Doc Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

Moving day!

2006-06-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

The Chimpanzee Refuge has relocated. Please refresh your bookmarks. Uh, well, given our volume, that advice will apply to a handful of readers. Anyway, here you go:

Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge at Science Blogs

More flower porn

2006-06-04T21:35:00.000-04:00

My 18 y.o. son experimented with some floral close-ups. This is one of my geraniums. His photographic adventure among my potted plants coincided nicely with my recent dilettantish attempts to educate myself about MADS-box genes. These are transcription factors which are paralleled by the homeobox gene products in animals, and are also deeply connected with morphology. Here's a fairly comprehensive site on the subject from the Max-Planck Institute: The MADS-Box Gene Home Page.

A blog by any other name would be as pungent.

2006-06-04T21:09:00.000-04:00

Sigh...

Well, we're still awaiting the move to ScienceBlogs. The team o' bonobos has compiled delightfully wordy bios, and I have put together a little description of the blog. We were asked to assign the Refuge to a couple of categories from the following list;

Physical Sciences (math, physics, chemistry, astronomy)

Biology (micro- and macro-)

Planet Earth (geology, paleontology, climatology, meteorology, etc)

Medicine

Brain & Behavior (neuroscience, psychology)

Academia (science education, lab life, life on the tenure track)

Philosophy of Science (history of science, scientific ethics, meta-
commentary about science itself)

Policy & Politics (excluding evolution vs creationism)

Culture Wars (evo vs creationism, also more broadly science vs faith/
religion, political rants)

The Chimp Refuge is nothing if not an heady potpourri of floral, astringent and scatological odors so it was hard to decide which category describes us most accurately. "Culture Wars" is the best fit, I suppose. "Biology" fits, too. "Academia?" Huh? Who says that lab life and exciting research are excluded from the Evil Korporate World?

Alas, we will lose the peaceful soft focus tiles of Pan which provide our background. Fortunately, khaulein, who will morph to wild_type with the move, has designed a wonderful banner which captures the essence of the Chimp Refuge.

Abstinence Only? To Arms! Send in the Shag Troopers!

2006-05-17T08:38:00.000-04:00

Tim Kreider was inspired by the NYT's Contra-contraception article. Be sure to read the Artist's Statement in the link below the cartoon.

What You Can Do To Fight Against The War on Sex!

The Greatest Threat to America

2006-05-15T18:10:00.000-04:00

Despite my best efforts to keep the popular press at bay, shouting headlines cannot always be avoided. Over the past few weeks I have placed the pieces together and have arrived at the conclusion that, apparently, the greatest threat facing our country today is hordes of gay Mexicans wishing to illegally cross our borders so that they can lobby to get married, use all of our oil, and demand that our schools teach evolution. This will, of course, signal the "end times". I imagine that somewhere there is a bible code that predicts this and that an hour long special about it will be broadcast soon on the History Channel.

Remember, you read it here first.

What? No Mother's Day card? Into the casserole you go!

2006-05-14T08:30:00.000-04:00

Oh, the sweet tales of Peter Rabbit! I fondly recall reading Beatrix Potter's stories to my kids when they were small imps. Old Mrs. Rabbit patiently and lovingly tended to her baby bunnies, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and that young rascal, Peter. She was a model of motherly behavior which included the threat of disaster should her bunnies stray too far afield:

'Now, my dears,' said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, 'you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.'

Then she said she was "going out." Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail remained in their assigned territory and dutifully gathered blackberries. But not the disobedient Peter. He was too tempted by Mr. McGregor's radishes so he defied his mother's orders with near dire consequences. Perhaps Old Mrs. Rabbit should have told Peter something to really put the fear into him. Had Peter led Mr. McGregor to their cozy burrow, and had the farmer prodded around the rabbit hole a bit, Mrs. Rabbit would have returned from her jaunt to the bakery and set to making hasenpfeffer out of her children as an accompaniment to her brown bread and currant buns. In the world outside of Beatrix Potter's anthropomorphized bunnies and pastel Lake District scenes, a mother rabbit will eat her own young if her nest is disturbed. Furthermore, Old Mrs. Rabbit spends most of her time "going out" and visits her nest to feed her bunnies by high pressure lactation for about 2 minutes a day.

It's little wonder that Peter is hiding under the covers. What, is that a spice mixture which Mrs. Rabbit is stirring in the cup?Mama animals, as warm and fuzzy as the concept of the loyal, saintly, self-sacrificing mother might be, can be a ruthlessly practical lot. Check out One Thing They Aren't: Maternal by Natalie Angier and published in the NYT, 05/09/2006.

Oh, mothers! Dear noble, selfless, tender and ferocious defenders of progeny all across nature's phylogeny: How well you deserve our admiration as Mother's Day draws near, and how photogenically you grace the greeting cards that we thrifty offspring will send in lieu of a proper gift.

Here is a mother guinea hen, trailed by a dozen cotton-ball chicks. Here a mother panda and a baby panda share a stalk of bamboo, while over there, a great black eagle dam carries food to her waiting young. We love you, Mom, you're our port in the storm. You alone help clip Mother Nature's bloodstained claws.

But wait. That guinea hen is walking awfully fast. In fact, her brood cannot quite keep up with her, and by the end of the day, whoops, only two chicks still straggle behind. And the mama panda, did she not give birth to twins? So why did just one little panda emerge from her den? As for the African black eagle, her nest is less a Hallmark poem than an Edgar Allan Poe. The mother has gathered prey in abundance, and has hyrax carcasses to spare. Yet she feeds only one of her two eaglets, then stands by looking bored as the fattened bird repeatedly pecks its starving sibling to death.

You get the picture. Motherhood in Nature is not a sentimental Hallmark greeting card. Although my adolescents rest assured that I will not selectively starve one over the other, and they know they will not end up as a roast or stew, they don't call me "Winged Harpy Mom" for nothing.

Marching toward Gilead

2006-05-08T07:35:00.000-04:00

We here at the Chimp Refuge have railed on about the Christian Right's incursions into the discipline of evolutionary biology, and their insidious distortions of science in the name of their fundamentalist faith. Their intrusiveness is not limited to the teaching of evolution in public schools. It also extends to public health and an aim to further curtail access to birth control.

While scanning the New York Times last Friday (May 5) this caught my attention: Use of Contraception Drops, Slowing Decline of Abortion Rate. The article focused on a report released last week by the Guttmacher Institute, a "nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research, policy analysis and public education."

From the NYT article by Kate Zernike:

Contraception use has declined strikingly over the last decade, particularly among poor women, making them more likely to get pregnant unintentionally and to have abortions, according to a report released yesterday by the Guttmacher Institute.

The decline appears to have slowed the reduction in the national abortion rate that began in the mid-1980's.

"This is turning back the clock on all the gains women have made in recent decades," Sharon L. Camp, the president of the institute, said.

Granted, Zernike's article isn't the pinnacle of fine reporting, and there's scant emphasis on the discrepancy between the increased rate of unwanted pregnancies among the poor and the decline of such among the more economically privileged. As some wags have noted, the New York Times suffers from a chronic case of affluenza. Still, the data shown in the excerpted bar graph raise questions. Why are fewer poor women using contraceptives? Why is the rate of unintended pregnancies increasing for this demographic?

The researchers blamed reductions in federally and state-financed family planning programs for declining contraceptive use. They called for public and private insurance to cover contraceptives, and for over-the-counter access to the so-called morning-after pill, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after sex.

However, Zernike's mediocre article proved to be the appetizer for the main course: Contra-Contraception by Russell Shorto (NYT Sunday Magazine, May 7, 2006). This proved to be an excellent follow-on to the Guttmacher Institute's report. It's not enough for the religious right to outlaw abortion, and to argue that some forms of contraception are abortifacients. These fundagelicals of Roman Catholic and Protestant stripes see sex without procreation as an evil and a bane of the world. Although a majority of Americans (93% overall and 90% of American Roman Catholics) favors the use of contraception, a vocal minority rails against it, and contradicts evidence-based medicine in its pursuit to restrict access to birth control. Their beliefs have become policy as the Bush administration erodes federal funding for family planning here and abroad. The political machinations which surrounded the approval, or rather lack thereof, for over-the-counter Plan B contraception have been described in detail elsewhere, e.g., Chris Mooney's chapter "Sexed Up Science" in his book, The Republican War on Science.

As a woman, I do not see that Western civilization is threatened by the removal of the procreation factor from the sexual equation. What I see is an agenda to abrogate women's relatively new found freedom from fecundity. Effective and reliable birth control provides us with the ability to enjoy sex with our partners without the worry of pregnancy, a non-trivial health event in a woman's life. Contraception allows women to forge all manner of careers and vocations. Contraception allows those of us who are stay-at-home mothers to better focus on our families and nurture fewer children. Contraception allows poor women to avoid pregnancy and to be better able to pursue opportunities to break the cycle of poverty. Contraception allows women to make the decision not to have children at all. The subtext of the Christian Right's agenda is not just taking away the recreation and replacing it with procreation. The agenda is the subjugation of women.

It's bad enough that the fundagelicals want to criminalize abortion. They also want to criminalize all manner of birth control. One might argue that this is a minority opinion. However, this vociferous minority has insinuated itself into our reproductive health. Look at that bar graph. Read the conclusions of the Guttmacher researchers. Read Shorto's article. Perform a 'Net search to see how Plan B approval was stalled. Although it may be hyperbole to believe we are marching toward some version of Margaret Atwood's grim dysopia, neither should we be complacent.

Literary butchers and a back fat beauty regimen

2006-05-04T19:02:00.000-04:00

First hand experience with butchering pigs seems to be de rigeur these days. I stumbled across two recently published articles which followed the general theme of colorful Italian teaches squeamish urban American how to gut a hog.

The first, Carnal Knowledge - How I became a Tuscan butcher by Bill Buford, New Yorker 05/01/2006, begins by the author's procurement of a pig (freshly deceased) from the Greenmarket in NYC. With the pig precariously tied to his Vespa, Buford careens through the streets to his home in Manhattan where he butchers the animal in his kitchen. After this preamble, he describes his tutelage from experienced butchers in a Tuscan macelleria where nearly every bit of the hog is put to culinary use.

The second was an excerpt in the NYT Sunday Magazine, The Modern Hunter-Gatherer, from Michael Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. An interview with Pollan appeared in in the UCal-Berkeley News. Based on reviews and this interview, The Omnivore's Dilemma has reached the top of my reading list. In the spirit of Fast Food Nation, Pollan's book scrutinizes the sources and economics of our food as modern consumers. As part of his explorations, he prepared a dinner for friends from scratch, and I do mean from scratch. Pork was the main course so Pollan set off into the California brush, accompanied by the requisite grizzled Italian hunter, to bag a wild boar for dinner.

Pollan's description of the hunt is nicely crafted. Likewise, Buford's chronicles of his apprenticeship to the maestro macellaio evoke the central place of meat in the Tuscan diet and culture. Buford is less squeamish about the whole business than Pollan is. As a former farm kid, and current omnivore, it was with perplexed bemusement that I read Pollan's occasionally reverential, occasionally anguished scrutiny of first-hand killing of a food animal.

Killing animals for food was a fact of life on the farm. I regularly witnessed poultry beheadings then I looked on as my mother plucked the hen and disembowled it. I was fascinated by the entrails of the birds. As a kid, I saw a steer gutted and cleaned at the local butcher's operation, the "locker" as we called it. I knew the source of my meat-based food and likely, I had even named the animal. The cattle and chickens lived well on our farm. We only kept four or five steers and/or heifers grazing in our pasture at any given time. They also ate cracked corn as a treat. They were contented beasts which lived in a healthy environment. Similarly, the chickens roamed freely around our orchard. We respected the animals, and I felt a detached affection for them. They weren't pets, hence the detachment, but they were living breathing mammals and birds whose lives intertwined with mine.

For some time, I cynically regarded my memory of our delicious, full flavored farm-raised beef and chicken as superior food as a merely nostalgic view through rose-colored glasses. Now, I realize our farm raised meat really was that much better. For quite some time, I kept the image of our free ranging animals lazing about on a small farm at the fore and pushed the reality of crowded feedlots as the source of my steaks, burgers, and roasts to a dusty corner of my cerebral cortex. But Fast Food Nation really did me in. The prospect of cattle eating the offal of their own kind in the form of meal is revolting, not to mention the deplorable conditions of the feedlot and the workplace for the humans slaughtering the animals.

I am fortunate that I have the luxury of being pretty free with my grocery money and to live in an area where I have a wide range of choices in food markets. So, I usually aim toward Whole Foods as the market where I purchase most meat and poultry. The conditions for animals and workers of the Whole Foods suppliers may be marginally better than the Big Ag Biz operations. Pollan's term for the supply chain to Whole Foods and the like is "Big Organic." There is an alternative, short of stalking devil deer in the surrounding woods for my dinner. In this part of the Gahduhn State, there are several small farming operations which cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry and sell the meat as organic. Cherry Grove Farm is an example, and their beef tastes very much like what I remember as a youth. Cherry Grove is an example of what Pollan terms a pastoral food chain. Fewer animals are raised. They roam freely and eat a lot of grass. In fact, these farms are reminiscent of my childhood home. Although I have yet to read the book, Pollan's comments in the NYT Magazine article lead me to believe this is a far more sustainable kind of agriculture, and certainly more humane for the animals.

Back to the fascination which Pollan and Buford appear to have with butchery...Many of us, er, older biochemists are not phased by blood and guts. When I first entered the pharma biz after my post-doc, I worked with enzymes which I isolated from porcine kidneys and bovine adrenal glands. This was quite a transition after working with recombinant enzymes which were expressed in and purified from E. coli. Although my then-employer had some pockets of scientists cloning genes and expressing the corresponding proteins, there was no centralized group which provided these, so most of us biochemists were on our own when we had to find sources for enzymes and receptors. There were a couple of slaughterhouses in the city . I chose to patronize the smaller one. The butchers smirked when I entered the killing floor since they expected me, a young suburban woman, to be squeamish. A guy pointed out a smaller carcass hanging in the locker and told me that it was a German Shepherd. Without missing a beat I replied "Sheep" with a smile. I never flinched as I watched their operation, and finally, one of the guys astutely guessed that I was a farm kid.

