is a majestic world of rich meaning and purpose. We are creatures with souls (all be-it souls comprised of billions of neurons). We are still responsible for our actions in all the ways that count. Indeed we now know that meaning, purpose and responsibility only enter into the cold, lifeless, tick-tock order of a dead universe as a result of a long Darwinian process. That is the point condensed.

So on to the subtitle, Read it Yo Damned Self! Most people know just enough about evolution to oversimplify it. Evolution is like a musical instrument, one can make noise with it immediately, but spend the rest of their life exploring it’s complexities without achieving complete mastery. It was a lay person’s fascination with evolution that prompted me to pursue a formal education in Biology. Here is a short list of books, in the order I think they should be read, that have caused a philosophical awakening in my mind over the last few years. Of course, I’m not saying the same will happen for you (or to you as the case may be). I wouldn’t presume that everyone should think the way I do about evolution, but neither can I possibly fathom that anyone can read the following books and not be changed in good ways:

1: The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

This is the original fuss maker, and still a wonderfully cogent case for evolution by natural selection. There was a great deal that Darwin didn’t know about. Mendel’s work in genetics was published the year before Origin, but ironically unbeknownst to Darwin. And of course, the discreet, quaternary structure of the information stored by DNA couldn’t have been known until Watson and Crick discovered it in 1953. Still, Origin remains a wonderful entry point to evolutionary theory.

2: The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

I admit to having a natural atheist’s preference for Dawkins, and after reading him it will become clear to you why there is no Stephen J. Gould on this list. None the less, I am fairly certain that The Selfish Gene must be on any respectable evolution education list, especially one as philosophy minded as this. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins states with pure tone clarity exactly how reductionist we should make our thinking caps when regarding biology. His explanation of genetics, and the gene as the most prescient unit of natural selection was and still is a major contribution to neo-darwinism. Along the way Dawkins draws up many deep concepts and brilliant examples. It is important to note that the title, The Selfish Gene, is misleading. This isn’t a book about a specific gene for the personality trait of selfishness, nor a justification for being selfish. In fact, one of the overarching themes of the book is an explanation of the emergence of altruistic creatures from a substrate of genes that only ever evolve towards their own blind, mechanically selfish ends.

3: The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins

I know, another Dawkins book, but this one deserves to be on the list as well. The anticipation is that after reading Origin and The Selfish Gene, your head will be full of theory. Knowing how evolution happens, you will want to know exactly what happened here on Earth (or more honestly, what scientists thought happened based on the best evidence available when the book was published in 2004). The Ancestor’s Tale answers that question quite well, and without overstepping the limitations of current scientific knowledge. Dawkins is consummately intellectually honest, always careful to delineate between speculation and well trod science. The history starts with humans, and works back through most recent common ancestors with all of our current cousins. First it discusses the most recent common human ancestors that all living humans share - Mitochondrial Eve, Y-chromosome Adam and their ilk. Then it works back through our most recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos; then the rest of the apes; then gibbons etc... Soon the book has ranged beyond the marsupials all the way back towards the most recent common ancestor of all mammals, and eventually (after traversing the entire 614 page treasure trove) it arrives, with a healthy dose of explicitly acknowledged speculation, at the most recent common ancestor of all life on Earth. In the tradition of Chauser, Dawkins, tells the tale of a specific animal at each rendezvous point, and each tale has a moral about evolutionary biology to teach. For instance, the Axolotl’s tale, told when our most recent common ancestor with the amphibians is met, teaches the concept of neoteny. The Ancestor’s Tale is probably the most easily enjoyed of all the books on this list, and if you read just one, this should probably be it.

