I thought it was vitally important that the vial in the image look like Re-Animator fluid. Imagine the carnage that would be unleashed by the unwitting dupe seduced by the promise of a cureall that turned out not to be just harmless linseed oil, but instead the sadistic creation of Dr. West that turns its users into a cannibalistic psychotic zombie creatures.

And Obama had such good intentions. Herbert West is laughing all the way to the bank.

The problem with this whole thing is, it’s not too unbelievable. People can be duped into buying just about anything if it promises to lower cholesterol or burn fat or cure scabies. People like to think that they aren’t gullible, but they are. We like to think that we’re past the days of the soapbox salesman selling his crazy potions and tonics, but we’re not!

With your indulgence, I’d like to offer evidence for my case that Americans (and probably most people) are easily duped by anything that promises to make them better with little or no work.

I work at a natural food cooperative. Some people call it a health food store, which ought to send up red flags because it is not a health food store. Organic potato chips are only marginally better for you than conventional ones. They’re still fried in oil, loaded with fat and carbs. I work at a grocery store, albeit a member-owned cooperative grocery store.

Among the many things that we sell that are genuinely good, we also have a lot of things that pretend to be good but are actually quite pointless. I find it fascinating that someone who wants to get healthy will walk toward the supplement aisle before they head for the produce cooler.

We sell a lot of vitamins. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. We also sell “medicine,” that is, cough syrup and pain relievers and the like. But, what does an organic pain reliever look like? If you look closely at any of our “medicines,” that is anything that isn’t actually a vitamin or mineral, it will almost always be one of two things: herbal or homeopathic. I am fine with herbal remedies. I suspect that they work in the sense that they’ve been used for thousands of years and this seems to be better in many ways than the FDA’s method of testing drugs, which routinely passes drugs that later turn out to have devastating side-effects that aren’t evident until years later.

Just you wait and see what a generation raised on Ritalin will look like in another ten years or so.

Anyway, it’s homeopathy that I take issue with. It’s a form of medicine based on the theory that if you dilute terrible poisons with enough water and in the right way, then the water itself begins to take on curative properties. And not diluted just a little bit. We’re talking about diluting it to the point that, in a given, average-sized lake of homeopathic medicine, there might be a molecule or two an active ingredient.

That’s right, people (many, many people) believe this. And this shit ain’t cheap. People are paying through the nose for inert substances that have no medicinal effect whatsoever.

Moving on. You have no idea how many times I’ve been manning the till when some dupe walks in and starts looking at the herbal supplements and turns to me and says, “Do you have [insert herb that they heard about last week on Dr. Oz]?” Ninety percent of the time the answer is no, of course we don’t carry that. We do carry a bunch of other things that have probably the exact same effect, but no, they want whatever it was that Dr. Oz was so up in a tizzy about. I don’t care that Dr. Oz works at Columbia University. I hope he dies of a heart attack so he never bothers me again. He’s a charlatan. You know what he should be telling people? “Folks, there’s only one way to be healthy and that’s to eat good food and exercise.” That’s it. There’s no other way. No amount of herbal antioxidant is going to replace good, healthy, organic food.

Food is the keyword here.

An important case in point is the acai berry. It is actually good for you. Dr. Oz said it was and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s not a complete idiot. For those that don’t know, acai comes from South America and has been lauded and praised for its antioxidants, polyphenols, and other nutrients that your body does benefit from having. They do have to be shipped from South America, however. This is a problem for conservationists, I would say.

And you know what’s better for you than acai berries? You’ll never guess. Blueberries. Blue-motherfucking-berries. Oh, and strawberries. Concord grapes. Red Beans have more antioxidants. So does red wine.

Blueberries grow wild all over the north country where I live. And it’s true, people do eat them and love them (they taste a hell of a lot better than acai, too–acai tastes a lot like sweet dirt in my opinion). But we have a demand for acai. So we sell it. And I can’t say shit because we make money on it. As much as it rankles.

I’ll close with something amusing. A guy walks into the store and looks around for a while. Eventually he approaches me and asks, “Where are those marshmallows you used to have?” I reply, “I don’t think we’ve ever carried marshmallows.” Which might not be true; I’ve only been there a year. So then he says, “Yeah, you know, those ones you used to have. The marshmallows. They’re made from the Nile river fish.”

I stare at him for a handful of seconds. And then I can’t help myself. I start laughing. A hearty chortle from deep inside my stomach. He starts laughing, too and says, “I guess that does sound a little strange. But I tell you it’s real.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine anything more absurd than catching fish in the Nile–the Nile is incredibly polluted, I’ll have you know–with the intention of making fucking marshmallows.