Over the course of the year, I popped in to harvest kidneys and adrenals. The guys brought the animals down in a swift and sure manner using a captive bolt. I never witnessed the animals struggle. It was like turning off a switch. The evisceration process was contained and efficient. Copious washes of scalding water were used to keep the area sanitary. When the animal was gutted and hanging, I climbed a small stepladder placed in front of the carcass and dug my bare hands into the back of the body cavity to scoop out the adrenals or cut out the kidneys. That winter, my hands and forearms were exceedingly soft. I wasn't using any extra skin lotion so I wasn't sure why this was until I realized that my moisturizing regimen was supplemented by wallowing in back fat.

The incessant chirping of bioengineered crickets from hell

2006-04-14T08:10:00.000-04:00

The Chimpanzee Refuge has been devoid of its usual bonobic hoots and screeches. We will be moving to Science Blogs in the near future, hence my reluctance to add verbiage here since my ever so precious yammerings will wind up in archival purgatory. Nonetheless, I can't keep my trap shut for long so here's a little potpourri of offerings:

In the old news department, there was quite a hoopla over the discovery of the fishapod (Tiktaalik roseae) fossils which represent a transitional species between fish and land-living critters. Tiktaalik roseae quickly became an evolutionary "In yo' face, suckas!" icon exploited by not a few press releases for twitting the ID/anti-evolutionists crowd. See Time Mag's blurb. I won't even bother to link the NYT article since you'd have to pay for it, but the nose thumbing was in there, believe me.

I suppose it's easier for the public to wrap their collective arms around an endearingly goofy looking fishapod than unseen molecules. To paraphrase Malibu Stacy, the molecular evolution of proteins is haaaaaard. Thus, Tiktaalik somewhat overshadowed the more titillating press release covering the publication of Jamie Bridgham et al.'s "Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation" in Science (April 7, 2006 vol. 312 ). It's a lovely piece of work, but then I'm a fool for nuclear hormone receptor biochemistry. Those of you with access to Science can read the manuscript in its entirety there. For you non-subscriber shlubs, here's the link to the NYT article: Study, in a First, Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance. Yes, the NYT will let you read about molecular evolution for free! And again with the twitting: in yo' face, Behe!

Although the NYT article trumpets this as a first, and indeed the work out of Thorton's lab at the University of Oregon nicely outlines the progression of molecular evolution of the aldosterone receptor (aldosterone is a mineralocorticoid; these hormones and receptor partners regulate water and electrolyte balance), enzymologists often think about evolution of enzymatic efficiency and how proteins have been shaped through adaptative processes as catalysts. That will be the subject of another blog entry after the Chimp Refuge moves on up out of the trailer park and into its new suburban tract home.

Finally, a tip o' the hat to those rapscallions at FrinkTank now to be found in the clutter of Bushwellian links to the right. The Frinks offer a scurrilously hilarious take on things scientific and are my slightly guilty pleasure. Plus the blog refers to one of my favorite Simpsons characters. What's not to like? The world is indebted to the Frinks who called attention to Tim Kreider's excellent comic, The Pain - When will it end? , an example of which follows. Let's hear a raucous hoot, my bonobos, for FrinkTank and Tim Kreider.

Botanical pornography

2006-03-27T18:20:00.000-05:00

One good thing about living in the central part of the Gahduhn State is that spring arrives earlier here than in Eastern Massachusetts, and certainly well ahead of south central Wisconsin. The young maple trees lining our street have a reddish glow, a color which subtly hints that the leaves which will emerge in a few short weeks. Larger buds can be seen on the flowering crabapple trees, and a few redbud trees are fully in the pink. Early narcissus are blooming and add cheery dashes of yellow and white among patches of last fall's dead leaves. However, long before the sap begins to run up the grey overwintered trees, the sure harbingers of spring in northern cllimes arrive during the coldest frozen days of January. Those are the seed and nursery catalogs.

I have poured over these catalogs ever since I began gardening in earnest some twenty-odd years ago. When I was a grad student, my spouse had a "real job" so we were fortunate enough to own a little house with a yard. I tended perennials along its borders and a variety of vegetables, including a mess of hot Thai peppers, in a sunny patch behind the old garage. My husband built what he called "the botany bench" underneath the basement stairs. He installed growlights above the pineboard bench, and with a heating wire beneath the seed starting mixture, I grew bright green seedlings while the bitter Wisconsin winter held fast in February and March with occasional snowy incursions into April. Wayside and Park Seeds were my catalogs of choice, and although Connecticut's White Flower Farms has recently found favor now that I live in the East, the other two are old friends.

Nursery catalogs are designed to seduce. The plants and flowers pictured are lush, lusty specimens, and no less alluring to the amateur horticulturalist than a Jenna Jameson spread is to a perpetually tumescent young man. The full shots of lilies, delphiniums, gallardia, and roses draw in the winter crazed gardener, and sucker him or her into believing that those glorious blossoms could really flourish in the garden. "Yes, yes, I can cultivate those Blackmore and Langdon delphiniums," I gurgled to myself when I, a young inexperienced gardener, gazed at these catalogs full of turgid floral beauties. While in the grasp of winter, these catalogs played on my desperation, and I imagined myself as a latter day Gertrude Jekyll.

The seduction by such botanical pornography shouldn't be surprising. After all, flowers are sexual parts, and are sometimes monoecious, sometimes dioecious depending on the species. Many plant species rely on insect vectors to assist with reproduction. Plants have co-evolved in a most marvelous way with their insect pollinators, and have devised clever ways of luring bugs to their flowers. Magnolia are among the most primitive of flowering trees, and they attract the more primitive insects, like beetles. The titan arum's most appropriate scientific name is Amorphophallus titanum (see photo). It is also dubbed the corpse flower due to its fetid perfume which attracts carrion beetles. The Rosaceae, a family of plants which arose after magnolias and which include plum and apple trees, call their sweet siren song to more complex insects like honey bees. Perhaps the one of the most striking co-evolutionary relationships between bug and bloom is that of the orchid with the wasp. The orchid's innards are shaped to look like the hind end of a female wasp, and the plant emits a phermonish molecule which reels the male wasp to its petals. The horny bug attempts to copulate with the orchid, and once finished, or frustrated, he flies away to another orchid and distributes pollen which is roughly the spermatazoan (sans flagella) equivalent of the flower, The sexuality of grasses evolved beyond mere insect pollinators and relies on mechanics like wind, rain or a passing critter's fur to transport pollen.

Humans recognize the sexuality of flowers. Blooms have long been a part of courtship ritual in the Western world. Robert Mapplethorpe and Georgia O'Keefe are among artists who exploited floral sexuality. Floraphiles themselves have predilections which are near fetishitic in their focus. Two friends are avid rosarians. In spite of highly different climates (one lives in upstate New York and the other in Southern California), these ladies are dedicated to roses, particularly the more rough and ready old fashioned varieties. In spite of my living in a spot which will not readily harbor a rose, they are ever after me to plant some rose, any rose, which I see as a testament to their obsessions. I did grow a nice climber, Zephirine Drouhin (see photo) in my little yard in Cambridge, MA, but most of my gardening here in Princeton is confined to containers. Here I make do with lush leafed caladiums and fragrant lilies (see photo). I know my friends really, really wish I would plant a rose, and are convinced that I will not be complete unless I do. As an experienced, and even somewhat jaded, gardener, I can resist the rose's call. It is time, however, for me to open the pages of the flower porn catalogs and order lily and caladium bulbs as I enter my own horticulturally hedonistic rites of spring.

More insect torment

2006-03-27T08:53:00.000-05:00

The latest offering from Nicholas Gurewitch's delightfully dark-in-bright-sunny-colors comic, The Perry Bible Fellowship:

I hope that Mr. Gurewitch will forgive the transgression of my reposting this here, but it's just too appropriate to pass up.

Insect torment - the road to sociopathy?

2006-03-14T19:11:00.000-05:00

The Revenge of the Flaming Roaches tale in my "Madcap hazmat" entry might suggest that I take great delight in tormenting insects, or at least reading or hearing about such. After all, the nasty little kid who pulls the legs from hapless flies is an archetype. But is this truly sinister? Is insect torture the gateway drug to tormenting puppies and kittens then moving on to Jeffrey Dahmeresque gorefeasts? I think not.

I grew up on a farm so I had the opportunity to observe many different kinds of bugs. I had no fear of insects, and in fact, genuinely liked most six legged critters. As a kid, I loved watching ants, beetles, and grasshoppers. Cicadas fascinated me, and I collected their discarded shells. Even better were the cicada killers, a species of wasp which hunts cicadas and paralyzes them with venom. Please check out Professor Chuck Holliday's page for detailed information on this fascinating bug. One of these formidable wasps set up a homestead, namely an earthen lair, near the foundation of our house. Putting a pragmatic distance between the wasp's home and myself, I hunkered down and watched the wasp come and go from her burrow. Finally, I saw the wasp ponderously glide in for a landing, and lug a stunned cicada into the little tunnel. I knew that down in the dark, the wasp would deposit eggs via her ovipositor into the still living cicada. The eggs would then hatch, and the larvae would devour the cicada and overwinter before bursting forth as young wasps the next season. My familiarity with this gruesome reproductive tactic may have been the reason that the movie "Alien" truly freaked me out. The concept of larvae in a host was nothing new to me, but to see it realized in such a ghastly way, if only cinematically, with human-as-cicada was horrifying.

Our farm's honey bees, which lived in an old hive in our orchard, were great: cute, industrious little champs with complex behaviors. The bees sometimes fell into the water trough for our cattle, and I rescued them. Initially, I used a stick as lifesaving device so the bee could crawl onto it. Later, when I realized that honey bees would not sting if handled gently, I used my finger to lift the bee out of the water. I liked watching ants, also captains of industry, but they were not as endearing as the honey bees.

We regarded bumblebees and yellow jackets as pests so they were fair game for insect torment. These loutish rugby-shirt striped hymenopterians tended to nest in less than desirable places, including the hay and straw mangers. This was quite unpleasant for a heifer or steer which unwittingly chomped down on some bee filled hay. In an ill advsed attempt at extermination, my brother and I often ventured into the barns, shook bumblebee nests in the straw with a pitchfork, then swatted the enraged yellow and black suckers with badminton rackets. I was stung more than once playing this game. We also engaged in a risky activity dubbed "bumblebee plipping" in which we would lurk by a patch of false dragonhead plants whose tubular flowers cover tall stalks. These attracted a somewhat smaller variety of the bulky how-can-it-fly bumblebee. Using the time honored configuration of thumb and forefinger, we flicked the bees’ backsides while their heads were immersed in the heart of the flower. The object was to stun 'em but not kill 'em. We gave the bees a fighting chance by removing our shoes for this activity. Barefooted, we danced with pain over a gravel driveway, which abutted the bed of false dragonhead, to evade the highly annoyed bees.

So, by and large, I had no problems with insects other than mosquitoes, flies, bedbugs (encountered these horrid little beasts at 4H camp), chiggers and cockroaches which became all to familiar during my years of living in the rabbit warrens of undergrad apartments and in the labs during grad school. Roaches are disgusting bugs. They grew to large proportions in the labs, and one could hear them scuttle when the lights were turned on. However, I admit I found the Madagascar hissing cockroaches to be kind of cool. A former boyfriend (now a geologist and an old fart like myself) had a pair of these which he kept in a small vivarium. He also had a seven foot boa constrictor which we tucked away in my apartment since we figured our mutual landlord, who roundly forbade him from keeping a snake, wouldn't suspect that a woman would harbor such a beast. Sexism worked to our advantage in this case.

Another one of my favorite insect-torment stories came from one of my architectural design studio instructors (I had a checked undergrad career). He and his grad school classmates captured flies and sedated them by chilling them briefly in a refrigerator. Then, my instructor and his artsy classmates quickly glued little slivers of balsa wood and tissue paper to the abdomens of the sleepy bugs. When the flies regained full consciousness and flew, a vertiable squadron of fly-planes filled the air. A Google search of "fly plane" reveals that this is not a wholly original concept, but my instructor and his friends used far more intricate designs. After all, they were artists! I have to wonder if the Flypower product line is somehow connected to my instructor and his chums since there are distinct similarities between his design and the fly plane product offered on Flypower.

So, yes, some fine upstanding citizens of my acquaintance have engaged in insect torment. A truly kind animal lover is welcome to go Jain on my ass, but I never felt the temptation to willfully torment a bunny, a puppy or a kitty. And I never have entertained the thought of bringing home the bacon by way of homicidally harvested "long pig." Still, karma is karma, so I may well wind up in some circle of Dantean hell, buried up to my neck in sugary pollen and nectar, butt waving wildly in the air, only to be "plipped" by an plutonian imp.

Photograph by Ronald F. Billings, Texas Forest Service

Madcap hazmat: a nostalgic reverie of lab accidents

2006-03-07T21:05:00.000-05:00

So this morning when I walked into the corridors bisecting our labs from our offices, I was greeted by yellow "caution wet floor" signs and my staff scurrying about like industrious, yet annoyed, overeducated ants. Apparently, a major leak developed sometime late last night in a lab on the second floor. The water made its way into another group's tissue culture lab adjoining my department's facilities. Fortunately, none of our equipment was affected, and our offices were dry in spite of copious puddles of water on the tile floors of the hallways. I did not arrive early enough to witness the full comedy of the company safety personnel taking care of the problem. According to one of my staff, the safety folk began tromping about without any investigation as to what might be lurking in the standing water. You see, when water floods a laboratory, there's always the possibility that it carries contamination in the form of noxious chemicals, biohazards, or radioactivity, depending on the source of the flood. This is not to mention the possibility of electrical hazards. The lackadaisical approach to clean-up, coupled with the observation of sparks shooting out of the ceiling when something started arcing as a result of the errant H2O, calls to mind many haphazard approaches to lab accidents in my past.