4: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, Matt Ridley

The title says it all here. This book is about sex and human nature. It’s the most provocative book on this list, placing humans firmly where they belong on the tree of life. When I say the book is about sex, take it two ways. First the obvious: yes, sex, as in people humping, why they do it, and why they do it the way they do it. There is a whole chapter on female infidelity as well as a chapter on the evolutionary explanation for the diversity of male sexual behavior - from harems to monogamy to homosexuality. The other way you should take it is less obvious. The question of how sexual reproduction could ascend to dominance in an evolutionary environment dominated by asexual reproduction is a perennial one for Darwinism. It is not perfectly clear that Ridley solved it, but the first several chapters of The Red Queen are dedicated to at the least advancing the ball, and he does a wonderful job of it. This book will blow your hair back. If you already fancy yourself an amateur evolution expert, and only read one book on this list, make it this one.

5: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life, Daniel Dennett

Dennett is a philosopher, not a biologist, but I would argue that he is as well educated on the topic of evolution as any biologists. This book isn’t so much an explanation of Darwin’s idea and the footnotes that modern science has added to it as it is a treatise on the ravages evolution has done to pre-Darwin philosophy. What of the precious Platonic idea of essentialism? What about purpose and meaning? What about free will? God? Does Darwin’s dangerous idea leave anything sacred? Dennett gives a gracious and morally conscientious treatment to these questions. Darwin's Dangerous Idea is definitely a book about evolution, but along the way you will encounter such a diversity of thought experiments, you will forget about biology all together from time to time. Of the books on this list, this is both the most difficult to read and my favorite.

It should now be considered an ethical obligation for all people of sufficient means to learn about evolution, as it is their obligation to learn what humans are and why we are here. No ethic is complete, or even begun, until it has incorporated the theory of evolution. A careful reading of these five books is a wonderful way to begin, and an entertaining treat for the reader to boot. Where to go from there if you’re still thirsty for evolution? Let the bibliographies guide you, perhaps back to school for a degree in biology!

Philosophy for June 28th

2009-06-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

Dennett and Dawkins Talk Philosophy

This is a conversation between Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Dennett is a philosopher of science at Tufts University and Dawkins is a Professor of biology and the public understanding of science at Oxford. Both have written several wonderful books on science and reason including Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained by Dennett and The Selfish Gene and Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins.

This video is a perfect demonstration of the fact that, like organic life, exhultation, gratitude, purpose and love of living can spring up without the aid of a God.

"The univese is so wonderful on its own it doesn't need a boss. It doesn't need a creator. The fact that it can in effect create itself is wonderful enough."

-Daniel Dennett

"Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet."

- Richard Dawkins

Science for May 28th

2009-05-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a great flash animation on the history of our entire universe as science knows it today - all the way from the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies to Earth, to evolution and finally human history.

Art for May 22nd

2009-05-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

Universe
Revealing Our Modern Mythology
by Jonathan Harris for Daylife

This is a really cool web thingamajig. It's a news search engine that turns the results into this free flowing constellation of images and shapes. Literally, you're using an animated starry sky to search the web. I don't know how to describe it any further other than to say click the link and give it a whirl. Whatever else you call it, this is most definitely art.

Whimsey for May 22nd

2009-05-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Nothing ironic about this. In fact, if you have a brain stem, you will laugh, reflexively. I think I heard the cactus sitting on my desk laugh. This is just plane hilarious, and further proof of man's place shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the great apes.

Irony for May 22nd

2009-05-22T16:40:00.001-07:00

Rupert's Mistake

Rupert J. Bullfrog fidgeted with the radio and picked nervously at the webbing between his fingers. His little frog crown rocked and bounced in the passenger seat of the pickup-truck as he drove down I-75, across the northern Georgia outlands.

Maybe I should just go back to the lily pad, thought Rupert, Maybe I’m making a big mistake.

Doubt had been running through his mind since he had left for the meet up, but that was two hours ago. It seemed he had passed the point of no return, and, turning off the highway into a small cluster of rural homes, he pressed through his apprehensions like a child closing his eyes and yanking on the corner of a Band-Aid.

Remember what she said Rupert. She’s lonely too. And who knows, maybe you really can become her prince. You deserve this.

Thinking back to the long distance relationship he had cultivated, Rupert realized what a wonderful thing the internet was. Only in this free, interconnected, modern age could an ugly frog like Rupert meet with a beautiful young lady like princessbaby2010.

