Pastor Jones
Cries and moans
And spouts his hateful views
He makes it clear
For us to hear
And floods the evening news
As cameras click
He does his shtick
And writers meet their deadlines
Somehow his shit
Is “news that’s fit
To print” and makes the headlines
This Jones, I think,
Enjoys his ink
When writers praise or scoff—
So I suggest
It might be best
To turn the cameras off.

A story in yesterday’s NYTimes does a bit of navel-gazing, and ponders the media’s role in Pastor Terry “Burn the Koran” Jones. Prior to his surfing the “ground zero mosque” media wave, Jones was an annoying little man who was unknown to the vast majority of us, a small fish even in his own community. He tried to get noticed, but frankly, few cared.

That was then; this is now. Every newspaper, every media outlet, everybody with access to ink or pixels has written about this pathetic man, and he has gladly stood in the center of a ring of cameras and made the most of a slow news period. (Yes, I see the irony in complaining about this while engaging in it. But I am a very small cuttlefish, and the odds of Jones being aware that I have even written his name are infinitesimal.)

The news cycle loves tempests in teapots. That is what this is. Jones has every right to burn [his own] copies of the Koran. The beautiful irony of it is, every argument he might make for exercising this right, is an argument in favor of building the mosque he is so dead-set against. Me? I’m an atheist, so I have no dog or god in this fight. But I would rather not establish a precedent of the government being able to dictate this sort of thing, because I quite selfishly would like to maintain my own right to offend people by writing… well, the sort of stuff you might find if you look through this blog.

Dear CreationConversations, could you help me out a bit?
We’re about to study Science, where in truth I must admit
That my knowledge base is lacking, and I really don’t know shit,
‘Cept the science that my pastor says is true—

Like that evolution’s evil, which already I’d suspected,
Cos if God says we’re created, then that doesn’t mean selected;
If my teacher mentions Darwin, then I want my ears protected,
So I’m looking to the experts—namely, you.

So I hear we might be learning about animals and plants
And a bit on reproduction, where I think that there’s a chance
That I’ll get a funny feeling near the zipper of my pants
And I’m worried that I won’t know what to do!

Can you help me with some answers? Can you help allay my fears?
Can you help me if some science accidently hits my ears?
Cos the they say it doesn’t matter what a Christian student hears—
It’s their Darwinist-Evangelistic view!

If I hear their godless message, there’s a chance I might succumb,
And that violates my first amendment right to still be dumb!
It’s my right to read the bible till my thinking stuff goes numb!
My religion says that learning is taboo!

I’ll await your thoughtful answer with a keen anticipation;
You can see that I’m concerned about my future education—
If you can’t find a solution to this current situation
Then my dream to be a doctor might be through!

So, yeah… according to PZ, CreationConversations is the place to go for advice on how to handle those pesky presentations of evidence for evolution that play havoc with one’s religious world view. I think one or two of my students must have gone there… probably not, but it was fun knowing more about the purpose behind their dog-whistle questions than they themselves knew. Those poor innocent children, naively asking questions they have been fed by utter bullshit artists. But it’s nice to give both the answer to the question and the warning against trusting those bullshit artists again. Two answers where only one was expected!

In the beginning, there was a void,
Which left a lot of folks annoyed.
So Hawking thought he’d take the case
And looked through time and space.

He looked to where it all began—
This thoughtful and inquiring man—
To where some say there must be God
And thought, “well, this is odd.”

“From gravity alone, I see
The Universe that came to be—
There need not be a Guiding Hand;
I hope you understand.”

But those who search in vain for Gaps
Where God may hide, just said “Perhaps
It’s God, creating Gravity,
Through his divinity.”

But comments left on news-sites show
That common people claim to know
Much better than a physics prof
(At whom they point and scoff)

Their knowledge-base approaching null,
Still from the vacuum of their skull
Ex nihilo, opinions sprout
And come a-creeping out.

From ignorance comes solid proof
That God is there—he’s just aloof—
And Hawking erred throughout his book,
They know without a look.

As usual, the real fun is to be had not in reading the articles about Hawking’s new book, but in reading the comment sections to those articles! Hawking’s book, which is not yet available, is already clearly wrong. Apparently faith in god comes with the ability to time travel, or to read so fast that you can finish a book several days before it is released.

Suppose you were down in the hole
But were not a mole
And were thus unaccustomed to life 700 meters underground
Where you are now found.
And suppose that everything that people could send to you had to fit into a hole barely the size of your fist—
What’s on your list?

Seriously… I have been thinking about this for a few days. The hole is narrower than a wine bottle (besides, the experts are telling them they can’t give the trapped miners alcohol–or cigs, for that matter), and some 700 meters long. You are trapped with 32 others, which limits the amount of time available for getting you your own personal stuff. If something gets stuck, it needs to be pulled up again, which further wastes time. Quite a technical problem to begin with, let alone the personal variables!