What a world.

Gelächter ist Medizin.

There are organisms that reproduce sexually and there are organisms that reproduce asexually. The former outnumber the latter by many orders of magnitude. Hell, even plants have sex on a pretty regular basis–though it’s a sort of kinky, bee-assisted sex. The question is why? Asexual reproduction is far more efficient than its more popular cousin.

In New Zealand, scientists found an astonishing opportunity to test one hypothesis. Snails are known to reproduce both sexually and asexually. In the fresh waters of New Zealand, both types of snail live side by side. So they could watch, over time, the changes in populations.

Here’s the thing. Evolution is affected by pressures. Behaviors and adaptations result for many different reasons, but the need to survive appears to be the primary factor in most adaptations–there are exceptions to this, of course. And so, the fact that sexual reproduction, which is terribly inefficient, is more popular than asexual reproduction is something of a mystery. Aside from the fact that it’s more fun.

They hypothesis that these researchers in New Zealand were testing has to do with parasites. Parasites infect all organisms. Consider that a population of snails that reproduces asexually essentially just clones itself off ad infinitum. Every child is genetically identical to its parent. It inherits all of its parent’s strengths, and, more importantly for this discussion, all of its weaknesses.

The offspring of a species that reproduces sexually is genetically unique, as it’s a sort of random mixture of its parents’ genes. So what’s a parasite likely to have an easier time with? A species that’s always the same, with the same defenses and the same weaknesses to exploit? Or a species whose members are always going to be different, have different chemistries, have different defenses?

The study showed that the population of asexually producing snails showed a marked reduction over time as a result of infection from parasites. The sexually reproducing snails showed a far more stable population trend and far less susceptibility to infection by parasites. The evidence seems to show that the evolution of sex was influenced strongly by parasites.

The thing that I find interesting about these findings is what they mean when examined in light of other things that we know about sex evolution.

Consider: Sex evolved as a defense against parasites. Once it became established as the dominant reproductive activity, sex took on a life of its own.

Peacocks have these long, ornate tails that serve absolutely no survival purpose whatsoever. They are purely a result of sexual selection. They are used to attract a member of the opposite sex. In fact, survival-wise, peacocks must strike a delicate balance between ability to attract mates and ability to escape from predators. The tails are a hindrance in a survival situation, but they ensure that their genes will be passed on. And so there are two completely separate pressures affecting the size of peacock tail feathers. One pressure creates a trend toward a smaller tail and other toward a larger, more showy tail. A very interesting tension.

But then look at humans. We are interesting because, not only are we social creatures, but we are also sentient. The most intelligent species on this planet. Sexual selection in humans is a far, far, far, more complicated affair than even that of peacocks. Look at the bizarre and strange rituals that humans adopt. Look at the prejudices, the tragedies, the arguments, the problems, that all arise as a result of a defense mechanism against parasites.

Sex brings out the absolute worst in humankind. I suppose it wouldn’t be poetic if it weren’t also true that sex can bring out the absolute best in humans as well. Poetry and literature as we know it would probably not be possible if it weren’t for sex.

I just got married. I couldn’t be happier about it. I don’t necessarily believe that monogamy is the only way that humans can (or should) interact on a sexual level, but I have made a choice to join in that sort of relationship. The fact that we can choose what sort of relationship we want to be in is probably one of our biggest problems because anyone that wants to have a different sort of relationship than what is deemed normal is often ostracized or worse.

Perhaps the best literary example of what came about as a result of sex is the Trojan War. Imagine it. Helen of Troy. The “face that launched a thousand ships.” And also spawned one terrible Wolfgang Petersen movie. All of that, because of parasites.

Maybe the Transformers are better off without it.

Maybe not.

Liebe ist in Ihrem Herzen.

A while back researchers located some dinosaur burrows in Montana. Of course, this proved that dinosaurs exhibited a burrowing behavior when the need arose. Just recently, further burrows were discovered in Victoria, Australia. The important thing to take away from this is that it shows a similar survival behavior from different species from different hemispheres. 110 million years ago, the Earth was a warmer place, but when Australia used to be situated at the south pole, it still got pretty cold in the winter. And apparently this was how they kept warm.

They were small dinosaurs, which makes sense. Comical as the image of a T-Rex burrowing into the soft sand of a riverbank is, it probably didn’t work that way.

The above cartoon is, as usual, my way of trying to be funny. Whether it’s successful or not, is not my call, but what I like is the idea that dinosaurs might compare survival adaptations, defenses, weaponry, in a civilized tone. It’s an anthropomorphism, which is the main point here. A similar discussion most certainly did occur between dinosaurs, but it probably would have been much more violent and probably involved the T-Rex trying to eat the Triceratops (though there is some debate over whether T-Rex was a hunter or a scavenger or both).

The thing is humans have three or so key survival adaptations: opposable thumbs, upright stature, gigantic brain. Each of these things is a tremendous liability in other ways, however. For instance, our upright stature makes us slow runners. Our huge brains mean our head are big which makes human childbirth a harrowing and very dangerous activity.

So basically, when one is trying to make the argument that humans are the pinnacle, the zenith, the ultimate, in biological evolution (or creation), they have to acknowledge the fact that humans have problems. We really have no natural weaponry, no defense against cold, our immune systems suck, we’re not strong, fast, or agile. All we have is our brains and our ability to use tools.

Dinosaurs were the most successful animals to ever walk the planet. They lived for millions of years. Bipedal man has been here for about five hundred thousand years and homo sapiens for only about a hundred thousand. We have a long way to go before we are even in the same league as dinosaurs. If anything insects (cockroaches, for instance) are the most successful animals currently creeping across this world. Crocodiles, sharks, and other similar species are far older than humans. Turtles live longer.

I mean, if your standard is simply “ability to survive,” then humans suck. We have a very high opinion of ourselves and it’s utterly undeserved. That’s the funny thing.

Again, this is from a survival-ability standpoint. Obviously we’ve made more art. We have language. We have “civilization,” whatever that means. And I think a pat on the back is well deserved. Maybe a polite, quiet round of applause.

Good work people. Keep it up for a few million more years and we’ll really be something. Just don’t screw it up in the meantime, alright?

Glück.

It’s a difficult world that we live in. It’s a world of expectations and everyone seems to expect different things from it. As some would have it, we are to submit to the pseudo-random flux that is evolution. A biologist might define evolution as: the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

Humans have the unique ability in all the animals on Earth to sort of transcend their instincts. We can act in ways that are contrary to the way we have evolved to act, in other words. I’m not trying to get into a free will debate here, but the fact remains that our ability to perceive evolution for what it is allows us to make reasoned judgments about it. It allows us the unique ability to consciously manipulate it.

Creationists often argue that evolution has never been observed in a lab. Apparently they have never heard of the Westminster Kennel Club.

As the technology for gene manipulation becomes every more sophisticated, a debate is growing about the ethical implications of so-called designer babies. I have very clear objections for eugenics, but as long as gene-screening of embryos is freely available to everybody who wants a child–and not available exclusively to the filthy rich–then what’s the harm? Everyone has a different idea of what beautiful is. What can possibly be wrong with giving your children a little extra edge in the uphill battle for survival?

What I wanted to talk about today is a little different than designer babies, however. I’m almost thirty years old. I’m past the point where my genes could be screened and I could be selected out of a pot of possible embryos. My Adonis-like beauty and Einsteinian intelligence were the result of good old fashioned chance. But that’s it. There’s no way I can improve myself further at the genetic level.

But are there other options? I came across this article today on Science Daily and it got me thinking. There’s a lot of technology being developed for people who lose limbs. This particular new technology is promising because it involves laying microelectrodes on the surface of the brain, rather than embedding them within the neural tissue as a way of detecting neural impulses, translating them, and using them as a computer interface or as a method of controlling a bionic limb. I actually really like that the article uses the words “bionic limb,” terminology that used to be the playground of science fiction writers.

So far, the technology is able to improve the lives of crippled individuals. It is not, however, capable of bringing them back to full power, so to speak. The question that we must entertain at this point is: what happens when it is?

What happens when bionic limbs meet–or exceed–the capabilities of our natural limbs?

Bionics and cybernetics are pretty science fictiony, but this article shows that dramatic progress has been made in the field, and perhaps in ten or twenty years viable, lifelike appendages can be attached with all the articulation of a real hand. But maybe they’re better and stronger than before! A wounded soldier with his purple heart proudly pinned on his cybernetic chest stands tall and proud among a crowd of normal people. He smiles benignly upon them, only dimly remembering the day when he was a mere mortal. He holds his metallic fist above his head, a salute to his great-great-grandfather who had nothing but a leather-wrapped stick to bite down on when the field medic went at his gangrenous leg with a rusty hacksaw.

It’s not that far-fetched!

And even if it were, what are the ethical implications? It’s called “transhumanism.” One could call it forced human evolution. It is a movement that supports the use of biotechnology to augment the human body, not just in the case of injury, but as a voluntary act. A purposeful denial of the limitations of our naturally selected man-bodies. The idea that injury, aging, disease, and death are involuntary and undesirable carries a lot of merit.

Buddhists spend their entire lives attempting to overcome suffering, but their approach is holistic. It emphasizes acceptance of things that can’t be changed. Transhumanism, as a philosophy, urges people to reject the notion that their body is a temple that should not be altered. Body-modification as art is one thing. Body-modification in the name of utility, physical improvement, and life affirmation is another matter entirely.

Robocop spent three films trying to regain his lost humanity, and this is one of the possible perils of transhumanism (also called “posthumanism”). Nietzsche’s description of the Overman is one who has surpassed humankind, but still cares for the transience and vitality that humankind represents.

Bear in mind that evolution short-changes us. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution. We are merely the product of a natural mechanism that allows animals that are “fit” to survive. As any biologist will tell you, an accurate description of it would be “survival of the sufficiently fit.” In other words, that which survives, survives. All a human needs to do is survive to reproduce. That’s it. In fact, that’s easy. All sorts of terrible maladies and suffering can crop up after that deed is done. Cancer. Osteoporosis. Heart disease. Love handles. And what’s worse? We pass those tendencies on to our children because it’s easy to reproduce.

The question is whether or not we want to accept the qualities that natural selection has, somewhat arbitrarily, assigned to us, or do we wish to strive for something greater? Do we make ourselves something new and distinct? Do we push the limits of human potential?

Some extra reading is important. I highly recommend anything by Nick Bostrom. He’s a professor at Oxford and a noted transhumanist philosopher. Specifically, look at:

• A History of Transhumanist Thought(pdf)
• The Transhumanist FAQ(pdf)
• In Defense of Posthuman Dignity(html)
• Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up(pdf).

In the end, it’s not about whether or not you value human life. Everyone except the most staunch sociopaths value human life. It’s about whether you value human life enough to go beyond it.

do svidania

As you may well know, I hold firm to the idea that science is profoundly important to humans, though it’s sometimes a difficult thing to articulate exactly why. And so, at the risk of beating the proverbial horse, I’m going to take another crack at establishing some of philosophical reasons for scientific research.

One of my favorite movies is Hurlyburly. It’s a little obscure, and my reasons for liking it are a little tangential and not necessarily relevant to this discussion, and so I hope that the connection I wish to draw does not come off as pointlessly esoteric.

Anyway, Sean Penn’s character is this totally self-absorbed Hollywood casting director, a low-life bottom feeder of the film and entertainment industry. He is essentially a member of a vast machine that pumps out entertainment to the masses and the part that he plays in this machine is utterly insignificant in the general scheme of things. This–and a lot of drugs–put him in the state of mind of always questioning his place in the world and how he is to relate to the world. He continually asks when presented with some outside information that is not directly relevant to his life, “How does this pertain to me?”

On the one hand, he is just being utterly self-centered. But on the other, I think he’s asking a valid question. Many things happen in the world that have no bearing on our day to day lives. But are we going to make the claim that starving children in Africa are irrelevant? Are we going to say that the potential for revolution in Iran is not important? These things don’t affect me directly, but as Anna Paquin’s character points out in the film, everything pertains to everything else in the sense that everything is part of the same “flow,” as she puts it.

I’m not trying to be mystical about this. These things that happen in the world always pertain to us because everything pertains to us. Even the most insignificant detail, like the fact that I’m sleepless in a hotel right this very moment because my flight home was delayed until tomorrow morning, is significant. It might, say, affect your decision to book a flight with Northwest Airlines–now Delta–in the future. It might affect your decision to decide on a connection at the Indianapolis Airport (I don’t recommend it).

To move on, there were two new studies that struck me as profoundly relevant, not only to our lives, but also to each other. I will point out that they will not necessarily affect how you live your life, but they definitely pertain to you.

First of all, researchers at the University of Missouri have shown that, as humans evolved, there is a strong correlation between brain size and population density. In other words, they have shown that brain size is directly related to social competition. What this means is: our brains are bigger because we compete with each other, and not with other species. This is pretty serious stuff.

And now some research out of Georgia Tech suggests that the fact that our brains are bigger is the reason we have higher cancer rates than chimps who are much less susceptible to cancer.

So let’s look at this. We–not necessarily willingly–gave up a relatively cancer free existence for our intelligence. That intelligence evolved as a result of competition within our species.

Interestingly enough, it seems that population density is also directly linked to culture. So there is a tension that exists when humans are together. But this tension can be utilized purposefully. It stems from competition (since that is the nature of the world) but it in no way means that we are incapable of transcending our natures and working together. We can do great things when we work together and if it means we’re more likely to get cancer, well, I think it means we have all the more obligation to use our brains.

Gute Nacht.

My dad says that he likes Rush Limbaugh. Honestly, I don’t believe him when he says it, but I want it to be perfectly clear that when I poke fun at Rush Limbaugh, it isn’t that I hate him (I don’t; it’s impossible to hate someone so stupid) it’s because it gets a rise out of my dad. I do it because, someday, my dad might take an interest in my blog and read this and we can have one of those political arguments where we both pretend to get angry but really it’s all in good fun. It’s mostly for his benefit. I’m not even sure if the image above is funny. It probably isn’t. But it was a fun photoshop job, nonetheless.

Anyway, there is this Futurama episode where all the characters get a tax rebate, and Professor Farnsworth spends his rebate on a vat of stem cells which cause him to look cosmetically younger. The image is of the old man dumping a whole jar of it on his head and instantaneously growing younger. Later, he learns that the true path to happiness is not in physical appearance, but in sex. It’s a great episode.

And this is what reminded me of it. Holy crap. Here’s the rundown: three patients had suffered extreme corneal damage and had lost their vision. What did the doctor’s do? Harvest some stem cells from the patients’ eyes, grow them in a culture, and then smear them on the damaged cornea. Almost exactly like the Futurama episode.

I mean… that’s what they did! Okay, sure, it’s a little bit more complicated than that, but essentially, that’s the basic gist. Here’s a quote from the surgeon: “The procedure is totally simple and cheap.” Since when to surgeons talk that way? Since stem cells got totally sweet, that’s when.

I can see it now. The future. Where all you have to do to live forever is let them scrape some skin cells, grow what amounts to a sort of jelly-like sludge out of your own living tissue, and then either use it as lotion or maybe even eat it. Does that amount to cannibalism if you’re eating your own cells? I don’t know if it even matters.

Here’s my big question: How did this get so easy? What happened to angioplasty? What happened to neurosurgery? The doctors of the future are going to be glorified appliers of lotion. All they’ll need is the patience of sourdough baker! Because that’s basically what they’re doing. They’re making the cellular equivalent of a sourdough culture and then smearing it on you.

It’s awesome and absurd at the same time to think that a solution so simple and so obvious too this freaking long to discover.

I was going to write about my take on Buddhism today. Maybe it’ll have to wait till Monday.

I am too stunned for words.

The expression “to have one’s cake and eat it too” has always struck me as strange. It is, essentially, the act of consuming a resource and then attempting to further benefit from it after the fact. But if we deconstruct the actual words of the expression, it is a completely incomprehensible word salad. In the context of the sentence “to have” and “eat” are equivalent, so having and eating are both happening in the first half of the expression. The last part is redundant. I’m not deliberately trying to be obtuse here. I understand what the expression means idiomatically. I just think it’s a stupid expression.

What I want to talk about is organic food, using eggs as an example. I happen to work at a natural foods grocery co-op (maybe sometime I’ll get into my take on cooperativism). Some people call us a health-food store, which has certain negative connotations for certain types of people. I prefer to call it a grocery store because that’s what we sell. In fact, a pretty large selection of our product is not even healthy. Candy and potato chips (organic or not) are probably not to be consumed without restriction because you’re still going to get diabetes.

A few days ago, Science Daily ran this story. The article poses the question of whether or not organic food is really worth the cost, which is often double or more than the cost of conventionally produced food. The question is whether purchasing and consuming organic food is equivalent to having your cake and eating it too. Are you really getting health benefits that justify the cost of admission?

The article does little except ask the question. The dietitian quoted in the article is most likely right in the assertion that actually consuming fresh fruit and vegetables (organic or not) is preferable to not consuming them at all. Obviously. She also points out that there is little scientific evidence that pesticides are harmful, or that organic produce is more nutritious. Though, I suspect that there might be a suppression of evidence fallacy committed here. I have read numerous articles touting the higher nutrition value of organic food versus conventional foods.

Admittedly, the evidence is often shaky. Studies have been conducted, though there is suspicion of bias.

So, here’s my take on organic food, nutrition value aside. For the record, I consume a fair amount of both. I shop at my co-op (since I work there, it’s sort of unavoidable) and I shop at the local conventional grocery store (and also for the record, our organic produce is about fifty percent the cost, on average, of theirs).