Here it is, 1033 Palace Dr. Don’t chicken out man. You can do this.

Rupert pulled to the side of the street in front of the two-story country home. The front yard was dark. There were no cars in the driveway, and the house looked empty except for a light in one of the first-floor windows. He flipped down the sun-visor, confronted himself in the vanity mirror and said aloud, “Who’s the frog? You the frog Rupert! You’re the baddest, sexiest bullfrog in the pond. She’s going to love you. Croak yeah! Let’s do this!” He slapped himself in the face and flexed his froggy muscles, took a few deep breaths, then donned the crown. Back in the mirror, he gave himself some last words of encouragement, “It’s all you bro. You’re her prince baby. Princesses love princes. It’s croakin’ go time.” At that, Rupert stepped bravely out of the truck, slamming the door behind and giving his hippity-hop a jocular strut as he approached the house.

He made it about halfway to the front door before anxiety crept back to the forefront of his mind. Suddenly, nerves shocked his heart and skin. He felt like a tadpole in high school speech class, terrified.

Maybe she’s not even there. God Rupert what are you doing!? I can still go back to the lily pad. I can call this thing off. No harm, no foul right? Yeah, that’s it. I’m just going to go home. I can be back in time to catch the World Series of Poker on ESPN.

Just as Rupert was about to turn and make for his truck, the front door of the house opened, and a beautiful young princess emerged.

“Rupert?” she asked.

“Yeah…”

“Hey. I’m glad you came. Come on in and make yourself at home. I’m going to go check some laundry. Be back in a sec, kay,” she sang the words to him, a siren call, her beauty irresistible.

“Umm, okay,” Rupert’s voice shook a bit, and he hoped she hadn’t noticed.

“There’s some lemonade in the kitchen,” said the princess, as she vanished back into the house.

Rupert pressed on, completely intoxicated by a cocktail of excitement, fear and lust. Nervously, he entered the home. Crossing the threshold was like casting off a robe in front of a leering crowd.

What am I doing? His conscience whispered. Is this real?

Rupert made his way down a hall between a foyer and a large open doorway, into the kitchen. A pitcher of lemonade and two glasses sat on an island counter that was surrounded by barstools. He hopped up onto one of the stools, poured a glass and nervously sipped. Time seemed at a stand still, just Rupert in the kitchen, sipping and fidgeting and looking about.

Suddenly a professional looking man walked in the room holding a clipboard.

Her father? The king! I’m done for!

Rupert’s heart almost stopped.

The man looked Rupert squarely in his eyes and said, “I’m Chris Hanson, Dateline NBC. We’re doing a show called To Catch a Predator; ever heard of it?”

Rupert’s heart sank. He buried his face in his hands and replied with a long sigh, “Yes… Please sir; this isn’t what you think…”

Music for May 18th

2009-05-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

Bb 2.0:

High Concept Instrument for the Low Talant Musician

Bb 2.0 (say it "B flat 2.o") is a collaborative music project and a web page. But more than anything else, it is a conceptual instrument - a really cool instrument that's easy to play. The basic idea is that people have been sending in videos of themselves playing a variety of actual musical instruments or singing in B flat major. The page has 16 of the videos up so that you can play them in any combination to compose an ambient piece of music just by clicking on a few of the different videos.

It's a bit like playing a harmonica in that it is impossible to come up with a sour note. Harmonicas are made so every available note is in the same key as every other note. That way absolutely zero skill is needed to get started, but there are enough possibilities to keep a person entertained for hours (or for decades if you're John Popper).

Here's the explanation from the web site:
In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

Participate! Create a video and send me the link! Here are some guidelines:

-Sing or play an instrument, in Bb major. Simple, floating textures work best, with no tempo or groove. Leave lots of silence between phrases.
-Record in a quiet environment, with as little background noise as possible.
-Wait about 5-10 seconds to start playing.
-Total length should be between 1-2 minutes.
-Thick chords or low instruments don't work very well.
-Record at a low volume to match the other videos.
-You can listen to this mix on headphones while you record.
-After you upload to YouTube, play your video along with the other videos on this page to make sure the volume matches.