The logistics of first designing and then sending a world of supplies down more than 2,200 feet through a hole not much bigger than a lemon has challenged the Chilean engineers and their counterparts from around the world, including NASA scientists and submarine commanders.

“That’s the size of the tube by which we can supply them,” said Chilean Health Minister Jaime Manalich as he formed a small circle with his hands. “Everything we develop must be this size or smaller.”

Manalich described a laboratory of inventors behind the scenes who are designing everything, including collapsible cots and miniature sandwiches for lunch.

Source
So… what’s on your list? If you get greedy, 32 people will put you at the back of the line. If you don’t speak up, you get nothing.

Me? I’ve slept on rocks before, I can wait on the cot. Roll some writing paper around a pen or two, and that ought to slide right down. That, and a loaded MP3 player with earbuds, and I’ll wait in the back of the line for a long time.

On NPR, a story asks the musical question “Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?” The work of psychologist Jesse Bering is profiled–Dr. Bering has written extensively on the intuitive conceptions (mainly in children) of various supernatural beliefs, like invisible observers, gods, and the mental capacities of dead entities. He speaks of religious belief as an epiphenomenon, that there is an abstract belief in intentional agency that gives rise to, rather than springs from, religious thought.

I am hoping that he has been the victim of quote-mining, but with such a pithy quote I rather doubt it:

Bering has a credo, a truth he says he’s learned after years of studying this stuff.

“I’ve always said that I don’t believe in God, but I don’t really believe in atheists either,” Bering says. “Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives.”

He certainly seems to have found this in his research. It does not match my own experience (although it did when I was younger), and I have certainly read of other atheists who claim it does not match theirs. But Bering has an explanation for that:

In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother’s death.

“They experience it but they reject it,” Bering says. “Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that’s not to say that they don’t experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way.”

Ah. He felt something shortly after his mother died (the wind chimes tinkled, and he felt it was a message from his mother–he does not say he believed this, but rather that he felt it, which is a meaningful distinction), and thinks we all must feel the same?

“I don’t believe in atheists”, the man said with a smile
“See, everyone believes in God, but some are in denial”
It must have been convenient, though, as anyone can see–
Just throw away the data points with which you disagree!
I’d like to try this method–goodness knows what I will find–
The greatest boon to science in the course of humankind!
There’s guaranteed significance! The dumbest will look smart!
We can find the things we’re looking for, and know before we start!
No more “plus or minus” error bars, uncertainty, or doubt;
When data disagree with you, you simply throw them out!
“I don’t believe in atheists”–it’s really rather dim.
If that’s his methodology, I don’t believe in him!

The patients here are silent. Their machines
Speak for them, in rhythmic beeps and colored lines,
And numbers–lots of numbers. Which one means
He is getting better? Or worse? What are the signs
We should attend to? I choose to watch the heart
Monitor; for now, it is holding steady, if fast.
They’ve chilled his blood, in hopes his brain will start
To heal itself, but now two days have passed;
It’s time to warm him up. We hope for the best
And wait, and watch the numbers, and pace, and cry.
The doctor’s face confirms–we’ve failed this test.
There is no doubt; my brother soon will die.
We know, today, his heart will slow and stop,
And as we watch… the numbers start to drop.

This was intended (still is, I suppose) to be just one of a series of sonnets, observations from the hospital. The different populations within the hospital were fascinating to watch, even in such horrible circumstances as we were in. The families of patients, both new and long-term; the doctors and nurses–“heroic” does not come close; the new parents; the cops and paramedics bringing in the victims of accidents and shootings; the janitorial staff, who appear to have seen everything all too often; the clergy, impotence masquerading as importance.

But, perhaps understandably, these are not easy things to write. I’m not a poet; I’m a commenter in verse. It is the exception, rather than the rule, when I write about something that touches me personally. Hell, I could make the argument that the restriction of verse is just another way of distancing myself from a topic. It has to rhyme, after all

Anyway. I’m not happy with it, but here it is, for now. I plan to revisit (in verse, that is) this hospital, but I couldn’t begin to say when that will be.

There was a man whose name was Dick;
Don’t ever be like him.
His tone was rude; his tongue was quick;
You’d never call him prim;
He always called a spade a spade—
Unvarnished was his truth—
To argue, he was unafraid,
And had been since his youth.

Opponents claimed that Dick was mean
(Of course, he did not care;
Just one more chance to vent his spleen,
To argue, and to swear)
They came up with a special plan
As smooth as it was slick
They started to dismiss the man
And blamed it all on Dick.

