Questioning Darwin

I've been thinking a lot about science education recently, having just given a two-day lab on bacterial transformation to a group of high school freshmen in the Bronx. It's really a great lesson; the kids get to transform bacterial with GFP and make them glow green. It shows them, first hand, the concepts of cloning, antibiotic resistance, and the link between DNA and protein expression. It really piques their curiosity. Which is what science is supposed to do. And why I was both pleased and dismayed by an article in the WaPo today.

The author goes on for a bit about some old high school history teacher that made him question everything and made history fun for him, whereas his science classes were boring and rote memorization. And if it's one thing the IDers have done for him was show him that biology can be questioned in the same, exciting way.

And it can. But not the way that IDers do it. He writes:

The intelligent-design folks say theirs is not a religious doctrine.
They may be lying, and are just softening up the teaching of evolution
for an eventual pro-Genesis assault. But they passed one of my tests.
They answered Gould's favorite question: If you are real scientists,
then what evidence would disprove your hypothesis? West indicated that
any discovery of precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in
the Cambrian period 500 million years ago would cast doubt on the
thesis that those plans, in defiance of Darwin, evolved without a
universal common ancestor.

See, that's all fine and good. That is a great way to disprove Darwin's hypothesis. Only such an ancestor has yet to be found. And until it has, evolution has not been disproved. Now, this author must turn around and ask the IDers how to disprove their hypothesis. What? They can't do it?

See the difference? Not questioning the facts of Darwinism in a science class is bad teaching. Bad teaching is a problem that is entirely exclusive from whether or not evidences for intelligent design or theories of irreducible complexity should be presented to students. If students aren't being forced to ask tough questions in their science classes, they aren't being educated properly.

But to introduce ID, specifically, alongside evolution and proffer it as another possible explanation is like teaching medical students that mental illnesses can be diagnosed by phrenology. Sure, there are probably a few doctors out there who may think that that is an alternative method, but any curriculum that gave phrenology any semblance of credence would be laughed out of accreditation. Saying that our current methods of diagnosis are incomplete, however, is a whole other story...

Don't Piss Off a Scientist

Earlier this week, P.Z. Myers lambasted some recent idiotic ID claims by David Berlinski of the dreaded Discovery Institute, which actually does more than just attack science (who knew?). Honestly, he's more restrained than he should be. When I was working on an Evolution v. ID workshop a few months ago, I spent many a day fuming at my computer (or the boy) and when I heard William Dembski speak to a bunch of Christian fundamentalists I nearly curled up under my seat and cried. Which is presicely how Myers (and other scientists) feel:

So what should I do in a debate with some sleaze like Berlinski, who
pulls this kind of dishonest crap? Spend 20 minutes teaching the
audience about Hardy-Weinberg, pull up the results of a half dozen
studies, and get all technical and detailed? Or walk across the room,
beat him unconscious with any one of hundreds of readily available
books that demonstrate his dishonesty, and kick him until he pukes?

And better yet, when Berlinski's essay had devolved into random babbling:

What the hell…?

This doesn't even make sense; all I can imagine is that Berlinski,
sitting in his little fantasy bubble, imagining how biology works
without ever consulting reality, has drifted off into some bizarre
alien plane where he is now warring with his own misconceptions.

Check out the article...

Bad Store Layouts

It's a well-known grocery store trick-o-da-trade to design your aisle layouts to maximize sales. The tricks are many and varied. For example, items that you want the shopper to focus on are usually on a shelf that's about 5'2" from the floor, because that is the average eye-level of a middle-aged woman which is your average supermarket shopper.

Apparently the shelf-stockers at Rite Aid didn't get the memo. This weekend I injured my back (or re-injured as it's a recurring injury from my more youthful, collegiate days) and so I hobbled to the drug store to look for some nifty product marketed especially for and yet not necessarily designed especially for back pain, like Doan's or something. And maybe some sort of insto-heating pad or other nifty contraption to make me feel better. And they had a plethora of back pain specific products, since this is America and we must be given 534,297 choices for everything.

And the were all on the bottom shelf. The shelf I couldn't reach because I couldn't bend over due to the back pain I was trying to alleviate by purchasing a back pain specific products that Rite Aid had convenient put on the bottom shelf.

I ended up purchasing plain old generic ibuprofen because a) it was cheaper and b) I could reach it.

Thoughts On My Commute and Stuff

There are a few things that are nice about not living two blocks from where you work. First, I get to ride the bus. Now many people probably think that that is a horrible thing, but I take it shortly after rush hour now so it's pretty empty. And I get to see new faces. The same new faces. I have bus buddies. And my own special seat. And I now know which buses are the good ones and which buses are the bad ones. I'd never stopped to think before about how relatively few buses were on one single line.