Update: Wow! This got bigger than I imagined! I greatly appreciate every submission, and I will watch everything, though I may not be able to reply to each. Also, I am being selective, in order to maintain the feel of the project. Many, many thanks to all who have submitted!

Science for May 16th

2009-05-16T22:07:00.000-07:00

Are We Hardwired with a Sense of Irony?

“Well, that’s just great.” Quick, what does that sentence mean? Is the speaker acknowledging some good news, celebrating a joyful event that just took place? Do we take the statement at face value? Or could the person who said it mean something quite different, maybe even the opposite? Perhaps his pleasure is not genuine.

The fact is we do not know. The words are ambiguous. The comment could be kind and authentic: imagine his daughter has just announced that she made the school honor roll for the first time. But he could just as well be stuck in rush-hour traffic, late for an important meeting. His comment in that case is probably not genuine at all but sarcastic.

How can we tell which is which? How as listeners do we recognize and comprehend irony? And what makes us use sarcasm and irony in the first place, when we could just as easily be literal and unambiguous? Communication is tricky enough without deliberately muddling things with hidden layers of meaning. What social purpose could such vagueness serve?

...One way to approach these questions is to look at language comprehension in children. Youngsters have few life experiences to speak of, so it would seem that they should be innocent of its ironies. They should take every sentence they hear literally, unless they are given some reason not to do so. So, to stick with the same example: if someone says, “Well, that’s just great,” kids should simply believe it. They should not be expected to probe for deeper meaning. If they do probe, it should be as an afterthought.

- Wray Herbert, October 2008 Scientific American Mind

Philosophy for May 16th

2009-05-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Next Life Doctrine:
Why the Afterlife Threatens to Destroy the Actual Life

The religious idea of prioritizing the next life ahead of this life is based on a falsity and leads inexorably to immoral behavior. Religious morality must accommodate the belief that, based on how well supernatural laws (probably written down by middle eastern goat herders, either during the Bronze or Middle Ages) are obeyed, the next life will be either infinitely good or infinitely bad and will last for eternity. I call this alarmingly common belief, that life itself is but a fleeting means to an end, the Next Life Doctrine. Because it is almost certainly false and because it downgrades everything in the physical world, including the struggle against human suffering, the sanctity of the Earth’s ecosystems and even the sanctity of human life, the Next Life Doctrine is among the greatest ideological threats to civilization. I will make my case in two parts. First I will argue that the Next Life Doctrine is almost certainly false, then that it is a grave danger to civilization.

The Next Life Doctrine is Almost Certainly False

One has to state the obvious at the get-go of any inspection of religion; there is a difference between believing in something for sound reasons and believing in something because it would be nice if it were true. Let’s face it; belief in the afterlife is an epistemic black hole. In fact, we have approximately the same amount and quality of evidence for the afterlife as we do for all sorts of things that are manifestly nonexistent, such as the Seven Eleven store on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa or the tiny elves who have a tea party in your kitchen every night while you sleep and meticulously clean up after themselves before you wake. I don’t mean to be rude or deliberately provocative. I am simply requiring that the Next Life Principle be subjected to the same constraints as any other fact claim about the nature of reality, and it seems that the only thing the Next Life Doctrine has going for it is that people want it to be true, which doesn’t amount to a single iota of evidence that it actually is true.

What exactly is the evidence for and what would constitute strong evidence for the afterlife? The most common evidence presented seems to be a dubious lot of ghost stories and near death experiences. These should be understood together as one phenomenon observed from two different points of view. Ghost stories are claims that a living witness observed or interacted somehow with a dead person. Near death experiences are claims that a living witness actually was a dead person. Good evidence would be reliably demonstrable under properly controlled conditions. We will see that such scientific evaluations of the Next Life Doctrine are currently underway.