Although safety in labs should be, and typically is, taken quite seriously, many scientists find amusement in exchanging tales of "safety incidents." Heck, even non-scientists have their stories as evidenced by historical recounts of mischievious chem class vandals who flushed turds of sodium metal down myriad high school boys' restroom crappers.

Some of the more memorable safety incidents of my career occurred while I was in grad school. Fortunately, I was not the instigator. These were perpetrated by my fellow students. One involved phosgene gas release. At room temperature, phosgene exists as a highly reactive gas which, when inhaled, reacts with water in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid. Damage by the acid causes pulmonary edema. Although phosgene raised its spectral head as a weapon (nerve gas) in World War I, it has more benign uses in chemical synthesis, and can be generated in situ from other reagents for this purpose.

That's what one of my fellow students was doing: generating phosgene for an alkylation reaction. He was supposed to chill the reaction vessel in an ice-water bath so that the phosgene would be contained. He was also supposed to perform this chemistry in a fume hood. Some source of confusion came into play as he set up his reaction. The confusion was possibly due to English as a second language. This fellow was fresh out of the People's Republic of China, and was among the wave of students and post-docs who came out of that country to US university labs in the early 1980s. He even had a Mao jacket. Rather than setting up his reaction in the fume hood and on ice, as per relatively safe procedures, this chap happily cobbled together his reaction vessel in the "cold room." Perhaps the student was unduly impressed with capitalist running dog technology and decided that the cold room, a contained insulated space whose temperature was maintained at 4 degrees Celcius or thereabouts, would offer a more sophisticated and reliable alternative to the more proletarian ice-water bath. It was the "thereabouts" temperature control which became problematic. In the summer, when the Phosgene Incident occurred, the temperatures in the cold rooms of our old building fluctuated wildly. Because the student's reaction was not on ice, it warmed up along with the ambient tempertaure of the not-so-cold room. Thus, phosgene gas was emitted from the student's reaction vessel. One of his colleagues discovered it when he walked into the cold room and smelled the characteristic new mown hay odor of the gas. He immediately bolted away, pulled the fire alarrms, and University Safety was called from a further removed locale. The student who discovered the phosgene scene was whisked off to the university hospital for observation. Not to worry, he was fine. The principal investigator was a no-nonsense, brusk fellow of Taiwanese origins, and was apoplectic over the incident. The Phosgene Kid was lucky not to be deported back to the People's Republic.

I was ferreting out journal articles at a campus library when this happened and returned to find faculty, staff and students milling around outside the building, alarm claxons blaring, while campus and city fire trucks careened onto the street. Firemen with air tanks strapped to their backs and respirators on their faces prepared to enter the building. But wait! Who's this? An official looking guy in trim pants and a dress shirt, and not a lick of any kind of protective equipment led the bemasked firemen into the building. I quipped to my fellow students and post-docs: "He must be the canary."

That wasn't the last of many incidents in the old lab building. This was in the days when smoking was still allowed in many academic labs. A chain-puffing post-doc tossed a smouldering cigarette butt into a trash can which also contained an empty container of ethyl ether. Well, it was nominally "empty" since ether fumes lingered in the trash can, Flames subsequently shot to the ceiling and singed off the postdoc's goatee and eyebrows. A year or so later in the same lab, a tank of hydrochloric acid gas sprang a leak and caused another evacuation. Again, there was a "canary," in this case the stoner departmental safety officer who ambled toward the affected lab while waving about a litmus paper strip as his sole source of protective equipment. It was a slow day at the local TV stations, so the local telejournalists covered the story as a "hazardous chemical spill on campus," and interviewed a couple of my classmates from the lab. Their principal investigator had been away at a conference, and upon returning to town, learned of the "spill" in his lab via the local news. He was less than pleased by the sudden notoriety.

One of the more bizarre safety incidents was described to me by one of my former bosses. He was a grad student in organic chemistry back in the 1960's. He and his labmates amused themselves late in the evenings by shooting acetone from squirt bottles onto the many ubiquitous and large cockroaches which ventured forth at night. Once the roach was doused with acetone, the students tossed a lit match onto the roach. Poof! Cockroach flambé! Yes, it was a cruel and unusual fate for the bug. However, the roaches had their revenge when one of the burning six-legged buggers scuttled beneath a cabinet full of flammable solvents and set the whole lab ablaze. After the incident, the principal investigator advised his students that roach flaming would no longer be tolerated.

Addendum, March 9, 2006: Check out In the Pipeline's "How Not to Do It: Liquid Nitrogen Tanks" for an account of a pretty impressive "safety incident."

In memoriam: Hope Machedon

2006-03-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

Kevin Beck published "Never Give Up Hope" last year and offers a reprise of this eloquent tribute to an incredible and memorable woman.

Morpheus' little cousins

2006-03-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

I have a bugger of a cough. I didn't notice impending signs of infection, that is, the interferon-tinged achiness and fever which often precede garden variety upper respiratory tract viral invasions. It was just a dry cough a couple of days ago then blossomed into a real hack-a-thon, particularly in the evening.

Thank goodness for morphine's relative, hydrocodone, a semisynthetic derivative of codeine, which is perhaps the best thing short of brown heroin for a cough. Well, that contention might be disputed since hydrocodone is not effective as an antitussive for all people, but based on empirical evidence, my μ-opioid receptors must have some modicum of affinity for the stuff. I hoarded a stash of an acetaminophen-hydrocodone tabs which were left over from past dental work. I figured I'd need them for future antitussive purposes. I am grateful for my pharmacologically thrifty foresight.

In other news, Doc Bushwell's Funhouse o' Science is no more. Kilgore's Endorphin Cult was summarily executed by the Free Forums for the crime of "inappropriate material." Who knew that BlackLight Power was so...so profane? However, Kilgore resurrected the Endorphin Cult in yet another incarnation. How's that for mixing theological allusions? I have updated the link in the left column. Enter at your own risk.

In my real funhouse, I have the opportunity to "do science" again, which is quite a pleasure after almost two years as a manager of scientists, a job which entails herding brilliant but prone-to-egotistical-hissy-fit cats. It is said that theatre people are the most temperamental of all employees. Au contraire! Deal with a senior scientist whose colleagues have not acknowledged him or her properly in a seminar (this typically requires ritualized genuflection) or whose name has not appeared in an authors' list. Then get back to me on termperamental theatre types. Anyway... I will still play the cat herder, but the addition of staff allows me to get back into the lab albeit in a piecemeal fashsion. The project involves an enzyme with a very complex reaction mechanism; it is a potential target for cancer. Well, aren't they all? But it is not another freakin' kinase! The target has another major therapeutic indication, but I'd have to kill you if I told you what that was.

Now I'm off to dig up my little tab of hydrocodone and quell the evening hackery, i.e., the cough and my writing!

"Endless Forms Most Beautiful," February 12, 1809

2006-02-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday, I set forth with my teenagers to NYC, taking the usual Northeast Corridor line through the lovely Jersey railroad right-of-ways to Penn Station. Our destination was the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), a stately building facing Central Park. We climbed the stone steps and admired the reliefs of various animals past and present carved into the stone . Tickets in hand, we wended our way through corridors to the Rose Center for Earth and Space where I met my friends, "A" and "J," in the vicinity of Jupiter. "A" joined us for our appointment with evolution. "J" had familial guide duties for her aunt who was visiting The City so we chatted briefly, took our leave and "until next times" and headed for the Darwin exhibit.

I figured Feb. 11th was a suitable date for such a visit since today is Charles Robert Darwin's 197th birthday. Given that NYC received record snowfall last night and today, the date was a wise choice. There were quite a number of people milling though the exhibit hall, and my rather impatient teenagers wanted to fly through the exhibit rather than dwelling over each and every bit of fascinating minutiae. I managed to slow the kids down somewhat, and concentrated on some key items. Darwin's notes sent shivers down my spine. Here were the great scientist's writings, yellowed with time, before my eyes. Words speaking across the years. My favorite display was comprised of the many plant specimens which he collected and notated. Perhaps these especially appealed to me because I studied botany as an undergrad. I collected and pressed my own plant specimens and fancied myself at that time as becoming a roving naturalist. Darwin took great care in drying and pressing the specimens as well as artfully arranging them. The bird specimens were also interesting. All Darwin's collections were arranged to highlight the patterns which he observed. His magnifying glass was on display as well as an elaborate reconstruction of his study at Down House. In the days of the polymerase chain recation and its revolutionary role in the study of molecular evolution, it is amazing to think that Darwin used such a simple instrument. Of course, he had the very best instruments at hand which serve any scientist well - his acute mind and his keen powers of observation. That the patterns of our molecular evolutionary Tree of Life are so consistent with Darwin's theory of evolution speak greatly to its fundamental underpinnings.

I couldn't resist the lure of the inevitable gift shop where I purchased a plush facsimile of a Galapagos penguin for my daughter, and the exhibit's companion volume, Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldredge (the AMNH curator of the exhibit) for myself. Eldredge is the co-discoverer with the late Stephen Jay Gould of the theory of punctuated equilibrium. I am a couple of chapters into the book, and thus far, Eldredge is setting up Darwin's background, and the influences of his scientific predecessors and contemporaries. It's a relative short volume, and certainly there are more detailed biographies of CRD, but Eldredge's book examines the deeper thought via Darwin's notes which gave rise to the greater theory. The last chapter of the book is titled "Darwin as Anti-Christ: Creationism in the Twenty-First Century." I am resisting skipping ahead.

To date, funding for the exhibition has come from private donations from affluent individuals and charitable organizations. There are no corporate sponsors. From the Telegraph (UK), November 2005:

The Darwin exhibition frightening off corporate sponsors.

Outside of the sci-evolutiono-blogosphere, this sad state of affairs hasn't made much press in the American media. It's shameful that the Bank of America, Gillette, Procter and Gamble or Pfizer couldn't see fit to fork over money for the exhibit. The perception of the Brit-Canadian-Australo-press is that the highly vocal Christian fundamentalist segment holds corporate America by the short hairs. Given that many major coporations sponsor scientific exhibits, it seems, well, odd that the AMNH found it so difficult to nab a few industrial dollars. So, the book and the penguin were a tad pricey, but I look at it as my contribution toward the exhibit. I left without a Darwin finger puppet and was sorely disappointed.

The exhibit is part of the bicentennial celebration of Darwin's birth and will move on to Boston, Chicago and Toronto before its final destination in London in 2009. It is definitely worth a look. Finally, check out the action packed Tortoise Cam!

Doc Bushwell's bit o' trivia: my great-great Uncle Perry Hay was an associate curator (vertebrate paleontology) at the AMNH from 1901-1907. See my entry "What's Bred in the Bones," October 2005.

Low Channel Redux

2006-02-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

I just had to share this. Last night I was watching "House of Yahweh" again, looking for a little evening humor. I was not disappointed. I learned the following:

1. In two years we will be facing Armageddon and in 3.5 years (Summer of 2009) the world will end.

2. 50% of all children today are fatherless.

3. Nearly 100% of all children born today are born with syphilis.

Number three really hit the spot. I am beginning to think that this fellow is not serious, that this really is just a simple "bilk the suckers" scam. I can't quite tell if the gleam in his eye and the slightly crazed smile denote a warped self-delusion or a touch of giddy acknowledgement of soon-to-be-arriving cash leaking out.

Catablogic pathways

2006-02-06T07:04:00.000-05:00

Here's a nifty bit of faux biochemistry making the rounds. As an irreversibly nerdy biochemist, a card-carrying enzymologist even (yes, we have laminated i.d.'s), I found this especially amusing.

Moment of Science: Metabolism of Evolution Information in the Blogosphere.

CB-1 antagonists: wacky tobaccy's pharmacological legacy

2006-01-29T10:30:00.000-05:00

Now that we’re a month into 2006, let us put the War on Christmas 2005 behind us and move on to the War on Obesity. The “battle of the bulge” has been a catch phrase for years, yet waistlines, and hips and thighs and arms keep expanding. For the majority of the overweight, including myself, there is an effective answer: less calorie intake and more exercise. It works for me. It works for many people. It is not a facile process, and requires consistent self-discipline in a society prone to copious amounts of food and generous portions of lifestyle conveniences, or lifestyle stressors, which discourage activity. The medical community has firmly stated in any number of venues that obesity is a significant public health problem. The pharma industry jumped on the obesity bandwagon some years ago with mixed results. Amphetamines with all their concomitant adverse side effects were a staple in the weight loss pharmacopoeia for years, but fell from favor as newer, relatively safer antiobesity drugs arrived on the scene. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors (similar to Prozac and its relatives) were the antiobesity flavor of the month. Fen-phen was the most notorious, and was withdrawn from the market when the drug combo was linked to potentially fatal heart valve abnormalities. Meridia, also a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, remains on the market, but with a plethora of precautions. Meridia differs from the recalled Fen-phen in that the drug's actions tend to localize in the brain's appetitie control center, thus bypassing the heart, whereas fenfluramine caused a systemic boost in serotonin levels, thus raising the potential for heart valve damage.

Among the more recent pharmaceutical offerings are two which are coming to the FDA for reviews as reported via Reuters on Yahoo, Drug firms eye fat profits from new obesity pills, and this undoubtedly expired NYT article, 2 Approaches to the Nation's Obesity Epidemic Coming Up for Review. The mechanisms of action of these drugs are distinct from fen-phen and Meridia.

Low dose Xenical will be submitted for approval for OTC sale. Long term studies indicate that it is a relatively benign drug in terms of adverse side effects. Because it blocks fat absorption, a side effect with great potential for embarrassment is loose stools due to the unabsorbed fat. As the earlier soft focus TV ads noted, the patient taking Xenical must do his or her part. Xenical, in addition to reduction of calorie absorption through its fat-blocking action, acts as adjunct behavior modification. If someone taking Xenical overindulges in large portions of fatty food, there will be diarrheal hell to pay. Hence, the patient is motivated to stick to a moderate diet.

