One person’s report is
“Galapagos tortoise
Is truly a creature of God”
It’s made, or created
By God, armor-plated,
With shell-shapes distinct, which was odd

Why God’s work might vary
Made ministers wary—
Perfection is what was expected!
But with close observation
Of type and location,
Particular trends were detected

The shells of some creatures
Have saddle-back features
Where cactus to forage grow taller
Where food’s near the ground
Different features are found
Like a domed shell that’s quite a bit smaller

What these features disclosed
Is what Darwin proposed—
That selection means shell shapes evolved!
Though a biblical search
Left the church in a lurch
Thanks to Darwin, the mystery’s solved!

A sad report, on a few levels; NPR’s “The Two-Way” blog reports that a 130-year old tortoise, a favorite at a South Dakota zoo, has died. Even for tortoises, this critter was old; grandparents showed it to their grandchildren, and told them of seeing it themselves at that age (Methuselah the tortoise was a respectable 73 when he arrived at the zoo).

But that’s not really why I’m writing. I’m writing because the very first comment at the NPR blog closes with “They are awesome creatures. A great God created them.” Which, frankly, is amusing given the tortoise’s role in providing Darwin with the evidence of evolution. Fifteen different subspecies of tortoise, each on a different island–my, what a capricious god must have created them! Oh, wait–the tortoises have saddle-shaped shells where the food grows higher, and round shells where it grows lower; perhaps characteristics vary, and those that offer an advantage are selected for by the environment!

So, NPR commenter, you get an irony award. Not redeemable for cash, but you may wear it proudly.

To heal yourself from being gay
The clinic’s here—so call today
We’ll blame your mom, and pray and pray;
It’s therapy, the Bachmann way.

Of course, when asked, we’ll just deny
We care if folks are gay or bi;
There is one simple reason why:
A Bachmann cannot help but lie.

So it turns out that Marcus Bachmann’s clinic does, after all, practice “ex-gay” therapy, which is far more religious than psychological. The full story is here at Truth Wins Out; a brief synopsis can be read here at Dispatches.

It’s six in the morning, the start of your day,
But you’re all out of coffee, and just want a cup
It’s a ten-minute walk to the nearest café—
Oh, quit fucking whining, and just suck it up

You’ve got errands to run; you’ve got places to go
We’ve heard the excuses; we’ve heard all the talk
The store isn’t far—just a mile or so
So hang up the car keys and just fucking walk!

You’ve got classes this morning—that’s two towns away
The drive is annoying; the parking’s a fuss
The answer is simple, I really must say:
Leave the car in the driveway and take the damn bus!

You’ll be taking the car, and you always complain
The buses aren’t perfectly synched to your classes
Now cars will be backed up for miles, on Main,
So your peers can collectively sit on your asses

It’s not like I’m asking you too fucking much,
Like to live in a house that’s as dark as a tomb
Making way around furniture purely by touch—
Just turn off the light when you leave the damn room

There are so many things you could do, but you don’t,
That could cut your expenses, conserve you some power
They’re easy to think of, so how come you won’t?
Do you shut off your brain in your long fucking shower?

This isn’t too much to be asked, for fuck’s sake;
There are hundreds, or thousands, of things we can do
If you can’t look around and see changes to make
Then the world’s got a problem, and the problem is you.

Sharon, at Casaubon’s Book, might just as well have waved a red flag at a bull, or red meat in front of a hungry dog. Fortunately, she already did it the hard way, with the repeated final rhyme, so I could just write this one.

It’s good, sometimes, to see the world
Through someone else’s eyes;
To take another’s point of view
And try it on for size.

“Be Muslim for a month,” perhaps,
Be Sufi, or be Sikh;
Try walking in their footsteps—
You could start for just a week.

You could try to be a Muslim
Or a Christian, or a Jew
But I’d like to see more people
Trying atheism, too.

Just try it for a month, or two,
Or maybe for a year—
Pretend there’s no use praying
Cos there’s no one there to hear

Pretend there is no god above
To save us from ourselves
Pretend there are no holy books—
Just leave them on the shelves

Pretend there is no heaven
And pretend there is no Hell;
Pretend we only get one life,
And try to live it well

And maybe, if you try it out,
You’ll like the you you find
Not member of a single tribe
But all of humankind

And maybe if enough of us
Can wear each other’s skins
We’ll understand our differences…
And everybody wins.

Via the Beeb (same link as above), an interesting piece on walking a mile (well, a month) in someone else’s shoes. In this case, it’s a bit like church camp, except that it is in Turkey, and the church is a mosque, and participants basically live life as temporary Muslims.