Near death experiences are invariably muddled by the fact that death is a fuzzy term. When someone survives after being declared legally dead, all that it necessarily means is that the doctor who made the declaration made a mistake. Not much is known about the final moments of life and how the brain ceases functioning. When a doctor declares someone legally dead, she is really saying that whatever the precise status of their livingness or deadness, they have crossed a tipping point towards being completely dead very soon and it is beyond her professional ability to improve the situation.

Still there could be actual cases of a person coming back to life after they really are completely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, dead. It may even be possible for a person to be cold and dead for months, years or decades then resuscitated with their mind fully intact. If future advances in cryogenics accomplish such wonders, it will not be evidence that the mind exists beyond the physical brain, only that the brain can be shut down, preserved and then turned back on again without being damaged. Next Life Doctrine proponents will have to show evidence that the mind was somehow extant during the same period that the brain was nonfunctional. As much can’t even be said for coma patients, who wake with absolutely no knowledge of what transpired while they were comatose.

The only straight forward attempts to prove the disembodied mind hypothesis that I’m aware of involve placing a secret image on top of a bookshelf or in some other location that could not be seen from the subject’s position. The subject is then asked to leave their body, observe the secret image, and report on it. As far as I am aware, the experiment has been run with living subjects who claim to be able to self-induce out-of-body experiences, but no subject has actually been able to identify the secret image. It seems to me that an experiment along these lines, using a resuscitated dead person as the subject, could potentially produce realistic and valid evidence of the afterlife. Just our luck, this exact experiment is currently being run in resuscitation areas in 25 hospitals across the UK and America.(1) The three year study plans to collect data from 1,500 near death experience survivors. The results are not in yet, but it will be very interesting indeed (though doubtfully surprising). Other interesting research has already been done which confirms illusory nature of out of body experiences, and their physical links in the brain.(2)

Even if one claims to have good empirical evidence for the afterlife notice that in order to advance the argument they must first take some awkward cargo onboard. They must deal with the fact that if part of the brain is damaged, say, the prefrontal cortex, some combination of spacial reasoning, language, facial recognition, aggression control, artistic creativity etc... the intangibles that make you you, will also be damaged or altered, probably irreparably. A neurosurgeon could degrade your mind and personality in any of a thousand precise ways with a well placed swipe of the scalpel. Yet to argue for the existence of an afterlife one must maintain that if the brain is totally destroyed by death, the personality somehow survives intact. It is awkward cargo indeed, a contradiction that simply can’t be swept under the rug. It’s not strictly impossible the way a married bachelor is, but it’s an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence. That evidence is not forthcoming; in fact the search for it has been admirably and extensively conducted and come up empty. It would clearly be irrational to operate as if the Next Life Doctrine were true. We are on firmer ground in assuming that it is almost certainly not true. To place it near a familiar landmark along the continuum of certainty: It is safer to assume that the Next Life Doctrine is not true than it is to assume that leprechauns do not exist. After all, serious people have made serious attempts to produce evidence of the Next Life Doctrine and come up short. The same courtesy hasn’t yet been afforded to leprechauns.

But what if, for the sake of the discussion, I gave the Next Life Doctrine an absolutely gracious benefit of the doubt and said that it is manifestly true that the mind survives the death of the body? Unlikely as it is, imagine that the above mentioned scientific study of near death experience survivors confirms the disembodied mind hypothesis. If you already subscribe to the Next Life Doctrine, it would immediately be tempting to stretched your evidence further than it will go. Even if there is an afterlife, you have all of your work still ahead of you to say anything about what kind of afterlife it will be. There is no reason to believe the afterlife is linked in any way to the Bible or Koran or any other religious text. Perhaps there is a heaven, perhaps not. Perhaps there is only the warm bath and white noise of Buddhist enlightenment. Perhaps the afterlife is presided over by a god that hates Christians and loves skeptics! Perhaps admission to the afterlife is determined by one’s ability to mix a good Gin Gimlet. In the hypothetical world where it has been obviously proven that some type of afterlife exists, all guesses are still on equally poor footing, because there is no information to go by. It’s not just that the afterlife almost certainly doesn’t exist. It’s worse than that for the Next Life Doctrine. Even if it does there is no reason to believe you should change your behavior because of it.