But maybe one of the best things about commuting is the advancements I've made towards entering the 21st century, technology-wise. First, I thought it was cool that I was the first kid on my block with DVR. TV watching becomes a whole new experience with it. But better than that, now I have an iPod. And all of a sudden I see the world through different eyes. The world has a soundtrack now. And I notice more and more people with those white earphones in their ears. It's like an Apple cult. See, there are bus buddies and there are iPod bus buddies.

And to even one-up myself, yesterday Amazon delivered my iTrip, so I can play my iPod through my receiver which is attached to my kick-ass surround sound system. Just think, less than two years ago I was stuck watching network television in real time and only able to listen to a Sublime compilation CD which was stuck in the broken CD drive of my five-year-old iMac in my apartment with only one floor.

More Shameless Self-Promotion

Often in my free time I get into long, heated discussions on other people's blogs. But sometimes I write letters to the editor. Rarely do I do so because it's harder to be short and concise than blustery and long-winded. So, ladies and gentlemen, yours truly has just had a letter to the editor published. Granted, it was for the Cornell Daily Sun up in Ithaca, so I had a better chance of getting in than the general public, but it's still a letter and it's still print and I have officially defended evolution in a more public arena.

Go me.

It's also interesting to see the editorial process in work. The letter was not edited for content or clarity, however they chose to emphasize in the title what I would have considered the minor point (that ID isn't a testable hypothesis) rather than the major point which was evolution is not a theory of origin.

Oh well. Go me anyway.

What's Worse for Western Society?

Polygamy or same-sex marriage?

This is the question that I think all opponents of SSM should be thinking about when the argue so vehemently against it, because I am afraid that the more they push against gay marriage and against the acceptance of homosexuality in general, the more likely polygamy will be to follow.

I think it is safe to say that polygamy is generally harmful to our society and I don't think I'd get any arguments from SSM-opponents. I'm not convinced that any new style of polyandry is actually beneficial to a significant enough population to outweigh the backwards slide to women's equality that would undoubtedly occur due to the use of polygamy by more inherently misogynistic populations, namely your more fundamental branches of Mormonism and Islam. We should, of course, be concerned with the possibility of polygamy in the United States since traditional polygamy is gaining popularity world-wide.

It is clear to many supporters of SSM, however, that polygamy does not naturally follow from gay marriage, yet to many SSM opponents it remains a mystery as to why this may be the case. The reason that SSM opponents find the slippery slope argument so compelling is because of the way they have been forced (and are forcing the rest of us) to shape the debate. And this all comes down to the refusal to choose to recognized sexual orientation as a suspect and protected class.

If sexual orientation were considered along with religion, race and sex, then the entire debate is an open/shut case. Restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples discriminates against gays, therefore gays should be allowed to marry. End of argument. The conservatives don't get their way, necessarily, but they get to keep marriage defined as a monogamous relationship. It would then be up to the polygamists to come up with a specific reason why they have the fundamental right to marry more than one person and why this would not only be beneficial to society but not harmful to an already protected class, oh, let's say women. I do not think that this would be an easy task, especially considering that a judge in Utah already found a compeling state interest in defining marriage as a monogamy.

But without any legal protection of sexual orientation, gays are forced to look outside of legislative means in order to secure protection for their families, namely suing in court. This leads to two problems for those of us who wish to keep the lid clamped firmly down on polygamy. First, marriage equality has to be argued for in terms of freedoms of choice (right to choose one's life partner) rather than on suspect classes. Second, arguments in favor of OSM-only have to exclude both SSM and polygamy.

While Gabriel Rosenberg (and others) makes some brilliant arguments for same-sex marriage based on sex discrimination, as well as against polygamy, it is becoming increasingly obvious that liberal-leaning courts will probably rule in favor of SSM not based on sex (which while articulate an argument, often comes across as clever world-play and manipulation of a system), but rather rule based on issues of privacy. And that leaves the door wide open for polygamy. Understand that I'm not making claims of a slippery slope. It's still possible to argue against polygamy even if the SSM debate is won over privacy; it's just that it's going to be a bit harder.

This leaves us with the opposition. How do they argue against SSM? Their two main pieces of ammunition seem to boil down to tradition and procreation, neither of which are terrible blows to polygamy. If we take a broad look at tradition, we lose to polygamy almost immediately, since polygamy was practiced not only by our own cultural ancestors but by the more recent ancestors and living relatives of a population of our country as well. And even if we limit the tradition argument to the traditions of our own country, since the Constitution was ratified, the traditional argument against polygamy is stronger, but not absolute given that the Church of Latter Day Saints has its roots in America and practiced polygamy in territories controlled by this country. And the procreation argument makes absolutely no sense against polygamy, since many children born out of wedlock could potentially benefit from having their father marry their mother, even though he is already married to someone else. In fact, it can be argued that outlawing polygamy can have a detrimental effect on those children, since it seems extraordinarily important to SSM opponents that children have "mothers and fathers" and that they be married to each other.

So what does that leave us? What's the bottom line? Same-sex unions cannot be stopped. They are legal in Vermont and Massachusetts and we can hopefully add Connecticut to that list soon, not to mention the millions of informal arrangements gay couples have already made. The path to recognition of homosexuality as a non-deviant orientation is well underway. Gays are already having families and the government has a compelling interest to protect its citizens, even ones that might not have 100% popular approval. Any evidence for the harm gay marriage causes to society is tenuous at best; the harm of polygamy, however, is well-documented.

So in arguing against same-sex marriage, we don't automatically exclude polygamy; but by arguing in favor of same-sex marriage, we can reinforce the importance of monogamy to a healthy society. It is essential for opponents of same-sex marriage to figure out exactly what about "traditional" marriage is important enough to fight for and what ideas can be sacrificed. Is it monogamy? Or heterosexuality? Or simply misogyny?

Activist Judges on the March

This week, the Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision, that the execution of juveniles is unconstitutional. Five unelected, robed men and women (women!) have decided, once again, what the American people can and cannot do. It should be up to the legislature to decide whether or not we can kill children, not a bunch of intellectual elites.

Our society has had a long history of executing children. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at the age of 14 for being a witch. Are we to deny other children the honor of being martyred? We've been executing juveniles in the country for over 350 years! Before we were even a country! I'm sure we would have executed those Columbine kids if they hadn't done it themselves. Actually, that's a great point. The teenagers themselves like to execute each other so why does the government need to step in? For the few who don't want to be executed?

People will say we've been on the wrong side of this. But who are these people? Blue-staters? Europeans? Personally, I don't think we should be even looking at the Europeans for help. Their society is in such a decline that women are abandoning their husbands to get implanted with lesbians' babies just so they can have abortions! It's madness!

And it's not like executing children is discriminatory. They are being treated just like every other citizen who does something to get them executed. Where does it say that a child has the right not to be executed? Why are these unelected judicial elites inventing constitutional rights that aren't there in the first place? Where in the Bible does it say "thou shalt not execute kids"? Nowhere is where.

If we want to preserve the union that our forefathers intended us to have, we must stop these elite bastards from rewritting all of our laws and morals. Pretty soon they'll be telling us that we can't execute Michael Jackson because he has the mentality of a child. Look, there is absolutely nothing wrong with executing children, at least after they've been born.

It's the Third of the Month...

... do you know where your plaid is? I can tell you where mine is but I can't show you since it would be considered sexual harassment to my fellow labmates.

But we don't worry about silly things like sexual harassment on this day, do we? Nope. Not today. Today is the day that everyone is without judgment or regret or anxiety, even if your figures which you'd assumed were statistically significant are not quite in fact entirely unlike statistically significant. No, we don't worry about these things today. How did that line go in that edgy 90s musical? Today for you, tomorrow for me? Well, guys, today is for you you you!

Treat yourself to something special today, like maybe instead of a normal cup of coffee in the afternoon you get a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon. Or instead of taking the bus home, take a cab. Or instead of committing sodomy, spice it up with a little gommorrahy. Do whatever suits your fancy; and do it twice. At least. Because you're once, twice, three times a wonderfully awesome person. Each and every one of you. Even those of you who stumbled onto this page because I somehow offended you in a blog comment box. Yes, even you.

Because while the Third of the Month is about celebrating your own very special uniqueness (which, by virtue of it's uniqueness is automatically special and can't be modified by a comparative since something can't be less unique if it's unique, but I digress), it is also about celebrating our humanity. Everyone's got some humanity, even Ann Coulter and James Carville. Heck, I bet buried deep down there somewhere, even Saddam Hussein's got a little humanity. If he'd celebrated the Third of the Month a little bit more we probably wouldn't even be in this pickle. Not that I think that the Third of the Month can cure all of our ills. Not at all, but it can sure make you forget about everything but the beauty that is you (at least for an average of 3-8 s).

So love yourself. And give me a shout out for my one year blogoversary! Because it was this day, one year ago, where I started my semi-daily web-musings. And I still don't average more than 100 hits a day, no matter how many times I mention the Gotti boys or Charisma Carpenter's breasts.

Go moist towelettes!