Among potential anti-obesity medications moving through clinical trials is Accomplia, the other drug up for review before the FDA. Ten years ago, scientists at Sanofi, a large French pharmaceutical company, discovered the first selective antagonist (blocks or inhibits biological action) of the cannabinoid-1 (CB-1) receptor. Accomplia is the culmination of Sanofi-Aventis' R&D, and represents a new approach to weight loss.

CB-1 and its close relative, CB-2, are members of the broader G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) family. These receptors have characteristic 7 member transmembrane domains which span the membrane from the outer part of the cell to the inner (intracellular) region. CB-1 and CB-2 were discovered in 1988 and 1993, respectively, through research of marijuana's active components, the cannabinoids. More research revealed the cognate endogenous ligands of the CBs in the brain: anandamide and 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG). These chemicals are more generally called "endocannabinoids."

A cartoon of CB-1 receptor is illustrated here.

Figure from D.L. Lewis, Medical College of Georgia. Prof. Lewis' site has a succinct description of the biochemistry and signaling of CB-1.

This figure below (from Dr. K. Chapman, Univ. of N. Texas) illustrates the action of endocannabinoids in pre- and postsynaptic signaling. Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells, and have directionality, hence, the "pre-" and "post-" terminology. Anandamide acts through "retrograde signaling." Typically, water soluble neurotransmitters, glutamate for example, are released from the presynaptic neuron, flow across the junction, and bind to receptors on the postsynaptic neuron, and depending on the neurotransmitter:receptor pairing, can elicit an excitatory or inhibitory response in the postsynaptic neuron. The endocannabinoids work "backwards." Influx of calcium ions into a postsynaptic neuron upregulates biosynthesis and release of endocannabinoids. These bind to CB-1 receptors clustered on the presynaptic neuron. Through signaling, the CB-1 receptor inhibits ion influx into the presynaptic cell and blocks release of neurotransmitters to the postsynaptic neuron. This can cause a postsynaptic neuron to "fire" or receive an excitatory stimulus since it is no longer receiving an inhibitory signal from the presynaptic neuron. In the absence of the endocannabinoid retrograde signaling, the postsynaptic neuron would be "damped down." This a less than adequate explanation of a complex phenomenon. A proper treatment would extend beyond the scope of the Chimp Refuge, but there's a great illustration of endocannabinoid mediated retrograde signaling in "The Brain's Own Marijuana" in the December 2004 issue of Scientific American.

Now let's take a look at the chemical structures of the various players in the endocannabinoid system. Below is an illustration of an endocannabinoid, ananamide. The latter and the more abundant 2-AG are bioactive fatty acid amides derived from the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway. A spleefy cannabinoid from marijuana, 9delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is shown below the ananamide structure. Note that these molecules share an n-pentyl "tail", i.e., a 5 carbon alkyl chain which you can see at the lower right part of each molecule. This chain appears to be required for biological effects since if it is removed from either ananamide or THC, the molecule loses its biological effect. Ananamide and THC act as agonists and enhance the CB receptors’ functions.

CB-1 is widely distributed in the central nervous system and is the among the most abundant GPCRs in the brain. In addition to the familiar (well, to at least a handful of Chimp Refuge readers, I expect) psychotropic effects, mediates pain and appetite. The agonist effects of “medical marijuana’s” cannabinoids are well known, e.g., treatment of glaucoma, debilitating pain associated with cancer, chemotherapy-induced nausea and cachexia resulting from AIDS and cancer.

CB-1 has been the focus of intense scrutiny, but CB-2 which is located in the periphery, and predominantly in the immune system, is also shining in the spotlight because of its role in inflammation. CB-2 also appears to mediate few, if any behaviors, but appears to be associated with peripheral pain like that derived from inflammation. CB-2 and its endocannabinoid ligands are thought to be a part of a neuroimmune axis. A hot off the presses publication in the Jan. 09 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA implicates CB-2 as a regulator of bone mass.

The cannabinoid receptors thus represent a rich source of therapeutic targets. There is evidence for cannabinoid receptors distinct from CB-1 and CB-2. Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical companies and biotechs have submitted a plethora of patents and patent applications surrounding chemicals that block (antagonists) or enhance (agonist) CB-1 and CB-2 activity. Accomplia (generic name:rimonabant) is being submitted for weight loss, but the multivariate role of CB-1 suggests that targeting the receptor may be useful for other indications such as smoking cessation and psychiatric disorders, i.e., as potential antidepressants and antianxiolytics.

Rimonabant's structure is distinct from that of the endocannabinoids and cannabinoids. Rimonabant does not have the n-pentyl chain like THC or ananamide. The exact binding interactions of rimonabant with CB-1 have not been observed directly through X-ray diffracion. Bovine rhodopsin, a protein in the retina, is the only GPCR whose structure has been determined by this method. This serves as a model for other GPCRs, including CB-1 and CB-2. Rimonabant's interaction with CB1 is inferred by computer-assisted molecular modeling and mutagenesis of amino acid residues in the purported binding sites. However, even with robust mathematical modeling and in the absence of a crystal structure, sometimes it's a best guess as to the precise nature of GPCR binding with ligands, antagonists and agonists.

Patients taking rimonabant on average lost about 10-15 pounds over the course of a year. HDL cholesterol increases in a dose dependent manner, so that's a plus. However, significant percentages of patients dropped out of trials because of adverse side effects relative to placebo. The dark side of Accomplia is depression and anxiety. These side effects are not unanticipated. Research on the endocannabinoid system indicates that 2-AG and ananamide act to ease anxiety, and that there's interplay between the dopaminergic system and endocannabinoids. Thus, an antagonist which blocks these actions could exacerbate anxiety and depression.

From a purely scientific standpoint, ricombinant and the CB receptors in general are way up there on the Bushwellian "Golly, ain't it cool?" scale. The endocannabinoid signaling system is fascinating, and there are many potential targets for pharmaceutical intervention, e.g. neuropsychiatric disorders, pain and who knows...maybe osteoporosis. But I always come around to the nagging question of all the efforts and money expended to treat obesity. I admit I speak from personal bias. I have never been more than 25-30 pounds overweight, and when I make up my mind to do something about it, I lose the flab through diet and exercise. I do not know what it is like to be 100 pounds overweight. Maybe a pharmaceutical intervention would be of great benefit for the morbidly obese. For the garden variety obese patient, I'm not convinced. To harken back to my "Big Fat Golden Goose Eggs" blog entry in July 2005, the words of my colleage in medicinal chemistry still resonate: all that work to come up with a pill which will allow a 300 pound person to lose 15 pounds, and that pill had better have a squeaky clean safety profile. I'm not so sure Accomplia has that. It will be interesting to see what the FDA's verdict is, especially since the agency is so skittish after the Vioxx debacle.

So the big fat bottom line to the pharma industry is that obesity is a large market. I know, a cheap shot. It affects me professionally because some of my group's resources are directed toward an antiobesity target. I wrestle with the market drivers which influence discovery research since I see projects in infectious diseases and neurosciences which I deem more worthy of my group's considerable talents, and yes, the impetus to realign our research efforts is often on my mind. And personally, well, if offered the choice of Accomplia or Weight Watchers, I know which one I would choose.

The Low Channels

2006-01-24T18:34:00.000-05:00

The cable service in my home area of central New York State has arranged the channels with what I presume are the “undesirables” clustered together at the bottom of the dial. These include CSPAN, CSPAN2 and public access. Now I might be crazy, but I truly enjoy the low channels. CSPAN seems to be a love it/hate it for most people and pretty much everybody knows what it’s about so I won’t belabor it. But then there’s public access.

Public access: The name conjures images of bad video from the polka party at the senior center or a local show concerning the intricacies of stamp collecting for those on a budget and an aversion to glue. I don’t know what the rules are for public access programming, but on our system I often see shows that were created a thousand or more miles from here. I have a funny feeling that that was not the original intent of public access. On the other hand, if the channel was limited to, say, a 100 mile radius, I’d never get to see shows like “Conservative Roundtable”. Granted, the show is a bit predictable what with the twin photo poster backdrops of a waving flag on one side matched to an in vivo embryo on the other, but where else can you watch a TV host in a cheap suit who is clearly in need of a shower and instructions on how to use a clothes iron blather on and on about the need for estate tax reform while sitting behind a desk that’s barely a step up from cardboard?

Undoubtedly the best material from the viewpoint of inadvertent humor comes from the religious shows. Two shows come to mind immediately. First there’s the lovely “House of Yahweh” which I lovingly refer to as “House of Yahoos” produced out of Texas. It’s your basic blend of end-of-times warnings and admonishments as delivered by an often smiling elderly gent who appears to have been hit over the head by a two by four a couple times too many. If he was a cartoon he’d have those little stars circling around his noggin. In light of this observation his pronouncements suddenly seem to make perfect sense. On the other end we have “Tomorrow’s World” (AKA “Dumb-morrow’s World”) out of North Carolina. The approach here is much more earnest than “House”, featuring a stern gray haired preacher who peels off quote after quote from “the good book” to support his screeds against “fornicators and homosexuals” and well, as far as I can determine, just about anyone who doesn’t agree with his narrow view of “acceptable and moral behavior”. This is end-of-times gold. He stares straight into the camera and in no uncertain terms proclaims that the end is coming, soon, and you’d better get on board if you don’t want to experience a personal global warming of a biblical magnitude. I am continually amazed at how he manages to tie in so many of society’s ills to a lack of adherence to his particular religious scheme.

These shows, as bizarre as the content can sometimes be, at the very least have semi-professional production standards even though they are boring at best. Hey, I don’t expect great cinematography with my free inadvertent humor. Every now and then though, a real jewel pops up. No, I’m not talking about the local evangelical services that they broadcast, although I must admit that watching a bunch of pudgy, middle class clones sway back and forth to an insipid musical accompaniment makes me giggle (gotta keep it simple so the nice white folks can follow the beat).

The other day I saw something that made me do a double take. I think it was a local broadcast but I’m not sure. Whatever it was, they had decided to use an extreme amount of video compression while filming the minister giving his talk. The end result was that whenever the minister moved, he was surrounded by huge pixilated chunks of his body and the background. I can only imagine that the effect would be quite impressive following the ingestion of hallucinogenic aids (not that I recommend that sort of thing). But that wasn’t the craziest thing. The truly wacky part was the subject and detail of his talk. Unfortunately, I had missed the very beginning, but the minister was apparently referring to the relatively recent announcement of “Mitochondrial Eve” to prove a literal interpretation of Genesis. I don’t know if this guy’s an end-of-times pusher like our other TV friends, but if he is, he’s certain that the ride ain’t gonna last more than 6500 years. As anyone who is familiar with Mitochondrial Eve will have figured out by now, this fellow completely misunderstood and misapplied the results. He went to great pains, though, to explain how these scientists had, with the use of modern biology, chemistry, and so forth, essentially proved that the Biblical Eve had existed. I’m sure his audience was duly impressed. The punch line came when he said that the researchers calculated that Eve walked the Earth 200,000 years ago. In a quick and dismissive tone he said (paraphrasing) “Of course, you can’t trust these scientists with this date. We know that it is way off. We know that the real date is 6500 years ago.” It was just so matter-of-fact that I nearly fell off the couch. I wonder how many of his so-called “flock” understood that he was denigrating the parts of science that didn’t fit his world view, misinterpreting the parts that could be bent to conform, and ultimately hijacking the credibility of science for his uses while trashing it in favor of blind faith at the same time? The hypocrisy was monumental.

As the comedian said, “You can’t write this stuff it’s so good.”

A Darwinian fundamentalist

2006-01-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

This short n' sweet interview with Daniel Dennett (italics - D. Solomon, bold text - Dennett) appeared in this morning's NYT's Sunday magazine. His comment on the strong human tendency to ascribe "agency in things that are not agents" is noteworthy. Faith and religion may be byproducts of humans' ability to recognize others-than-the-self, and to conceive of another's existence when the other is out of sight. Dennett's comment on death, and the inability to "turn off" the deceased's existence speaks to this. Further, this recognition of others, even when not present, can be transposed to objects without sentience, like thunder and lightning or a rock. Although the latter extrapolations have no adaptive benefit, the conception of other-than-self undoubtedly does to cerebrally complex and highly social humans. Thus, it is a strong trait, that "hair-trigger tendency of which Dennett speaks. There was a good article about this in the December 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly: Is God an Accident?" I read this in its entirety last November while visiting my mother, an Atlantic Monthly subscriber ( and a good moderate Methodist who does not fear new ideas). I have yet to spring for the online article for my records.

Also a worthwhile read in today's NYT magazine: The Animal Self by Charles Siebert. It's a good read on the field of animal personality.

There are some underlying themes in both articles. Among them is this: never underestimate the power of neurotransmitters, synaptic networks and all their interactions with experience and environment.

January 22, 2006
Questions for Daniel C. Dennett
The Nonbeliever. Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON, New York Times Magazine

Q: How could you, as a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, write a book that promotes the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology? Why would you hold a scientist's microscope to something as intangible as belief?

I don't know about you, but I find St. Paul's and St. Peter's pretty physical.

But your new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," is not about cathedrals. It's about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease.

That itself is a scientific claim, and I think it is false. Belief can be explained in much the way that cancer can. I think the time has come to shed our taboo that says, "Oh, let's just tiptoe by this, we don't have to study this." People think they know a lot about religion. But they don't know.

So what can you tell us about God?

Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world - that's a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Yet faith, by definition, means believing in something whose existence cannot be proved scientifically. If we knew for sure that God existed, it would not require a leap of faith to believe in him.

Isn't it interesting that you want to take that leap? Why do you want to take that leap? Why does our craving for God persist? It may be that we need it for something. It may be that we don't need it, and it is left over from something that we used to be. There are lots of biological possibilities.

Didn't religion spring up in its earliest forms in connection with the weather, the desire to make sense of rain and lightning?

We have a built-in, very potent hair-trigger tendency to find agency in things that are not agents, like snow falling off the roof.

There was so much infant mortality in the past, which must have played a large role in encouraging people to believe in an afterlife.

When a person dies, we can't just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.

But they are still with us, through the process of memory.

These aren't just memories.

I take it you do not subscribe to the idea of an everlasting soul, which is part of almost every religion.

Ugh. I certainly don't believe in the soul as an enduring entity. Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.

That strikes me as a very reductive and uninteresting approach to religious feeling.

Love can be studied scientifically, too.

But what's the point of that? Wouldn't it be more worthwhile to spend your time and research money looking for a cure for AIDS?

How about if we study hatred and fear? Don't you think that would be worthwhile?

Traditionally, evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould insisted on keeping a separation between hard science and less knowable realms like religion.

He was the evolutionist laureate of the U.S., and everybody got their Darwin from Steve. The trouble was he gave a rather biased view of evolution. He called me a Darwinian fundamentalist.

Which I imagine was his idea of a put-down, since he thought evolutionists should not apply their theories to religion.

Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don't really care. A lot of the evangelicals don't really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

I take it you are not a churchgoer.

No, not really. Sometimes I go to church for the music.

Yes, the church gave us Bach, in addition to some fairly spectacular architecture and painting.

Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.

Yessir, that's my baby!

2006-01-21T20:42:00.000-05:00

The quandry: should I wait a little while before I roll over my old 401k (all company stock) to my current one or gamble and let it go for the end of Phase II?

From the Biopeer blog. There are a number of other press releases on VX-950, and no, it is not some third generation nerve gas. Just Google it.

January 10, 2006

Vertex’s VX-950 drug leads to cure for Hepatitis C

The experimental pill VX-950 launched by Vertex Pharmaceuticals has proved effective in the treatment of Hepatitis C, a liver disease that leads to liver decline, cancer and death. The results have revived hopes in the company’s claims that the pill would be helpful in reducing the treatment time of Hepatitis C to three months from the current timeframe of about a year. Moreover, VX-950, a protease inhibitor that blocks enzyme in liver cells linked to virus reproduction has been given a fast-track designation by the FDA.

According to the 14-day trial study conducted on eight patients by administering a combination treatment consisting of Vertex’s VX-950 and pegylated interferon, virus presence in patients reduced significantly by 300,000-times in a stipulated period of over two weeks. Additionally, it was also revealed that the medication was well tolerated by the patients with no reports of any kind of serious adverse effects. Typical interferon-related side effects, of mild to moderate severity, were registered in the patients that were administered with peg- IFN along with VX-950.

Meanwhile, Prudential Equity Group raised the price target on Vertex Pharmaceuticals from USD 28 to USD 37 with the announcement that positive clinical results of its experimental Hepatitis C treatment. Further the studies have also helped in soaring the market share prices of Vertex by 78 cents, which is an increase of 2.5 per cent on Nasdaq.

Doc Bushwell's safe harbor statement: the word "cure" in the title is forward-looking since data on rebound viral replication have not been reported by Vertex. Still, it's an extraordinary drop in viral load. Let's just say I'm a proud mama but I, along with VX-950's other parents, will not be making arrangements for the graduation party just yet. But we're hopeful that "our baby" will pass all its classes in Phase II and Phase III, then graduate summa cum laude to the benefit of many HCV+ patients.

On flinging bonobo scat here or in my new Funhouse

2006-01-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

Kilgore has kindly provided me with my own sub-forum, Doc Bushwell's Funhouse o' Science on The Endorphin Cult (EC). Although bonobo scat may be tossed about freely here in the form of comments (registration not required), the Funhouse (also linked to the right) allows for more discourse. Again, you may post anonymously on the Funhouse or the EC.

Be forewarned that some of the EC content can be described at best as R-rated, and at worse, NC-17. Kilgore, the orthodox libertarian moderator, maintains an extremely light, even non-existent. hand with content, other than formatting interventions. I really like his approach since it allows for free-wheeling dialogue, as well as clever permuations of profanities, but those who are accustomed to the niceties of polite society should be aware that the EC is no tea party.

Science Blogs: a sexy Madison Avenue kind of vibe

2006-01-20T08:57:00.000-05:00

Found in the Business section of this morning's New York Times:

Science Blogs as a Vehicle for Upscale Ads

The summary from 30,000 feet is this: advertisers are looking toward the new media of blogdom as a vehicle for hawking their wares. Seed Magazine, which focuses on the Venn diagramatic intersection of science and culture, is launching a network of science oriented blogs and plans to sell ad space to some hefty corportations. Seed Media is engaged in a marketing research study aimed at examining the relationship beween consumers and science in collaboration with JWT New York. Here's snippet of the results, excerpted from the NYT article:

The research has identified about 20 million Americans, 7 percent of the population, who are labeled in the study as "Leonardos," named after da Vinci for their avid, Renaissance-style interest in science as well as subjects like art and politics.

Leonardos are mostly male, in their 30's and middle to upper class, said Eliza Esquivel, a planner at JWT New York who is working with Ms. Cortizo on the study.

The Chimp Refuge may never qualify as a lofty enough addition to Seed's select group. After all, our contributions are a bit scurrilous, and my menopausally diffuse brain causes me to veer from the scientific realm now and then. But lofty or not, I am proud to claim a couple of articulate and rakish Leonardos for my blog team.

The links to Seed Magazine and ScienceBlogs are now on the Refuge. Note that a couple of familiar faces, Pharyngula and Gene Expression, are now hosted on ScienceBlogs. Please update your links to these fine blogs. Now I will anxiously await the colorful Viagra, Propecia and Nexium ads contaminating the purity of the overwhelmingly academic offerings on ScienceBlogs. Welcome to my world, baby!

Coming to the Refuge soon: cannabinoid receptors and botanical pornography!

The Problem With Gregg Easterbrook

2005-12-30T20:18:00.001-05:00

I was reading an interview with Richard Dawkins the other day. Quite nice. Dawkins is his usual clear and straightforward self regarding the public’s take on evolution versus so-called intelligent design. What caught my eye, however, was a link to a story by Gregg Easterbrook entitled "Bullied and Brainwashed" in which the author expounds his thoughts on “The trouble with Richard Dawkins”.

Easterbrook doesn’t waste any time before launching into Dawkins: “Don’t take this personally, but if you are an American adult there is a one in two chance that Richard Dawkins, a renowned professor of science at Oxford, thinks you are ‘ignorant, stupid or insane,’ unless you are “wicked.” These are the adjectives Dawkins chooses to describe the roughly 100 million Americans adults who, if public opinion polls are right, believe Homo sapiens was created directly by God, rather than gradually by evolution. Ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked. Not much to choose from there!”

No, there isn’t much to choose from because those words pretty well cover all of the bases. Anyone who takes the ideals of the Enlightenment seriously and who engages in the study of evolutionary theory versus creationism can only come to the conclusion that evolution fits the observed data and dovetails with other scientific theories far better than creationism does. If one cannot see that, then the individual does not have sufficient data (ignorant), does not possess sufficient reasoning skills (stupid), is mentally incapacitated (insane), or has another agenda that requires them to place truth in the backseat in order to favor the competition (wicked). My guess is that most of those 100 million Americans probably fall into the first two categories, although if my cable public access channel is an accurate representation, then a certain number of clergy fall into the fourth category.

Easterbrook continues: “..the first problem with Dawkins’s positions: he is arrogant.” My my. He’s arrogant. This little cut, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the positions Mr. Dawkins holds. Mr. Dawkins could be the nicest or the most foul individual on the planet but that does not effect the veracity of evolutionary theory. Easterbrook then extends this argument saying that Dawkins wishes to stifle all counterarguments. I believe it would be more accurate to say that Dawkins does not wish to expend further time and resources on arguments that have already been hacked to tiny bits. For example, there are those who take a literal interpretation of the Bible, believing that the Earth is a mere 6000 years old. They explain away dinosaur fossils by saying that humans and dinosaurs lived together in the antediluvian era; humans going so far as to saddle and ride them like modern horses. No modern individual with even an inkling of scientific schooling buys into this. Should we spend money and time teaching this “alternate theory” in biology and history classrooms? Hey, for that matter, there are some folks who believe that the moon landings were faked. Do we need to rewrite our textbooks and alter curricula to appease them? Some might say that the difference here is in the number of adherents, that the beliefs of large groups should be taken into consideration. After all, only a small handful of people believe in a young Earth or in faked moon landings, yet 100 million US adults think creationism is “just groovy”. Mass opinion does not equate to objective truth. It never has. If it did, the Earth would be flat and the Sun would be orbiting us instead of the other way around.

“Theology is all ridiculous superstition, Dawkins said, and unworthy of being dignified by study.” quoted Easterbrook. That’s because it is. This is not a new idea. Indeed, one need only peruse Tom Paine’s "The Age of Reason" to get the low-down on the good book from one of the formative writers of the late 1700’s. Calling it “ridiculous superstition” is a light touch compared to Paine’s disembowelment of it. Ultimately, how do you study something which, by definition, claims its own perfection and infallibility? You can perform no test or probe, develop no hypothesis, or hope to validate any theory of human origins. Its interest lay primarily as an historical document, not a factual explanation. I do not mean to imply that only items of scientific curiosity are generally useful. Far from it. One need only consider the subjective domains of art to refute this. Fortunately though, most humans are smart enough not to turn to a painting or symphony and use it as a guidepost to explain human origins.

Easterbrook mines some gold with this one: “I suspect one reason so many Americans have a poor understanding of evolutionary theory is that overbearing figures such as Dawkins talk down to them and act contemptuous of their religious beliefs. So people respond--perhaps quite rationally--by screening out the views of scientists whose motives they distrust.” Right. It’s the scientists’ fault that people screen them out or don’t understand the issues. It wouldn’t have anything to do with ministers and over zealous evangelicals insisting that they will suffer eternal damnation and hellfire, a seed planted in many a mind in early childhood via propaganda from “religious education classes” or Sunday school. Easterbrook continues “it is telling that polls show Americans overwhelmingly accept many findings of modern research, such as the theories of relativity and of cosmic expansion. The scientists who favor these ideas generally aren’t in the habit of mocking peoples’ faiths, and so they are believed by the general public.” The real issue here is that cosmologists and physicists are never in a position of being perceived as “mocking peoples’ faiths” because these days most so-called “holy men” don’t go running around saying that the Theory of Relativity is anathema to the Bible. One need only go back a few centuries to find examples of scientists (e.g. Galileo) who were persecuted by the church for saying similar sorts of things.

Easterbrook’s article was apparently written a few years ago judging by this section: “But Dawkins is often guilty of sins of which he accuses others, including arguing against straw men and playing fast and loose with the flaws in his own ideas. In the "ignorance" article he declares, for example, that doctrinaire creationists “dominate the school boards in some states.” Oh really? Which ones, exactly? Creationists did take over the Kansas State Board of Education and issue a non-binding recommendation against teaching some aspects of Darwinian thought. The recommendation was rejected by Kansas’s Republican governor and ignored by all Kansas school districts, and the creationists were voted out last year. Today, every U.S. state requires basic instruction in the theory of evolution. By pretending otherwise, Dawkins tries to exaggerate his opponents' influence and cast them as a looming anti-intellectual menace.” They say hindsight is 20-20. The recent uproar in Dover, PA bears this out as does the reversal of the situation in Kansas, plus similar situations regarding school textbooks in other states. Dawkins sees this as an on-going threat, not an odd one-off, and recent happenings support this view. Hopefully, this will all die away but one cannot be certain of that given the blind fervor of extremist religious groups.

Here is a classic misunderstanding (dare I say a show of “ignorance”?): “Dawkins, like others who want evolution to win on all counts, tends to glide past the little problem that Darwinian thinking cannot explain (and in Darwin’s work itself, does not even try to explain) the origin of life. This is no small detail. I haven’t the slightest doubt that evolutionary mechanics explain how eohippus became the modern horse, or how Homo hablis became Homo sapiens. But why was there eohippus or primitive humanity or any kind of life in the first place? Maybe the ultimate explanation is natural, but today biologists don’t have much more than wild guesses, much less a solid theory.”

First of all, this is not the domain of evolutionary theory. This complaint is similar to the often heard “If they can put a man on the moon why can’t they XXX?” Simply because one has little to do with the other. Evolutionary theory says nothing about the origin of life, only its adaptation and variation over time. This is not to say that “biologists don’t have much more than wild guesses”. Easterbrook is just plain wrong on this point.

Easterbrook closes with the following: “It’s hard to think of a topic that’s more interesting to talk about, and there could be an engaging, ongoing discourse on this point among scientists, theologians, and others, if only the doctrinaire believers would stop denouncing the scientists and the doctrinaire scientists would stop denouncing the believers. In this, Dawkins, an extremely smart man with a great deal of interest to say, has managed to make himself part of the problem. But maybe I think that because I’m insane--or wicked.” As long as we’re slinging around personal opinions of others, I’d vote for ignorant—-or stupid.

Post-Festivus Airing of Grievances

2005-12-27T11:58:00.000-05:00

I am late in observing a fine Festivus tradition, namely the airing of grievances. Belatedly, I offer this kvetching for 2005:

To my family: That's right. I do not multitask as well I formerly did. Do some of the tasking yourself and do not expect me to carry on a scintillating, vibrant conversation without pause, other than for a Tourettish expletive or three, while driving in Jersey traffic.

To my employer: I am grateful to have my job. Really. I enjoy what I do, and considering the doldrums of the industry (see "To Merck" below), I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth. However, I despise tormenting my staff, and myself, with lengthy performance reviews when the average yearly raise is 2%. Just let me give them all a pat on the back and an "attagirl" or "attaboy" as appropropriate rather than pouring Human Resouces Brand distilled vinegar into wounds by way of a complex matrix of objective results and highly subjective behaviors.

To my city of residence: Your town and gown interactions are the worst I have ever seen. Princeton students rarely step off campus and mingle with the hoi polloi in the community, or at least this seems the case compared to other college towns where I have lived. It must be due to the gritty urban street scenes of Princeton Boro and the Township. Oh, and while you're at it, relax the prudish liquor licensing and attract some decent restaurants and bars into town, OK? More streetlights, too. A spill while perambulating in the pre-dawn dark a few weeks ago really spooked me.

To Merck: What can I say? The industry was at the edge of the crapper, and you had to go and give it a big flush.

To the Boston Globe: This is a special grievance and one which just barely makes the end of the year finish line. It may even inspire a separate blog entry:

Women in Science Weigh Lab vs Life Goals.

Thanks so very, very much, Ms. Bombardieri, for contributing to the myth that the only worthwhile career path in scientific research for women, or men for that matter, is to be found as an academic at a tier-one university. And to the hapless biochem grad student who does not wish to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry because she will "feel like a drone.," well, I'll have you know I am no drone. I am a queen bee, goddammit!

Finally, to Kilgore: Stop moaning so much. The neighbors are complaining.

Gud Jul! Io, Saturnalia! And...Merry Christmas! Happy now, Jerry Falwell?

2005-12-16T08:28:00.000-05:00

The fruit o' my womb, now some 14 and 18 years removed from that obsolescent organ, recently decorated the Christmas tree as I extracted several Swedish candelabra from storage boxes and placed them in the windows. I rummaged about in the piano bench and found selections of Christmas music. Later, I stretched out my fingers, tickled the ivories, and did not overly mangle various songs of the season. I plan to engage in a minor frenzy of baking this weekend, and will bring some greenery such as a poinsettia, cyclamen or pine branches into my abode. I have searched Amazon wish lists, clicking away with gift giving, and sent off delectables from the local gourmet food shop to friends and family on the West Coast. I anticipate standing to sing Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" at the Princeton High School choir's winter concert. In spite of other stresses in my life, I am getting into the swing of the holidays.

All this holiday cheer from an agnostic with atheistic leanings. And why not? The "X" word in "Christmas" notwithstanding, this holiday is a truly ancient observance and dovetails with numerous other winter solstice celebrations. It is a cultural holiday, but predictably, "Merry Christmas" has become a nexus of controversy for fundagelical Christians.

The refrain, "Keep 'Christ' in Christmas" seems now to be drowned out by the more bellicose "The War on Christmas" as squalled by various reactionaries (see kemibe's November 30th entry, "We wish you a buried Christmas.") Their ire is absolutely perplexing to me because I, along with a complement of educated secularfolk and fundamentalist (and I mean fundamentalist) Christians, recognize that the holiday is as pagan as all get out. The real fundies forbid their congregants from observing the holiday, harking back to the mid- to late 1600s when the Puritan elders of Massachusetts outlawed the celebration of Christmas with its decidedly non-Christian trappings.

But we have the likes of Jerry Falwell who has issued a fatwa against those who would "secularize" a holiday which is as remote from Christianity as Yom Kippur is from St. Patrick's Day. Falwell's false jihad entails litigation and boycotts against groups which he perceives as muzzling Christmas. Falwell's binary "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" is aimed at public institutions which take pains to remove all Christian references to the holiday, even to the extent of not using the word "Christmas." It's a manufactured Christmacrisis, and yet another ruse for the right wing of Christianity to bleat over faux persecution.

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) are lightning rods for Falwell's campaign. A letter to Falwell from the Rev. Barry Lynn illustrates the reasoned stance of the AUSCS. Here's an excerpt from the Reverend Lynn's letter to Falwell:

Contrary to your wild allegations, Jerry, neither Americans United, nor any other civil liberties organization that I know of, is waging any kind of war on Christmas. The First Amendment of our Constitution ensures every American’s right to observe religious holidays or to refrain from doing so. We can wish each other a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” and it’s really none of your business which term we choose. We can call our decorated tree a “Christmas tree” or a “holiday tree,” and that’s our right. (We can observe the holidays of other traditions as well.)

I think we all know what’s really going on with your campaign. You want an America where there is no separation of church and state and where your rather narrow interpretation of Christianity is forced on everyone. If you can convince Americans that their cherished Christmas traditions are under fire, you think maybe they will join your nefarious crusade to tear down the protective church-state wall that guarantees our freedoms.

A far more effective campaign for alarming Americans might be to cap credit cards at a $200 spending limit and close all malls from Nov. 24th through January 15h. This would put cherished Christmas traditions to the fire. Anyway...

Speaking for myself, I observe Christmas as cultural tradition, and not a religious one, and have done so for many years. My kids attend public school with a multiculty student population. Songs in their holiday concerts indeed mention "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," but also "Dreidl, Dreidl." With a nod to the spinning top of the song and gelt given and gotten, Hanukkah is a quiet, warm holiday, and but seems to have risen to an artificial prominence as a Judaic answer to the loud wassailing of the goyim's Noel. [Post-publishing note, 12/18/2005: see this article from The Boston Globe, Hanukkah: It's big and it's beginning to look less like Christmas, for an informed update.] Diwali is another increasingly popular and visible fall/winter celebration carried to our community by Indian immigrants and their ABCD children (American Born Confused Desis). My daughter's French class dined on Morrocan delicacies when Ramadan (an observance more rooted in its originating religion than others) ended. Thus, when "Merry Christmas" is spoken, it is a given that the phrase is not a mechanism of proselytizing in our diverse community because more likely than not, it is accompanied by other greetings. A cheery "Happy holidays" in these parts is not a matter of political correctness, but borne of convenience since the easy phrase encompasses several celebrations which orbit the winter solstice. It's not a big deal.

It's hardly surprising that mankind in the Northern Hemisphere would weave holidays around this arc of the year's cycle as the sun's light wanes with every shortened day. Humankind lit bonfires and performed sacrifices to drive back the darkness. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a time of excess and when masters served their slaves, an old practice which is the predecessor of Boxing Day in more Brit flavored regions. Sir James George Frazer's definitive treatise,The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion delves into the rites and superstitions which parlayed themselves into Christmas as well as many other Christian beliefs and holidays.

Observing Christmas represents an ancient continuity to me. My deprived ancestors in colonial Massachusetts may have been forbidden to celebrate the holiday, but much further back in time during the long dark winters of Scotland and England, my forebearers lit the night with the Yule log, brought holly and ivy into their homes, and knocked back homebrew as they waited from the sun to return. This comic, from the odd "Electric Sheep" web site, saucily illustrates the enlightenment of one who believes that Christmas is a Christian holiday, and a family's wholesome observance of the season. Give it a read:

The Thompson Family Celebrates the Season & Mrs. Murray Learns about the True Meaning of Christmas!

With that, I wish my beloved bonobos a Gud Jul. I give my cherished chimpanzees a "Io! Saturnalia!" shoutout. I'll add a gentle "Happy Hanukkah" to the chosen. I offer a hearty "Merry Christmas!" because you know what I mean by that. Finally, to Jerry Falwell and his Friend or Foe minions, I have this to say:

Thumpa! Thumpa! Thumpa! ...YES!

Wow.

2005-12-02T23:45:00.000-05:00

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The foundering of America

2005-12-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

Complaints from the wingnut brigade about the "war on Christmas" (how these followers of an archetypal peacenik love to talk in terms of battle!) are part of a greater ethos that posits that the United States is a country "founded on Christian principles." They claim that its laws, traditions and moral codes are rooted solidly in devotion to Christ, with the founding fathers leading the charge on behalf of Jesus. They point to this claim whenever a redneck judge insists on displaying the Ten Commandments at a courthouse or when controversies regarding the Pledge of Allegiance arise. They say that church-state separation is an outcropping of "revisionist history."

As usual, their ignorance is as astounding as it is unyielding. Also as usual, the irony is thick enough to eat with a trowel: Those bitching loudest about the supposed rewriting of U.S. history haven't a clue about the very annals they themselves are desperately ignoring in their attempts to modify the record books to their liking.

Although Christianity -- in its various guises and with its battling subgroups -- is and always has been the predominant stateside religious affiliation, this is not tantamount to either a constitutional endorsement of same or a reflection of the founding fathers' personal beliefs. Ardent Christians often invoke the names Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Henry and Paine when advancing the idea that the kick-starters of America really -- no, really, it's true, look into it -- intended for the U.S. to be a Christian nation, despite no mention of Jesus or Christianity in the U.S. Constitution. In doing so, they're only beshitting the very case they are trying to make. These men were men of faith, but were largely Deist and, more to the point, vehemently anti-sectarian and anti-Christian. (Had they not lived before the advent of molecular genetics, microbiology, geoscience and other helpful disciplines, they likely would have would have questioned even their vague ideas about a Creator, but that's a side issue.)

References are legion, and although a thorough understanding of history is always preferable to following a few Internet links, here's an excerpt from a concise summary of the founders' documented attitudes about Bible-based Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson:

I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.

Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.

The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.

Jefferson's word for the Bible? Dunghill.

John Adams:

Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?

The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 states:

The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

Thomas Paine:

I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book (the Bible).

Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).

It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.

Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins...and you will have sins in abundance.

The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

(Paine's notable work The Age of Reason is as hilarious as it is instructive.)

James Madison:

What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy.

Madison objected to state-supported chaplains in Congress and to the exemption of churches from taxation. He wrote:

Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

So, as loudly as the Christians demanding special dispensation screech, historical evidence firmly relegates their entreaties about the founders to la-la land along with too many other insane ideas to count.

The strangest and saddest part? Christians, even when history texts are flung open beneath their noses, have no qualms about simply squeezing their eyes shut, jamming their fingers in their ears and bellowing "KWISTIUN NASHUN! KWISTIUN NASHUN!" over and over until their challengers give up and move on, thereby preserving the Christians' perverse espirit de corps until they produce their next complaint about the commies at the ACLU and the librul America-haters who abet them. It's one thing for backwater Bible-beaters to deny the scientific reality of evolution; after all, it takes a modicum of study for even an open-minded and scholarly person to appreciate the various precise ways in which anti-evolutionists reveal themselves to be as off the beam with respect to biology as they are in other areas. But even an idiot can appreciate the gravity and meaning of Thomas Jefferson referring to the Bible as a pile of shit. Yet such references don't sway them or slow them down in the least.

As with all godidiotic undertakings, this would be funny (albeit in the discomfiting way that stumbling upon fornicating senior citizens is amusing) were it not so ominous. that wingnuts can continue screeching that America is a nation founded on Christianity when all historical evidence demonstrates otherwise.

Thomas Jefferson et al. would certainly find the modern-day manifestation of "Christianity," with its grisly infestation of top-level goverment affairs and decisions, especially abhorrent. They would find it abominable that highly visible assclown Christian individuals and groups shrug off hurricane destruction and death on the basis of natural disasters' origins in divine punishment, and they would cringe at seeing a large fraction of the populace justifying America's involvement in a futile war by pointing directly or indirectly at the Christian Bible. They would rail against the hamstringing of scientific progress by people who, motivated by vague and misguided notions of God's will, believe that the "life" of a corpse that has spent years on a ventilator or a newly formed morula is more valuable than that of a fully sentient ALS sufferer.

Which is exactly why people like me, who are anything but anti-American, are pointing fingers today.

We wish you a buried Christmas...

2005-11-30T16:24:00.000-05:00

...and a jappy Jew queer. Or so some claim.

Last year was the first one in which I remember the substitution of "Happy Holidays" for "Merry Christmas" by numerous merchants and other public entities becoming an attention-gathering issue. As you might imagine, I didn't really care; I'm an atheist who is technically a "Christian" by birth (the WASP son of an agnostic and a lapsed Catholic), has always taken part in the commerical ritual of modern-day Christmas, and -- being well aware of the pagan origins of the holiday presently dictated by consumer extravagance and credit-card debt -- has never questioned the clear detachment of the life and times of Jesus Christ from Frosty the Snowman, red-nosed reindeer, or egg nog.

Moreover, I took no special pleasure in watching innumerable Christians complain about an increasingly popular move which, according to their claims, is aimed at striking Jesus from the American historical record and denying this nation's "Christian heritage" (which is demonstrably nonexistent, but that's for another disgustion). If anything, I initially found it odd that Christians would rail so strongly in favor of ensuring that tableaus rife with toy-making elves, popcorn garlands, mistletoes, and the Grinch would reign supreme in the public eye over menorahs and Kinaras, given that Jesus would likely have been mortified by the whole Yule display of human excess at its finest. But then I quickly reminded myself that vocal Christians' chief mission is to blindly ensure that the word "Christ" appears in this country in as many places as possible, regardless of context. They may claim to wish only to spread "God's word," but at heart they're all for the P.T. Barnum model of publicity. Like every other business, they enjoy free advertising, but in their case they literally feel entitled to it, which makes their declarations of woe especially malignant.

This year, the volume level of this particular channel has shot up tremendously. Since before Thanksgiving, every day has brought several news items revolving around the decision of a major retailer or outfit such as Wal-Mart or the USPS to de-emphasize Christmas in favor of a more general approach to getting people to buy shit during the all-important holiday season. Here is a representative one. Note the pastor's observation: "The way I see it is retailers want to make Christmas money without acknowledging Christmas." That's right -- not unlike the way Christians want creation "science" taught in public schools without acknowledging science. Then there are amazingly vacuous bits of "but why, Grandpa?"-style demagoguery like this, and biology professor P.Z. Myers has a nice summary of the whole circus at the eminently pro-nontheist Pharyngula.

Bill O'Reilly, who would be the first person admitted to Hell if there really were such a place and its chief sexual harassment correspondent, wasted his and his viewers' time (not that people parked nightly in front of Fox have anything better to do) with this segment, in which he examined who is and isn't adopting the MC-HH transmogrification. In each instance of "Christmas-squashing," a large band of wingnuts has surfaced to generate large amounts of static about the efforts of secularists, liberals, communists, atheists and their chief abettor, the ACLU, to destroy "the true meaning of Christmas," though no one seems clear on what that actually is, with the possible exception of the ancient Romans.

To hear them tell it, the National Guard is standing by and prepared to sweep anyone uttering a peep about Christmas off the streets and in the general direction of Gitmo. They're also convinced that the phrase "Happy Holidays" somehow excludes Christmas by not making overt mention of it -- an archetypal example of Christians' demand for pedestal placement.

To be honest, especially given America's slate of more pressing concerns, this is a bunch of bullshit. There's no reason people should be hesitant to sing Christmas carols, deck the halls, display trees or nativity scenes. Christians, though misguided in myriad ways and especially in conflating the American holiday with the Jewish folk hero, are correct in pointing out that Christmas is an American tradition. If a guy like me can swallow it without wincing, it can't, at its root, be faith-driven.

The maneuverings of the ACLU may seem excessive. The thing is, if Christians aren't kept in check at all times, they engage in increasing levels of tomfuckery until someone shuts them down. Whenever they claim to be asking only for equal treatment, they're demanding the expansion of the special treatment they already enjoy across multiple realms. The best example I can provide is the gathering of mushbrains at StopTheACLU.com, whose collective penchant for whine-based lying is trumped only by its writers' and followers' inability to understand the subjects they choose to rant about. That the government gives these talking cloacas property-tax exemptions and money for bullshit-based sex abstinence programs says it all. So it's best to nip their machinations in the bud.

Overall, when I watch Christians squawk and stomp their feet over the "denigration" of Christmas, the term that comes to mind is just desserts, or, if you prefer, divine retribution. For as long as anyone can remember, plenty of us have been telling Christians -- directly and indirectly, personally and through media or legal channels -- that we don't want them coming to our homes to push their mythology on us, we don't want them arsing up our biology classes or biomedical research, we don't need their ideas about homosexuality to become a part of American law, we don't care for their insane ideas about the origins of natural disasters, we aren't sympatico with their conviction that God and morality are inextricable, and we don't give a rip what their charmed book of ghost stories claims will happen if we stick our pee-pees in places some jealous skygod allegedly doesn't approve of. But feeling supremely entitled to the imposing of their views on anything with a pulse, they've never paid attention. They're surely unable to grok or appreciate the irony here, but it's fun to watch anyway.

In addition, we non-theists have stressed at every opportunity that it's not Christianity per se that is bothersome but religious aggression, which of course is virtually synonymous with fundagelicalism in the United States. Ever notice that Jews, Native American spiritualists, and Buddhists aren't out to convert people? It helps to not be worried about being posthumously shipped off to black-fantasy-world furnaces and torture chambers where no one bothers to keep track of the time.

The bottom line is that Christians are choking on their own bile. The funniest part of it is that if they bothered to act remotely in accordance with what they supposedly stand for, they wouldn't have to.

Feliz Noel.

Ugliness

2005-11-22T11:40:00.000-05:00

"…and pretty soon there won’t be no streets
for dummies to jog on and doggies to dog on
religious fanatics can make it be all gone
I mean it won’t blow up and disappear
it’ll just look ugly for a thousand years"

-Frank Zappa

Did you ever wonder what the world would be like today if Western culture had never suffered through the Dark Ages? What if, given the controls to some omnipotent time machine, we could shuttle The Enlightenment back several hundred years, oh let’s say to the ninth or tenth century? And further, that The Enlightenment ideals of discovery and rational thought continued from that time forward? What would our everyday lives be like? On this time scale, we’d have landed on the Moon and created the Internet well before the 14th century (versus the real 14th century which saw widespread wars, plague and misery). I don’t think it would take a great leap of imagination to expect that we’d have cured cancer, produced clean and inexpensive forms of energy, moved everyone out of "third world" status, colonized the inner planets, uncovered more about the Universe than Stephen Hawking’s best wet-dream, created stunning new forms of art, and in general, made the lives of humans much, much better. Heck, we might even have encountered intelligent extraterrestrial life. Sounds pretty cool.

But what happened? Why did we have a Dark Ages in the first place and what kept us there? Why did we have to have an "Enlightenment" to pull us out of this historical dung heap? If there is one defining characteristic of the Dark Ages, it is the oppressive control over governments and people at all levels through a rigid ideology, an ideology that claimed perfect knowledge for itself and that required the persecution of those who might consider the exercise of free inquiry. In those days, the Church was number one and all governments answered to it. Ultimately, the Dark Ages can be thought of as The Golden Age of Western Theocracy. You see, the Dark Ages is the sort of thing that happens when people who place blind faith and adherence to rigid rules above free thinking and rational inquiry get into positions of power. We’re talking about Ugliness on a grand scale.

Now aren’t you a little pissed off that this Dark Ages thing happened? Aren’t you a little pissed off that your friend or relative suffered and died from a disease that, under a better timeline, we’d have found a cure for centuries ago? Aren’t you a little pissed off that so many people on this planet suffer without proper medical attention, food, energy, housing, etc., problems we could have licked by now with more advanced technology and a rational, thoughtful approach? Don’t you just want to hop in that time machine and knock some sense into the church leaders of a millennium ago? Doesn’t it make you just a little crazy that people could be so blind to the reality around them, so antagonistic toward basic logic? Aren’t you glad we don’t live in those times, a time when you could be burned at the stake or stretched on a rack until every joint in your body dislocated for professing that the Earth was a planet which revolved around the Sun?

Funny, but there are those today who would fit right into the 14th century. While they might admit that the Earth is a planet which revolves around the Sun, they might also claim that the Earth is a mere 6000 years old, that a pair of every species of life on the planet managed to be sequestered in a wooden boat a few hundred feet long for months during a global flood which covered even the highest mountains, or that ancient humans threw saddles on dinosaurs and rode them like horses. Why would they think such things? Do they have geological evidence? Radioisotope data? The results of DNA or biology experiments? Cosmological observations? The insights of anthropology or paleontology? Mathematical models? No. They have none of these. They claim they have something better. They have a book.

Yes, a book. And the book tells all. And the book is inerrant. Why? Because the book says it is, that’s why. There’s no need to investigate, or even think for that matter, if you believe you are in possession of The Big Book With All The Answers. It’s all there.

Now, what happens when this person shows up at an institution where free inquiry and rational thought are prized? Well, things like this. Yes, a group of Christian Conservatives are all a-fluster that the University of California is calling them on their bass-ackwards Christian fundamentalist coursework and have decided to sue on a claim of discrimination. All I can say is hooray for the University of California! The last thing I want to see is anti-rationalists get science credit for a course in blind-faithism. This is not a matter of plurality or diversity. "What’s that Johnny? You believe that the early Earth was made out of Roquefort dressing and that Tyrannosaurus Rex invented pantyhose? My, but that’s charmingly diverse of you! Here, take a seat next Sarah. Her parents told her that trees are the work of the devil and that mushrooms are fairy umbrellas! I’m sure you’ll have lots to talk about in Biology 101!"

Is the University of California guilty of "'viewpoint discrimination' and unfair admission standards that violate the free speech and religious rights of evangelical Christians", as charged by the Association of Christian Schools International? Put another way, is it unfair for the University to tell a group that their teachings do not meet the University’s standards? What? Unfair? Are they saying the University doesn't have the right to set standards? This is ludicrous. It makes no difference that the teachings stem from a religious versus secular source. Suppose Johnny went to a school that denied the existence of irrational numbers or the microbial theory of disease based on historical texts. Should Johnny’s "viewpoint" be "discriminated against"? You bet your ass. Does that constitute "unfair admission standards"? It would if his viewpoint was accepted, in which case it would be unfair to those students who learned what the scientific method offered. It is important to note that University of California doesn’t simply throw out an applicant because they attended a Christian fundamentalist school. They accept a number of courses from these schools (at least 43 according to a University representative). What they don’t accept are courses which place blind faith before appropriate scientific rigor. The fundie schools are claiming that this amounts to being told what to teach. No, it doesn’t. It simply tells them that certain courses will not count at that University. "Teach these courses all you want folks, but we’re not going to accept them. Maybe some other fine institution like Bob Jones University will give your kids credit for them."

Free speech is a separate issue here. Does Johnny have the right to claim that the Earth is 6000 years old in the face of evidence across myriad fields of study that show it to be nearly a million times older? Sure he does! He has the right to claim that and a host of other things, and his fellow citizens have the right to show through evidence to the contrary that Johnny is a crackpot. Johnny has the right to say whatever he wants but that doesn’t mean that he should get college admission credit for it just because it’s part of his so-called faith. I like to believe that colleges and universities are still halls of learning where the pursuit of knowledge and truth remains the top priority. While all opinions may be equal in terms of their right to be heard, they are not necessarily equal in terms of objective truth. It amazes me how the Christian fundies will be the first ones to cry that they are being discriminated against, how their ideas are not taken seriously, when they are the ones who, by definition, will not even consider arguments contrary to The Book. They reject the scientific method and free inquiry when it points out the flaws in their own world view, yet they don’t seem to mind so much if it helps them (for example, by pointing out that the creation myths of many other religions are not plausible, or by producing vaccines, cars, the Internet, and lots of other useful things). Fundies like to gripe about others’ “moral relativism” versus their objective truth when it comes to the fundie brand of morality, but they clam up pretty fast when it comes to the objective “truth” of their claims in the natural sciences. In fact, what the fundies are really bitching about is that they're not being given special treatment, a treatment they feel they are entitled to because of their special brand of faith.

Newton said that if he had seen farther than other men, it was because he had stood on the shoulders of giants. I look back at the giants of The Enlightenment and am thankful that their work and sacrifice made my day to day life possible. My worst nightmare is that all of that work would be lost in a modern rendition of the Dark Ages; a retreat into superstition and the stifling of free inquiry and creative thought in order to assuage the demands of an emerging American theocracy. Ugliness redux.

"What’s the ugliest part of your body?
I say it’s your mind"

-Frank Zappa

Another day in fools' paradise

2005-11-15T06:29:00.000-05:00

With Hurricane Wilma three weeks in the meteorological books and utilities restored to most in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, things in South Florida are more or less back to normal. For example, two Fort Lauderdale doctors just pleaded guilty to using fake botox; a toddler drowned in a West Palm Beach swimming pool; three brave up-and-comers rammed a motorboat into a channel marker near Boynton Beach in the pitch black, killing one of them; a Pompano Beach family was killed when their SUV collided with a train; and the recently suspended city manager of Deerfield Beach is petitioning for a contract extension.

Threads of normalcy ran throughout my own busy day as well. I was awakened by the hammering, yammering and general loud bonhomie of the "workers" outside my door, who seemed to be intent on reaching relatives back in Gaudalajara without the use of telecommunications devices. When I went outside, one of them was using a leaf blower to clear pieces of terra cotta roofing from the steps. Several discarded Coke cans lay in the third-floor breezeway serving four apartments: signatures of the construction trade.

When it came time for my afternoon run -- done in the typical crisp 80-degree temps of mid-November -- I was treated to the sight of an apartment complex with screen balconies that had been uniformly treated like five-dollar whores, with the enclosures having been transformed into curious Rorshach patterns of torn mesh and warped metal; perhaps the residents had left them that way after declaring them art. I alternately dodged piles of branches and septuagenarian-commanded golf carts. I passed a stone golf-community marker that had been toppled by Wilma and not yet righted and marveled; it easily carried the heft of a half-dozen large gravestones. (Of course, in accordance with local standards of shoddiness, it had probably never been sunk properly in the ground but simply placed on the soil.)

After waiting almost five minutes for the recently restored traffic signal to change in my favor so I could cross my local eight-lane monstrosity, I watched a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Deputy blow through the nascent red light less than ten feet from where I stood, en route to a destination that evidently warranted no siren. Like every other motorist in this swampy armpit, he obviously believed that shaving two minutes off his trip to the next box store or fast-food joint was more important than yielding the lawful right of way to someone dumb enough to be on foot in this century. "I hate this fucking place," I remarked to the wading birds lurking elegantly at the brim of a nearby canal. I believe they empathized, but were apparently more accepting of the direction this place has taken than I.

Once home, I figured I'd work a necessary visit to the local parochial school in with a trip to the nearby dog park. The skies were clear when I left, darkening by the time I left the school ten minutes later, and as I approached the park the deluge began. "Sorry," I muttered into the back seat, and turned around.

By the time I got home the skies were blue again. I had to go to the grocery store and considered walking the one-klick distance, but reckoned I'd get soaked if I did. So I drove, nearly being clipped by a Jeep housing two bimbi and cranking along the main driveway of the apartment complex in reverse. Sure enough, when I left Publix (jammed, as always, regardless of day or time thereof), it was pouring South Florida-style. I congratulated myself for my wise decision and stepped off the curb. I was soaked within three seconds and, having demonstrated sterling judgment in wearing flip-flops, almost fell on my ass with twenty-five pounds' worth of groceries.

The lowlight of the day, if not the most emblematic, was finding reason to post these uninspired, uninspiring events on Jeff Kilgore's message board as soon as I was in for the evening. That's like slithering into a bar full of malevolent, coked-up NFL washouts and moaning toward the floor about how you can't keep your hot but stupid wife from banging other guys. At least here I have those benevolent bonobos (however faint) for an audience.

(Up)standing Pat

2005-11-11T14:11:00.000-05:00

Pat Robertson has been bonkers since the Taft administration, but unlike other members of the Religious Reich (e.g., James Dobson, Jerry Falwell) -- who maintain a more or less steady but low-grade public presence -- Robertson is a binge idiot, interspersing islands of relative quiescence with bursts of raucous verbal flatulence suggesting he either has some of the worst judgment in history or is truly insane (not that these are mutually exclusive qualities, but I digress).

A couple of months ago, Robertson famously shat all over New Orleans, opinining that if abortion were not legal, Hurricane Katrina would have avoided savaging the Big Easy. (Robertson, of course, was far from alone in serving up this and similar solecisms.) On the heels of that, in a move so misguided it appeared parodic even by the standards of the source, he called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Chavez. Soon afterward, realizing for once that he had stuck his foot so far into his mouth that his anus appeared to have sprouted toes, he backpedaled, but by then it was too late, and besides, it's not as though anyone was really surprised. (For an amusing litany of all known Robertson faux pas, go here).