The Next Life Doctrine is a Grave Danger to Civilization

As Christopher Hitchens says, “Falsity is a subdivision of perniciousness.” Falsity certainly isn’t a virtue, but it isn’t exactly what I’m worried about either. Even if the Next Life Doctrine was true, it could still be detrimental to Earthly civilization, but then if I really believed the Next Life Doctrine, I would have to argue that eternal civilization in paradise is worth the destruction of finite civilization on Earth, if that’s what it takes. And lo, according to a myriad of popular interpretations of many of our self-proclaimed holy books, including the two most popular, the Bible and the Koran (especially the Bible and the Koran), that is what it takes. Therein lies the problem. Many people take the Next Life Doctrine seriously enough to come to the same ‘whatever it takes’ conclusion as I just have. Evidence of this abounds in the form of suicide bombers, murdered abortion clinicians, dead Dutch playwrights, polygamist cults, Nigerian children abandoned or mutilated under suspicion of witchcraft and the like. I could fill a volume the size of your run of the mill sacred text with such examples. That is to say this stuff is really dangerous. The Next Life Doctrine, ironically, can kill you (and me, and your neighbor, and the Chinese, and everyone else on Earth).

Not only is the Next Life Doctrine proactively harmful, it is an unforgivable waste of resources and attention, the ultimate red herring. Why do we give credence to anyone who believes the Bible is the most important treatise ever written about human morality without first making them answer for the absurdities of Leviticus and Deuteronomy? Or put it this way: Why don’t we immediately call into question the ethical intuitions of any person who believes it is justifiable for an adult man to take a nine year old bride because the prophet Muhummad is recorded to have done so? (Recorded, that is, in a book of dubious historicity, though I don’t find the claim at all difficult to accept at face value.) It is bizarre to legitimize any moral system without question. People are almost gleefully eager to scrutinizing every jot and tittle of secular law, and rightly so. They want to live in a well designed society with well designed rules that promote general progress and well-being. If they are committing unjust acts or simply wasting time and resources laboring under a delusion, they want to know about it so they can make improvements. However, when it comes to the Next Life Doctrine or practically any religious doctrine for that matter, anything goes. Such doctrines are allowed to jump straight into the conversation at a level that is usually reserved for ideas that have passed through a gauntlet of litmus tests, without so much as a second glance. They distract us from problems that are actually rooted in the physical world. For instance, we can't even get started on an Africa solution because we are too busy fighting a counter-Jihad, squabbling about whether or not a human zygote (a hollow sphere of 100 undifferentiated, human cells) contains a soul, watching in horror as Hamas thumbs its nose at nuclear armed Zion or inexplicably and unforgivably wasting time ad nauseam on that recurring issue of the day, gay marriage.(7)

According to a recent CNN poll, 59% of Americans believe the events described in the book of Revelations are going to come true.(8) According to a 2007 AP poll roughly a quarter of Americans believed Jesus would return sometime in 2007, presumably to end the existence of the physical world as we know it.(9) These people are strong adherents to the Next Life Doctrine. If you take these people at their word (we have no choice) it follows logically that they can’t be counted on to be good international neighbors, to tolerate spiritual differences, to contribute to scientific inquiry or to conserve Earthly resources. This follows from the same reasoning that would prevent you from opening a mutual savings account with a friend who claimed to be certain they were going to win the lottery in the near future. Imagine the conversation:

“How do you know you’re going to win the lottery? The odds against it are mind boggling?”

“I just do. It fills my heart with joy to know I will win the lottery soon. I can’t imagine living in a world where I’m not about to win the lottery. I don’t understand how you can behold the beauty of a sunset and not have faith that you are about to win the lottery too!”