Given the ignorance about other faiths, and the animosity toward Muslims in particular, I think the “Muslim for a month” idea has some serious potential for good. Yes, it could be a worthless exercise, but it can’t possibly be as futile as simply praying for peace.

Of course, after the 2006 University of Minnesota study, I personally think we could use this concept on a group that is distrusted even more than Muslims. Atheists are distrusted; atheists are misunderstood; atheists are demonized.

But it would be so easy to try to be an atheist for a month. You wouldn’t even have to leave home. Wouldn’t need to fly to Turkey, or to Israel, or Rome, or anywhere. I think (if memory serves) that Julia Sweeney’s atheism began this way–just as a brief experiment, that proved successful.

It’s actually easier than not being an atheist. No rituals, no hymns, no call-and-response, no nothing. Well, you do have to do one thing. You do have to think.

For yourself.

When the whole debate began, it
Was one people, on one planet,
Looking up into the night-time at the stars
Whether proximal or distal
Whether fiery gas or crystal
All they knew beyond a doubt was, it was ours
There were greater lights and lesser,
They were beautiful, but yes Sir,
It was evident they all belonged to us
Both the lesser and the greater
And of course, the stars’ creator,
Who’d decided we were worthy of the fuss.

Then it changed; the observation
Of a moving constellation
Showed a different sort of neighbor in the night
There’s a planet that’s between us
And the sun—we call it Venus,
And another planet, Mars, as well in flight.
Now our neighborhood’s gone plural
More suburbanite than rural
So we contemplate the details of God’s plan:
Did He give these planets Jesus?
Are they only there to please us?
Either way, we know His favorite is Man.

Tip of the cuttlecap to PZ, here.

(and no, this isn’t technically an instance of pluralistic ignorance; that’s when everyone in a group thinks that every other member of the group understands something, and each individual doesn’t want to look like a fool admitting to being the only one who doesn’t get it… Happens all the time. No, this is a rumination on the ignorance of pluralism.)

Fertile-ly, turtle-ly
Diamondback Terrapins
Took to the runways, in
Order to mate;

Flights were delayed, due to
Testudinoidea—
Love conquers all, so they
Just had to wait

It’s happened before, and it happened again yesterday; around 150 turtles (terrapins, really) halted landings at one JFK runway. This year, the JFK turtles are even on Twitter.

But really, I just posted this so I could quote one of my favorite Ogden Nash poems, “The Turtle” (actually, I have heard that Nash’s estate has had a great deal of trouble with people stealing his work and posting it without permission, so I’ll just let you follow the link. It’s very brief–4 lines–and charming, if you don’t already know).

And yes, the title of this post is a Grateful Dead reference.

I cannot help but think it odd
To swear an oath “so help me god”

Yeah, well… I’ve been on jury duty this month. Found someone not guilty, and decided on a load of compensation for an accident. It was, overall, a very worthwhile, though extremely frustrating experience. Trying to get 12 people to agree on X, where the two opposing sides had suggested values of X ranging by over an order of magnitude. Long, boring story.

At the end, though (indeed, after we delivered our decision, before we were dismissed, while we were talking), I found at least 2 other jurors (only 4-5 of us were talking in this group) who, like me, raised their right hand but remained silent during the “do you swear or affirm yadda yadda yadda so help you god?” rigamarole. One of the others in this small conversational group had never considered the oath as discriminatory–I couldn’t tell for certain, but it seemed to me that he was quite sympathetic.

I guess I’m not quite used to the idea of a significant number of godless around. Here, at least a quarter of the jury was (no idea about others, other than one christian minister).

Maybe I’m projecting, but it seemed like each of us was glad to find the other two. I know I was; it felt like they were as well.

Maybe there are more of us than we imagine; if we just show ourselves, we may already be in good company.

My problem wouldn’t go away
No matter what I’d do or say
No matter what I’d think or wish
My problem still stayed problem-ish
And so I looked for expert thought
To ask advice on what I ought…
I saw a doctor on TV
Who said he had advice for me:

“Remember, as you walk along:
You might be right—you might be wrong.
You’ll find two sides from which to choose
Each side could win—why must one lose?
There is no right and wrong, you know;
It’s only thinking makes it so
So close your eyes—just shut them tight—
And all your choices will be right!

Some say that two and two are four;
I don’t believe that any more—
It might be five, or six, or three,
They’re all the same (at least, to me).
Don’t close your mind! Go on! Ask why
The answer can’t be e or pi!
Of course it could! And so, it might!
It could be wrong; it could be right!”

I slowly turned and walked away
And thought on what he had to say;
I knew my odds were awfully slim
(Of course, that’s why I looked to him)
I realized, to my great delight
He’s either wrong, or else he’s right!
A simple fifty-fifty shot
Is better than I ever thought!

So now, when playing cards or dice
I never have to worry twice—
The odds I’d get the card I got?
I’d either get it or I’d not!
The trick to feeling really wise
Is simply to dichotomize:
This little trick is really nifty:
Everything is fifty-fifty!

And now, when faced with tricky choices,
Hordes of disagreeing voices,
Climate change, or vaccination,
Ayurvedic medication
Follow science? Follow gods?
I now know how to play the odds—
To find which side is best to join…
I close my eyes and flip a coin.

Technically, this post was inspired by reading some of PZ’s give-and-take on Twitter with Deepak Chopra’s followers. Science and magic, after all, are both possibilities, and there’s no reason to think that either of them is more right than the other.

I’ve known people who reason like that. You probably do, too. Someone who will buy a lottery ticket, thinking that their odds are pretty decent–either it will win, or it won’t, so there’s a fifty-fifty shot. Or that there is a 50-50 chance the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the universe.

This is why courses in statistics and probability should be mandatory. And early. And repeated.

After all, sometimes it’s not something trivial like the destruction of the universe. Sometimes it’s something important, like vaccinating your child.

Brave little Emma, a child of God
Was at the museum one day
She listened politely, but found it quite odd
That they said what she heard them to say
Brave little Emma, she took them to task—
It was more than another might dare—
She knew in her heart just the question to ask
“Were you there?” Emma asked; “were you there?”

She remembered the question, our brave little Emma;
She’d learned it at home, during school
Museum guides, hearing it, faced a dilemma:
Should they lie? Should they look like a fool?
If they told her the truth, why, of course they weren’t present
But admitting it doesn’t seem fair
So they awkwardly pause—it’s distinctly unpleasant—
“Were you there?” Emma asked; “were you there?”

They had rocks that were nearly four billion years old
Or, at least, that was what the guide claimed
They were merely repeating some lies they’d been told
Emma’s question would leave them ashamed.
Don’t they know it is written, “a child shall lead them”?
They shouldn’t have been unaware!
There are truths in the Bible, if only they’d heed them—
“Were you there?” Emma asked; “were you there?”

Our brave little Emma, perhaps, could have learned
How they knew all the things that they said
Imagine that Emma, instead, was concerned
Asking “how do you know it?” instead!
There is wonder, and knowledge, and people to share it
You can learn quite a lot, if you care
But listen! Or else you’re no more than a parrot:
“Were you there?” Emma asked; “were you there?”

I hope that young Emma, that brave little girl
Will ask questions that let her mind grow
In museums, or church, she could give it a whirl,
Asking everyone, “How do you know?”
She will open her eyes to the world all around
And be willing and eager to share:
“Were you there on the day a new Emma was found?
“Were you there?” she will ask; “were you there?”

Context, of course, here and here.

One of the more mysterious things doctors have ever seen
Is the spleen.
Throughout history
The function of the spleen has been shrouded in mystery.
The literature tells
It is known to filter blood, and remove dysfunctional red blood cells
It releases platelets and neutrophils when you bleed
And is a source of stem cells, in times of need
It can produce new red blood cells, like the marrow
But its function is not that narrow
Today, we see excellent news from drug trials (phase one)
For people with Type 1 Diabetes, which is not fun.
Mass General is testing the Calmette-Guerin vaccination
In a new situation;
It has been used to prevent tuberculosis and in the treatment of bladder cancer
But now there are questions about diabetes for which it might be the answer
The first trials show it is safe to use
Which is good news
And it has been shown to reverse type 1 diabetes in mice
Which is very nice
Even if you don’t happen to be a mouse
Which, as it happens, is the case for all the diabetics in this house.
So now, Phase II trials are beginning
And, though it is too early to really say that we are winning
I think I can reasonably say
It’s a good day.

According to their press release, the Phase I trials showed no ill effects of Calmette-Guerin vaccination on individuals with type 1 diabetes. This is not really unexpected; the C-G vaccine is already in use for TB and for bladder cancer, so it has had to pass such tests before. The big news is both in the past and in the future. In the past, this vaccine has allowed mice with type 1 diabetes to reverse the course of their disease. Studies have shown that the vaccine stimulates splenic stem cells to produce pancreatic islet cells; the stem cells essentially mimic their function in embryogenesis. In the future, the therapeutic potential for these stem cells is promising–not just for type 1 diabetics, but hey, right now that’s the application that’s got me smiling.

I’d try to explain the process a bit more, but it is not my area, so I’ll defer to any of my readers who have the expertise–or if you see that someone else has written about it, let me know!