One: Organic food tastes way better. There’s simply no comparison, especially in terms of animal products like eggs, milk, and meats. Organic, local milk is far superior to the watery lactose-juice that gets peddled at the local store. Some people think it tastes “funny” but if you start drinking it, you’ll grow to like it, and then the conventional milk will start to taste funny. Eggs are the prime example. And here, it’s not even organic that makes the difference. Free range is far more important than organic. Free range eggs have richer yolks, are more flavorful, and according to at least one study, contain half the bad cholesterol and double the good proteins and other nutrients. Whether it’s true or not, the taste justifies the cost.

Two: It’s better for the environment. A recent study showed that farms that grow organic produce had a dramatically decreased impact on soil degradation than conventional methods. And this is the clincher because, as hippy-ish as it sounds, this is the only planet that we have, and we’re going to be in a whole crap-ton of trouble in a decade or so if we keep doing things the way we are now. I’m not trying to be on a soap box or anything. Far be it from me to care about anything other than my own personal well-being, but the fact remains, these problems are imminent and might actually affect those golden years that I’d rather spend building model airplanes and blogging than dead or worse–scavenging in a post-apocalyptic world for fifty-year-old canned goods with no labels.

Now, there are other things to consider here. What is considered “conventional” in production standards was revolutionary not so long ago. The use of pesticides and herbicides dramatically increased the food supply and may or may not be responsible for the current level of comfort that Americans enjoy. We could suddenly produce food in vast quantities cheaply. Great. The long-term costs are up for debate, however. Large scale irrigation is not sustainable. Aquifers will run out of water and then where will we be? The long term health effects of pesticides and herbicides are also not known regardless of whether the foods themselves are less nutritious. Regardless, you should probably wash all produce before consuming it.

What about genetically modified food products? Anything genetically modified is automatically considered non-organic (no matter what other methods are employed in its production). Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. Genetic modification is something we’ve been doing for years. We’ve been putting selective pressures on all sorts of crops and food producing plants and animals for thousands of years. So much so that very few of them would survive as species without humans around. Have you ever heard of Ray Comfort? He’s this guy that uses the banana as proof of god’s existence. The problem is, for thousands of years, the banana has been undergoing forced evolution. It has been domesticated over thousands of years. Wild bananas? Not the most edible food in the world. They are ugly and look nothing like the fruit that we buy by the bunches at the grocery store.

Until someone can show differently, I don’t see any reason why adding salmon DNA to tomatoes in an effort to make them resistant to frost is somehow a bad idea. Most people that object to it have a faulty understanding of how genes and DNA work. Genes merely code for proteins. It doesn’t make the tomato taste fishy, it just makes it hardier. It’s not an exact science at this point, but I give full support to any endeavor to design foods using genetic modification. I would also like to see those foods produced without using pesticides and herbicides, but you remember what we said earlier about cake.

The bottom line here is that we can afford what we want to afford. Almost all of the families that buy their groceries exclusively at my co-op are not wealthy at all. They have merely made a lifestyle choice that I would imagine affects their health. On the one hand, their food is fresher. The fact that they buy organic food means that they are cooking most their own food and are more aware of what they are ingesting (fewer preservatives, etc). It’s a tradeoff. They probably don’t have as many other creature comforts. I mean, the simple act of cutting out cable TV frees up plenty of cash every month and would more than make up for it, increasing your well-being by forcing you to find better things to do with your time.

It’s about choices. Are you going to have your cake? Or eat it? Or…whatever.

My fiancée thinks that Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter is hot. To test it again, just now, I said, “Hey, you should see this,” and I turned the monitor so she could see the above image (before my modifications). Her eyes immediately clouded over and she smiled, emitting sort of a “hmm…” sound. The fascinating thing is that he is deliberately dressed to be androgynous. He’s a transvestite. While it’s probably obvious that it’s a man, there is a blurring of the lines here. His bone structure is that of of a man, but his behavior–if you’ve ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show–is often feminine. You might call Frank-N-Furter a sort of melding of two genders, lying solidly in neither. Such is the nature of “trans-gender” individuals. Drag queens sometimes blur the lines further. I’ve seen drag queens that I could have sworn were women.

Word on the street is, the California Supreme Court did something today. Or rather, failed to do something, which is strike down Proposition 8. You know, back in 2008, when I first saw this commercial, I thought it was a joke. Nobody in their right mind could possibly say these things without some irony. These people defend Prop 8 on the grounds that if same-sex couples are allowed to get married, it will somehow infringe on their rights. Of course, there is no mention of the homosexuals in question having their rights restricted.