This may seem cute at first, but you certainly would be foolish trust in his fiscal responsibility. Imagine if he actually started behaving appropriately for someone who was about to come into a life changing sum of money. If, believing the time of his big jackpot was drawing near, he began giving away all of his possessions, filing under a higher tax bracket and shopping for mansions, you might even be compelled to intervene before he signed a lease. Now imagine he begins behaving as if the apocalypse is drawing near and instead of being your goofy friend, he’s the head of a nation, religious sect or political movement.

By now we should all be woefully familiar with the martyr’s infamous love of death. To what sensibility will we appeal when our death loving co-inhabitants of Earth finally get their hands on nuclear or biological weapons?(10) As any high school student knows, the world survived the Cold War on the wings of mutually assured destruction. No one can take credit for having the idea of mutually assured destruction. It’s not a policy or a doctrine. It’s not even a strategy. It’s actually a game theory solution, a naturally occurring stasis of distrust between mutually opposed agents who each make the base assumption that the other is at least as rational as they are. The prerequisite to this stasis is that both parties value the future of their own physical existence. Without a belief in the future, there would have been insufficient motivation to prevent the U.S.S.R. and the United States from destroying each other and the rest of Earth’s inhabitants in the process. It seems then that the Soviet and American juggernauts, with their thousands of intercontinental nuclear missiles, were never as dangerous as a hand full of muslim tribesmen from Kandahar with one warhead could be. The tribesmen have something unique that the Soviets and Americans never had, a genuine love of death. They are guaranteed to use their warhead because the only thing they truly value is the Next Life Doctrine, and we can not credibly threaten to retaliate against an enemy that imagines himself and everything of importance to him to be literally immortal.

I recently saw a news clip with a militant looking man shouting in Arabic. The subtitles read, “We love death more than the infidel loves life.” This man espouses a profound faith in the Next Life Doctrine, and I believe him. But I’m not just an infidel to Muslims. I’m what you might call a universal infidel, and I believe the Friar Hermans and Pastor Warrens and Rabbi Wolpes of the world love death too, maybe even as much as that militant looking Muslim on the TV. The whole of the world is in the hands of people who are capable at any time of immolating it in service of the Next Life Doctrine.

Art for May 16th

2009-05-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

Arthur Ganson's Kinetic Art

Arthur Ganson is an artist, engineer, and in my opinion a genius. He has created a small army of machines that are almost the physical embodiment of the Weekly Irony theme - some elegant, some whimsical, some intensely interesting, all ironic. Arthur's art could be described as kinetic sculpture or engineered irony, but I think they're just beautiful toys. I'll let Arthur and his machines speak for themselves.

Irony for May 16th

2009-05-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens

I pose a hypothetical question. As a man of some fifty-seven years of age, I am discovered sucking the penis of a baby boy. I ask you to picture your own outrage and revulsion. Ah, but I have my explanation all ready. I am a mohel: an appointed circumcisor and foreskin remover. My authority comes from an ancient text, which commands me to take a baby boy's penis in my hand, cut around the prepuce, and complete the action by taking his penis in my mouth, sucking off the foreskin, and spitting out the amputated flap along with a mouthful of blood and saliva. This practice has been abandoned by most Jews, either because of its unhygenic nature or its disturbing associations, but it still persists among the sort of Hasidic fundamentalists who hope for the Second Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. To them, the primitive rite of the peri'ah metsitsah is part of the original and unbreakable covenant with god. In New York City in the year 2005, the ritual, as performed by a fifty-seven-year-old mohel, was found to have given genital herpes to several small boys, and to have caused the deaths of at least two of them. In normal circumstances, the disclosure would have led the public health department to forbid the practice and the mayor to denounce it. But in the capital of the modern world, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, such was not the case. Instead, Mayor Bloomberg overrode the reports by distinguished Jewish physicians who had warned of the danger of the custom, and told his health care bureaucracy to postpone any verdict. The crucial thing, he said, was to be sure that the free exercise of religion was not being infringed. In a public debate with Peter Steinfels, the liberal Catholic "religion editor" of the New York Times, I was told the same thing.

-Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything