New book contest!

Hey! Carl Zimmer is giving away free copies of his brand new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) — all you have to do is ask a good question in a comment to stand a chance of winning one.

I don’t need to enter; my copy is sitting on my desk right now, begging me to read it. I keep barking back at it that I want to, but I’ve got 3 exams to give in the next week, and there is no time right now. And then it reproaches me with those big gentle puppy-dog eyes and weeps sloppy proteoglycan tears and threatens to adhere permanently to my shower tiles. It’s persistent and ubiquitous, so everyone better read it soon.

Eternal injustice

Sid Schwab considers the meaning of eternal torment. Even a moment’s thought should make anyone realize that eternal punishment, besides being literally unimaginable, cannot possibly be just. Yet this principle is dogma in Christianity — Jesus himself said, “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment” — and even worse, those who are good and are admitted into heaven are going to be eternally aware of the torments inflicted on their unsaved fellows, and will be going out to witness the punishment of the wicked (according to St Augustine, anyway…I hear he’s a fairly highly regarded source on doctrine.)

I suspect that the truly good would be in rebellion against such a tyrant god, but then, we always knew Christianity was a death cult for sheep, that rewards submission to the odious and the unlikely.

I’d add to Schwab’s rejection of the principle that it isn’t just eternal punishment that is a problem, but the whole idea of eternal life. There can be no such thing. People change all the time, and the I that is here now will not be the same I that could exist in 20 years; my mortality is a part of my being, and removing that would be an event so traumatic and so life-changing that it would produce an identity even more substantially different than the vast revolution I went through 51 years ago, when I gastrulated. Immortality is meaningless and achieving it is impossible.

That’s not to say we don’t want a long life and will fight off death as long as we can. It’s just that life itself represents a kind of incremental dynamism that can’t be frozen without destroying it.

California public schools require teachers to sign a loyalty oath?

And it’s actually enforced? Two teachers have been fired for refusing to take an oath…an oath that was put in place during the McCarthy witch hunts. Apparently they just left it on the books, but now it’s a hook that can be used to eject troublemakers.

You know, like those rabble-rousing, dangerous Quakers.

The most incredibly ironic thing about this whole controversy is that non-citizens are not required to sign it. Says Marianne Kearney-Brown, one of the fired teachers, “The way it’s laid out, a noncitizen member of Al Qaeda could work for the university, but not a citizen Quaker.”

That’s America for you: the important things are the superficial, meaningless expressions in service of great ideals, and if it means throwing away the actual implementation of those important ideas like civil rights, freedom of expression and conscience, and a faith quietly and sincerely held in order to promote noisy but meaningless demonstrations of loyalty, so be it.

God arrested!

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Omnipotent, omnipresent supernatural being (left) deigns to be arrested for raping children.

It’s a rough era for deities. This one seems to be subject to ordinary mortal ills, like wrinkles and graying hair, ordinary mortal temptations, like having sex with young girls, and also, surprisingly, is powerless before minor material obstacles, like handcuffs. Odd, isn’t it? He should stamp his foot, and the earth cracks wide and his foes tumble into the depths. He ought to wave his hands raise a whirlwind that sweeps away his enemies, scatters their guns, and hurls their squad cars into the sky. But no, they always turn out to be fragile meat with no special abilities, and the most tawdry, revolting tastes.

Wayne Bent, AKA Michael Travesser, AKA minister of the Lord Our Righteousness Church, AKA the Messiah as revealed by God, has been arrested. How do you arrest a supernatural being, I wonder?

I hope they’ve built a special prison cell for him out of an adamantium/eternium alloy, with a special guard detail of angels and demons. Nothing else could possibly hold messiah.

A little psychiatric help might also be in order.

Portland, how could you?

Portland, Oregon is a beautiful city and a great place to live, but hoo boy, does it have its share of wackos. The latest: some credulous nut wants to practice acupuncture…on the city. He has semi-randomly associated regions on the map with organs (the Willamette River is a kidney?), and is sticking giant acupuncture needles in the ground to shift the flow of chi.

I hope this guy does not get funding for such stupidity.

The History Channel might do something right

I just got this announcement for a new series to appear on the History Channel in June. This has the potential to be really good — at least it sounds like the focus is on the biology — and we’ll have to tune in.

SERIES PREMIERE!
EVOLVE:
EYES

Eyes are one of evolution’s most useful and prevalent inventions, equipping approximately 95 percent of living species. They exist in many different forms across nature, having evolved convergently across different species. Learn how the ancestors of jellyfish may have been the first to evolve light-sensitive cells. In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in particular the dragonfly, would take the compound eye to new heights. Find out how dinosaurs adapted their eyes to become such successful hunters of prey. And while dinosaurs remained at the top of the food chain for 150 million years, tiny early mammals developed night vision to populate the night as a survival technique. Finally, learn how primates underwent several adaptations to their eyes to better exploit their new habitat, and how the ability to see colors helped them find food.

Throughout eons of evolution, the natural world has played host to a never-ending competition. Since the dawn of time roughly 99% of all species have become extinct. In order to survive, all creatures, including man, must treat life as a battlefield and master the natural weapons and defenses that have evolved: Tyrannosaurus Rex’s 13-inch canines; the gecko’s Velcro-like toe pads; the bald eagle’s telescopic vision that is capable of spotting a hare a mile away. What is the history of these evolutions and how did they come about? They didn’t just appear arbitrarily, they evolved for a common reason – to give these animals a critical edge in interspecies warfare. To evolve is to conquer!

The new series EVOLVE traces the history of the key innovations that have driven nature’s evolutionary arms race from the dawn of life to today, from the anatomical (eyes, jaws, and body armor) to the behavioral (movement, communication, and sex). This 13-part series will deftly blend spectacular live-action natural history sequences, CGI, epic docudrama, and experimental science to illustrate our and our fellow species’ eternal struggle for survival on earth.

PREMIERE: Tuesday, June 17 at 10pm/2am ET/PT
LENGTH: 2 hours
REPEATS: Sunday, June 22 at 11pm/3am ET/PT
PRODUCED BY: Optomen Productions, Inc.

Mildred Loving has died

Loving was the woman who, with her husband, was tried in the 1960s for the crime of interracial marriage; their victory before the Supreme Court led to the striking down of laws banning racially mixed marriages across the country. Here’s part of her account:

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

The judge’s comment is particularly interesting. He’s using an unholy mix of rank creationism and Blumenbach’s 19th century taxonomy of human races to justify his decision! For all the finger-pointing at science for promoting racism, though, it’s clear that most of the rationalizations have come from god-fearin’ church folk. Browse the racist web boards (here’s an example; it’s the evil Stormfront, so be warned), and you’ll find an amazing infatuation with biblical authority.

It’s worth noting that the same flavor of argument, thumping the bible to claim god is agin’ it and making up ‘facts’ about the natural world, is also the same strategy used to argue against homosexual marriage. I remember 1967 — that was the year I was grooving to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles — and it’s dismaying to think our country held onto the bigotry that denied people the right to love one another for so long, but it’s even more distressing to see that the same attitudes still prevail in 2008.