Here’s the thing. I was talking with a science teacher friend of mine and he asked me what I thought the difference between females and males was. I pretty much assumed it must have something to do with the wang. Well, as he pointed out, biologically speaking, the only clear-cut way that scientists have of differentiating between is the size of their gametes. The female of any given, sexually-reproducing species will always have the larger gametes (eggs) while the males have the smaller gametes (sperm). That’s it. There is no other way of differentiating between the two across species. For instance, female spotted hyenas have an organ that resembles the males’ genitals, referred to as a pseudopenis. To the untrained eye, it’s almost impossible to tell a male from a female.

Look at seahorses. The males are the ones that get pregnant and give birth to live young. Reminds me of a terrible Schwarzenegger movie, speaking of California.

So what’s the deal with humans? Aren’t we somehow different? We’d like to think that we are, wouldn’t we? If aliens came to Earth today, do you think they’d be able to tell a male from a female human without some research?

Sexual reproduction evolved as a novel way of blending genes between generations. The reasons for sexual reproduction persisting are not exactly clear. A number of species of animals reproduce asexually (some lizards, insects and sharks are able to reproduce through parthenogenesis), which is a lot more efficient. It is thought that wider diversity is the result of sexual reproduction and that it allows for quicker adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Regardless of the truth-value of this assertion, we are a species among many species which produce sexually.

The question of the naturalness of homosexuality arises now. Only a heterosexual coupling among humans is going to produce any viable offspring, so this is the evidence that is often cited in opposition to allowing same-sex couplings. I would posit that since the only real biological difference between the genders (and therefore making any other differences largely cultural) then any random coupling of humans is essentially the same as any other. If, by some chance, a few of those couplings are “heterosexual” and result in offspring, then so much the better for the species. In fact, the way evolution works, this is, of course, going to be far more common than a same-sex coupling. But, as we have seen with many species, including chimps, bonobos, and other mammals, homosexual couplings do happen. It is, for lack of a better word, normal. It’s not strange or weird, and nature allows for it simply because it’s possible.

I am not here to argue for whether these relationships are more or less loving and functional (there are plenty of hetero- couplings that are completely dysfunctional), but to argue that biology allows for homosexuality. The differences between the sexes are subtle and the differences between the genders are cultural.

Whether or not Chief Justice George actually believes that he is serving democracy best by upholding Proposition 8, the fact remains, the proposition itself is just another cultural battle that has absolutely no bearing on biology or the efficacy of humans to continue existing on this planet.

No marriage, no matter what genders are involved, is official until its sanctioned by the state. You can have ceremonies all day long, but until the ink is dry on the marriage license and submitted to the county registry, then you aren’t married in the only eyes that matter: society’s. I’m not a huge fan of state institutions, but this peculiar institution shows that it’s not just a religious one and it cannot be defined as such.

And that is why the California Supreme Court screwed up.

I used to work at a small town science museum. It was mostly for kids. We had exhibits, activities, and demonstrations ostensibly for educational purposes, but for the most part, it was entertainment. There’s only so much science talk you can get in before kids stop listening and just want to touch the lightning ball. Perhaps our biggest draw was the plethora of live animal exhibits that we had. We had everything from tarantulas to a chinchilla to a tortoise (twenty pounds of reptile, that). All of it was designed to be interactive. If a kid wanted to hold a tarantula, we were more than happy to facilitate and supervise such an experience.

Which brings me to a particular incident involving one of our boa constrictors, a young, bright boy and a woman who was presumably his grandmother. I don’t know if you know this about boa constrictors, but they have little claws near their back ends. I pointed out the largely residual organs. The young boy, who had the constrictor draped around his shoulders, said, more or less, “That’s from when they used to be lizards, right?”

Utterly delighted, I was about to say, “That’s exactly right,” and maybe drop some sort of mini lecture about it. Unfortunately, just as I opened my mouth, the grandmother opened hers. She said, “Oh, that’s preposterous.” And then she went off on a tirade about how evolution didn’t happen. She even appealed to me, saying something to the effect that it was “ridiculous to think that people in Africa were black because it was sunny.”

I wanted to say, “Well why else are they black? Are you suggesting some other reason, you old racist?”

But I didn’t. I had absolutely no idea how to respond to the remarks by this woman. Going into the intricacies of sexual selection theories, vitamin D theory, ultraviolet radiation theory, etc. would be complex and I would never be able to explain it adequately without getting angry or distracted. There wasn’t enough time. I let it go. To this day, I’m pretty sure it was one of the most cowardly things I’ve ever done.