There also was another guy
I think his name was Stan
Who had it in his mind to try
And be a nicer man;
He argued smartly; argued well,
So cogently and brightly
And always (so the stories tell)
He argued so politely!

But those with whom he argued saw
In Stan, a different sort;
A Stan they’d mostly made of straw
To pick apart, for sport
They knew that Stanley disagreed—
Politeness didn’t stick—
The disagreement’s all they need
To label him a Dick.

There was a man whose name was Dick;
Don’t ever be like him.
His tone was rude; his tongue was quick;
You’d never call him prim;
He always called a spade a spade—
Unvarnished was his truth—
To argue, he was unafraid,
And had been since his youth.

Opponents claimed that Dick was mean
(Of course, he did not care;
Just one more chance to vent his spleen,
To argue, and to swear)
They came up with a special plan
As smooth as it was slick
They started to dismiss the man
And blamed it all on Dick.

There also was another guy
I think his name was Stan
Who had it in his mind to try
And be a nicer man;
He argued smartly; argued well,
So cogently and brightly
And always (so the stories tell)
He argued so politely!

But those with whom he argued saw
In Stan, a different sort;
A Stan they’d mostly made of straw
To pick apart, for sport
They knew that Stanley disagreed—
Politeness didn’t stick—
The disagreement’s all they need
To label him a Dick.

They said, of PZ Myers, “why, the man has got no heart!
He’s the bastard son of Satan, don’t you know?”
Now it’s off to Minneapolis, to crack his ribs apart
And determine if the situation’s so.

He’s a man who deals in evidence, a man who deals in facts
Why, he’s writing all about it in his book!
When the doctors said they didn’t like the way his ticker acts,
He’d be first to tell them, “hey, let’s take a look!”

If you’d like to say a prayer for him, just hang your head in shame,
That’s a waste of time, complete and utter loss!
But to really make a difference (you can do it in his name)
I’ll give blood, at the American Red Cross!

Comment, originally here.

So… why not a PZ Myers Blood Drive? I know it’s not an actual poll, but to pharyngulate the blood bank would be a very worthwhile cause. I personally think this week would be an excellent one for such a call to action… and that way, cracking open PZ’s chest can be good, not just for him, but for many others across the country and perhaps across the world!

In natural selection, there are special sorts of features
Which are sexually dimorphic, and selected for as such—
Like the plumage of a peacock, or the buttocks of a mandrill
Or some other bits, impressive in their sight, or smell, or touch
If some arbitrary feature signals reproductive fitness
Evolution may be focused on that feature for a while
The result? Exaggeration of a reproductive signal
Just a part of evolution, but it really has a style!
Imitation and intelligence are (sometimes) found in humans
In proportions far outstripping our survival needs, it seems
In our search for reproduction, we’ve developed all of culture—
For the species known as humankind, our peacock’s tail is memes

In the New York Times “Opinionator”, Sue Blackmore replicates her TED talk on memes and temes:

All around us information seems to be multiplying at an ever increasing pace. New books are published, new designs for toasters and i-gadgets appear, new music is composed or synthesized and, perhaps above all, new content is uploaded into cyberspace. This is rather strange. We know that matter and energy cannot increase but apparently information can.

It is perhaps rather obvious to attribute this to the evolutionary algorithm or Darwinian process, as I will do, but I wish to emphasize one part of this process — copying. The reason information can increase like this is that, if the necessary raw materials are available, copying creates more information. Of course it is not new information, but if the copies vary (which they will if only by virtue of copying errors), and if not all variants survive to be copied again (which is inevitable given limited resources), then we have the complete three-step process of natural selection (Dennett, 1995). From here novel designs and truly new information emerge. None of this can happen without copying.

The really attentive reader might remember that I posted Blackmore’s TED talk on this topic last year, after seeing Daniel Dennett give a very similar talk on Darwin Day. There is much replication in the world of memes. Some repackagings are, as is to be expected, more successful than others at replicating.

I myself wonder how much of it can be stuffed back into its original box; that is, might it be the case that memetic evolution is not a new type whatsoever, but just one particular result of natural selection? The peacock’s tail is much more than it needs to be–so is the human brain, and human behavior, and imitation and culture. But… Darwin wrote about sexual selection; features that are related to reproduction are, evolutionarily speaking, on the fast track for selection. Even the worst (in my subjective but correct opinion) bands somehow seem to attract groupies; the ability to write an earworm of a song clearly has reproductive consequences. Kissinger (eww…) said that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”. You don’t have to be Freud to see that the stuff that advances culture gets you laid.

Which does not, come to think of it, explain the existence of pseudonymous poets. Where is the payoff?

Back to the drawing board.