Later, I approached my boss, an elderly retired parasitologist, a remarkable and intelligent woman. I retold the story and asked her what I should have done. She said an appropriate response would be, “A majority of biologists agree that evolution by means of natural selection is most likely to be the primary mechanism for the origin of species.” More or less.

But isn’t this cop-out? With new evidence of humanity’s origins surfacing all the time, do we have to be so overly diplomatic? Where ought the line be drawn? It’s a fascinating question because proponents of evolution are the only people who are concerned with being diplomatic about the issue. Perhaps my availability heuristic is flawed, but the majority of anti-evolution folks that I’ve spoken with are vehemently opposed to the idea, not even open to the debate. They don’t care if they’re diplomatic about it at all. And perhaps I’m not open to the idea of a religious interpretation of creationism if it seems to contradict the evidence that I can see with my own eyes.

Why exactly do we feel the need to be diplomatic about our stance on evolution? Obviously, we aren’t all the time, but when it comes down to it, diplomacy is disarming. It’s the only way we have to get through. Being militant is not effective. Until we can find clinching proof, the smoking gun that I talked about yesterday, calm, reasoned argument is all we have. If we start calling people idiots, no matter how idiotic they are being, we’re simply not going to be convincing anyone. Psychological defenses go up and they shut down just like a kid who doesn’t want to hear a long-winded explanation of some scientific principle.

One last thing: Check it out, hobbits are a different species. Gary Gygax is vindicated.

Discuss.

The word for the day is bureaucracy. NASA is in the final stages of assembling the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Part of the machine’s purpose is to search for evidence of the existence of anti-matter by reading the cosmic rays. Since not all rays on planet Earth are, by their nature, cosmic, the gadget needs to be mounted on the International Space Station, sort of like a satellite dish bolted to the top of a mobile home. Sort of high-tech white trashy.

The problem with this whole thing? Despite the fact that they are almost done building this thing, there’s no guarantee that it will launch. You see, we only actually have three space shuttles. That’s right. Three. Five were built. Two blew up. The nature of science is such that most projects take a very long time to complete. So this spectrometer project has been going on for a while, but when Columbia disintegrated in 2003, they had to alter the launch schedule. I mean, we have been pushing these ships to the limit. It’s a tough job. They are old! Older than my crappy Beretta and that thing is on its last legs. With only three space-worthy shuttles, that puts the US in a pretty awkward position. The entire world depends on our shuttle program, and the entire fleet (such as it is) is going to be retired next year. It’s pretty sad, honestly. So they finish building the spectrometer and hope that they can launch it.

Part of the AMS’s mission is the search for evidence of anti-matter. And, as anyone who has read a Dan Brown novel knows, anti-matter is pretty tricky stuff. It’s exactly like normal matter except that if it comes into contact with normal matter, both substances “annihilate” which is, they cease to be matter and are transformed into pure energy, mostly in the form of heat. In layman’s terms: big freaking explosion. Pretty cool, huh? The question is, since our galaxy is made of normal matter, is it possible that there are entire galaxies, solar systems, planets, or even intelligent life forms made entirely of anti-matter? It sounds like a plot from a bad comic book, but the fact remains that it’s entirely possible. The crazy of it is, that we could never actually meet these beings because if we tried to shake hands, we would blow each other straight to oblivion.

How much energy is released in one of these explosions? Remember the famous equation, E=mc². You take the mass of the two beings–one made of normal matter, the other, of the anti-variety–and add them together. Probably 180kg, assuming they are about the same size as we. You know, it doesn’t matter, because no matter how much mass they are, you end up multiplying it by c². What does c stand for? The fucking speed of light. That’s right. And you square it, which means that an incredibly huge amount of energy is locked up in matter. But we all knew that, right?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if NASA never got the funding to launch this machine, so we never discovered whether or not there were anti-matter galaxies, and then, say, a few years from now, some amazing energy source is found that allows us to travel between galaxies, and, wouldn’t you know it, the first galaxy that we travel to is made entirely of anti-matter? It could happen, people. It could happen, and won’t we all feel like dorks for not giving NASA their measly two billion dollars?

In other news, soon, the internet will be able to answer all of your questions. Finally! I’m so sick of the internet being totally useless. At long last, I never have to wade through google and wikipedia to find just about any information I could possibly hope for. I jest, of course, this thing looks totally keen.

Last but not least, since I’m a little strapped for time, let’s see if I can toss two stories into one sentence. Soon, you’ll be able to use your brand new, silicon invisibility cloak to avoid spiders that want to inject sperm into you with hypodermic penises. That is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.

Discuss.