Now, with all eight school board members supporting ID having been voted off the backwater island that is Dover, Pennsylvania, Robertson noted that God was likely to forsake the town, what with turnabout being fair play and all. At least he didn't recommend offing anyone. (Be sure to watch the 700 Club clip.)

Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a brief but amusing post on this, and also goes into some detail about the general situation in Dover. The blog's owner and operator, Ed Brayton, is a fine wordsmith who has also written extensively about the ACLU's penchant for defending freedom of religious expression, not that the facts are bound to sway the energetically uneducable troglodytes zealots at StoptheACLU.com.

Wrong Said Fred

2005-11-11T14:09:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that someone can imbue an eleven-paragraph essay with the quantity of ignorance that this asstard has. Hopefully he's just raving for effect, something near and dear to me. But his convictions seem genuine.

I hate it when frigslappers refer to the "church" of evolution, spuriously likening an enormous number of well-established scientific facts to the blind faith and ludicrous nonsense inherent in creationist claims.

"If Pennsylvania wants to mention Creationism, or to require three years of French for graduation, it seems mightily to me that these things are the business of parents in Pennslyvania."

Leaving aside the fact that one backwater town, not "Pennsylvania" as a whole, is involved in this skirmish: Facts are not subjective, something too many people refuse to accept or even understand. Science classes are simply not forums for the expression of any and all ideas. Those classses exist, so no one is being cheated if what's taught in biology courses is limited to naturalistic material. But everyone is cheated if faith-based idiocy takes root.

The reason the courts get involved in these matters is simple -- we're a nation of abject morons that increasingly deserves to be carved out of the planet and fired in the general direction of Altair (which, come to think of it, would mark the Rapture and therefore make lots of fundies happy).

What if Pennsylvania wants to teach its students scientific "facts" about ghosts, the healing power of magnets, or the divine origin of natural disasters? What if they allow a vote in Georgia or Alabama as to whether re-segregating schools, or just lynching blacks outright, might be a good idea? What if Texas wants to make football mandatory for every male over the age of four? Lots of people believe in the utility of such shit; this is their birthright as Americans, but shepherding it into public schools is a different matter.

"I do not object to the content of Evolutionism. Some, all, or part of it may be correct."

Good deal. How generous of someone who's clearly and proudly a fifth-degree bumpkin to say that something 99.9% of scientists support might be correct. What makes objects tend to fall from the sky to the ground? Might it be gravity, or does the earth just suck?

Fred, like most Americans, can't even distingush between abiogenesis and evolution:

"...an entertaining way to study the politics is to ask the Evolutionists questions that a scientist would answer...They are simple. (1) Has the chance occurrence of life been demonstrated in the laboratory? Yes or no. (2) Do we really know, as distinct from guess, hope, or imagine, of what the primeval seas consisted? Yes or no. (3) Do we know, as distinct from guess, pray, wave our arms, and hold our breath and turn blue, what seas would be needed for the chance formation of life? Yes or no. (4) Can we show mathematically, without crafted and unsupportable assumptions, that the formation of life would be probable in any soup whatever? Yes or no.

"...Of the Knights Templar of Evolution, none—not one—answered the foregoing yes-or-no questions. They ducked. They dodged. They waxed wroth. They called names."

Evolution doesn't touch the primordial seas or the chance occurence of life. Much remains to be discovered about the origin of life, but what's known about evolution is as incontrovertibly true as anything can get. He doesn't know fuck from phinola.

Victory by the good guys in the Dover trial seems all but assured, but what has recently happened in Kansas is a travesty. They should evacuate everyone with an IQ over 75 (which would only require two or three full-size school buses) and then nuke the goddamned place. (Admittedly, places like Oklahoma and Nebraska would probably not favor such a thing.)

Actually, the whole country is fast becoming a waste of space. Slack-faced, ponderous booger-eaters whacking their Bibles with one hand and dialing out for an XXXL pizza pie with the other. Again, they should be able to do exactly this and more if they like, but it's not pretty to watch. Europeans -- scientists and otherwise -- are caught between titillation and horror when hearing about this ID garbage, to say nothing of our collective corpulence.

Other than these trivial things, two thumbs up to Fred's essay.

Xena: Warrior Scientist! by Doc Bushwell

2005-11-05T14:28:00.000-05:00

I freely admit it. I routinely destroy my neoencephalon by watching all manner of crap on television. I am not one of those overweening snobs who daintily curl an upper lip as I sneer, "I never watch television." I love popular culture, and frankly, find a dose of mindless television to be relaxing, and occasionally thought-provoking.

Such occurred recently when I watched the imaginatively titled, "Vampire Bats" featuring the unconquerable Lucy Lawless. Although I was not a devotee, I enjoyed watching Ms. Lawless chew up, and kick the shit out of, the scenery in "Xena, Warrior Princess." The imagery of Xena often came in handy when I, often the lone woman, endured gigantic clashes among primadonna scientists. As the guys were postulating, posturing, and sometimes patronizing, I imagined myself as Xena, leaping to the top of the conference room table, bursting forth with Xena's signature ululation, and making them listen to me by means of a whip or a well placed boot. Of course, by all appearances, I would be supporting my view in a moderately civil manner with data and citations from the literature and experience. Inwardly, the Xena imagery bolstered my assertiveness when the guys were in full chest beating mode.

I once told a male colleague about this imagery, which took our conversation down the general path of women in science. These days, there are a lot more women scientists, particularly in biology, but fewer in other fields, e.g., chemistry and physics. Back in the day, many scientific disciplines had fewer still. A former colleague related an amusing anecdote from his grad school days in a chemistry department at a major Midwestern university. Of all the tenure track faculty, there was only one woman, and as a young professor, she felt more comfortable with the grad students than the grand old men in the department. After a particularly contentious departmental meeting, she came back to the lab and voiced her frustration to the grad students, including my friend. She said, "They (the rest of the faculty) all were trying to prove who had the biggest dick there, and I have nothing to work with!"

The chemistry professor's humorous lament really hit home. I frequently experience the same feeling. That's when the Xena imagery comes in handy. It's also why, in spite of wincingly bad scripts and not-quite-campy acting, I thoroughly enjoy Lucy Lawless' role as Dr. Maddy Rierdon in "Locusts" and "Vampire Bats." Maddy comes across as competent and thoughtful, strong and intelligent, plus I'd kill to look as sexy as she does in jeans and a T-shirt. Her students love her, and will follow her into the deepest darkest Louisiana swamp to help her capture the anomalous vampire bats so she can more closely observe their behavior. As an aside, the science of "Locusts" and "Vampire Bats", albeit wacky, is another appealing feature. The locusts and bats are not products of a Revelational pestilence of Biblical proportions or supernatural spookdom, but have "scientific" explanations, typically pertaining to bioengineering gone awry (the bugs) or manmade environmental maladies (the bats).

Yes, I like Maddy Rierdon, and it's refreshing to see a woman scientist portrayed, even in such goofball offerings as "Locusts" and "Vampire Bats," as a strong, smart character who saves the day through her powers of observation, her knowledge, and yes, more than a little kick-ass physicality. Although there are smatterings of women scientists in the spheres of television and cinema, two others stand out most in my mind, and they don't appeal to me nearly as much as Maddy Rierdon.

The first is Robby Keough, the infectious disease specialist as portrayed by Rene Russo, in the truly-wretched-yet-I-cannot-look-away Outbreak. Robby's smart enough, but one gets the impression she's just along for the ride for dramatic, and not incidentally, sexual tension between her and her ex-boyfriend, Colonel Sam Daniels, as played by Dustin Hoffman in an excrutiatingly horrid action hero role. Colonel Sam is really the principle character in "Outbreak," as he and Robby try to idenitfy and contain the outbreak of the deadly Motaba virus, which is some sort of super-hemorrhagic cousin of Ebola. Sorry, Robby, but Maddy's colleague and husband, Dan Dryer (Dylan Neal), is relegated to a supportive, handsome accessory, and unlike Colonel Sam, stays in the background. Chalk one up for Xena.

The second is Rosalind Franklin, a real-life character, who is portrayed by Juliet Stevenson in Race for the Double Helix. Rosalind Franklin was the superb crystallographer whose data were pivotal in solving the structure of DNA. Unfortunately, her significant contributions were obscured by the fact that Maurice Wilkins shared her results, without her knowledge, with Jim Watson and Francis Crick, who ultimately cracked the code. Here are a couple of key paragraphs from the link provided:

She spent three years in France, enjoying the work atmosphere, the freedoms of peacetime, the French food and culture. But in 1950, she realized that if she wanted to make a scientific career in England, she had to go back. She was invited to King's College in London to join a team of scientists studying living cells. The leader of the team assigned her to work on DNA with a graduate student. Franklin's assumption was that it was her own project. The laboratory's second-in-command, Maurice Wilkins, was on vacation at the time, and when he returned, their relationship was muddled. He assumed she was to assist his work; she assumed she'd be the only one working on DNA. They had powerful personality differences as well: Franklin direct, quick, decisive, and Wilkins shy, speculative, and passive. This would play a role in the coming years as the race unfolded to find the structure of DNA.

Franklin made marked advances in x-ray diffraction techniques with DNA. She adjusted her equipment to produce an extremely fine beam of x-rays. She extracted finer DNA fibers than ever before and arranged them in parallel bundles. And she studied the fibers' reactions to humid conditions. All of these allowed her to discover crucial keys to DNA's structure. Wilkins shared her data, without her knowledge, with James Watson and Francis Crick, at Cambridge University, and they pulled ahead in the race, ultimately publishing the proposed structure of DNA in March, 1953.

The strained relationship with Wilkins and other aspects of King's College (the women scientists were not allowed to eat lunch in the common room where the men did, for example) led Franklin to seek another position. She headed her own research group at Birkbeck College in London. But the head of King's let her go on the condition she would not work on DNA. Franklin returned to her studies of coal and also wrapped up her DNA work. She turned her attention to viruses, publishing 17 papers in five years. Her group's findings laid the foundation for structural virology.

Stevenson's portrayal of Franklin is excellent. In France, she is smiling, flirtatious, and happy. In England, with the hovering Wilkins, she is closed, dour, snappish with her male colleagues and fiercely protective of her research. And with good reason. Wilkins is the archetype of what I call "the project vampire." Scientists (male or female) of this ilk latch themselves on to the work of another scientist individually, or as part of a team, and manage to gather credit and recognitions for little to no accomlishment. Franklin's story, and Juliet Stevenson's portrayal of this brilliant woman, is very painful for me since I was the target of a project vampire in my previous job. The experience of watching this guy insinuate himself into a major project, in which I was a key, senior player, contributed in no small way to my answering a recruiter's call, and accepting a significantly vertical move to another company. I am not even half the scientist that Rosalind Franklin was, but I so empathize with her history that Juliet Stevenson's role brings back those crushing feelings.

This is why I like Maddy Rierdon. She's always the one on top, and not just the sexy foil for the guy scientist or the dupe of the conniving male colleague. The only vampires she deals with are furry little critters with wings. So, CBS, if you're listening or if one of your minor minions stumbles across this backwater of a blog through Pharyngula or a Google search on "hen bestiality" (yes, that happened), give me more Maddy!

The rhetorical Eephus pitch

2005-11-03T18:18:00.000-05:00

I am sometimes asked -- indirectly, in the form of angry outbursts from wounded parties -- why I am so strident in criticizing the failures of religion. To hear believers tell it, as in this fine example (see the comments), they are all for hearing views from the god-free camp -- as long as such views are not dismissive, straightforward, strongly worded, categorical or otherwise couched in such a way as to get their central message across without confusion. In other words, it's okay to criticize faith as long as it comes off as something other than criticism.

I am obviously among those who believe that faith in the supernatural ought to be treated just as irreverently as any other idea grounded in high-grade horseshit, e.g., "psychic" consultants, astrology, fad diets and so on. That most people in America are religious to some extent doesn't cow me, because it doesn't take, well, a genius to grok that most people in the U.S. are stupid in one and usually numerous realms, usually in concert with their own particular "failures" (obesity, poverty, insecurity, and so on). I am among these unfortunates, as frequent lapses in judgment have established, but if nothing else I happen to have escaped the religious byrus.

Apart from this, however, I have an ulterior motive in being especially aggressive when it comes to taking on the assertions of the faithful. Part of the reason I do this is because I know that even if I begin gently, in accordance with the tacit demands of believers, I'll ultimately wind up stating things in increasingly strong fashion until I reach the point of offensiveness I'm presently accused of adopting from the outset. In other words, I'm sparing everyone the preliminary dancing around. But my chief reason for acting this way is because doing so, in theory at least, puts the faithful in the seemingly strategic position of having a powerful motive for refuting my serves.

It doesn't take a philosophy background to understand that the best way to defuse an opponent in debate is to prove his assertions false. Yet all I ever hear from goddists is that I'm intolerant, or pompous, or overly wordy, or operating on blind faith of a perversely religious variety -- usually some combination of the above. As for why I am supposedly wrong, I've never heard the slightest focused argument. I occasionally hear appeals to "authority" such as the Pope, baldly relativistic nonsense about godlessness being just another fundamentalist religion, and, amusingly, figures about the prevalence of belief, as if a mass, institutionalized delusion compensates for the inanity of the whole charade.

In baseball, there's a phenomenon known as an Eephus pitch. (I saw it demonstrated by Yankees reliever George Frazier back in the 1980's during a post-season lost cause.) The Wikipedia background is here, but know that the basic idea is that this is a pitch that by all appearances is an easy target for batters, yet repeatedly stymies its victims. This is how I see challenges to religious doctrine. Give them something that provides every imaginable reason for shredding its originator, and the invariable result is that its recipients can only stammer, yammer and fumblefuck in circles. It wouldn't even be considered a fair fight were it not for religion's unfortunate stronghold on American politics.

Is the effectiveness of the rhetorical Eephus pitch telling? Well, only if you remain on the fence or unconvinced of the things I typically write. To me such hollow forms of backlash are entirely predictable, because people who have nothing to back up their belief systems other than belief itself have no forensic option other than complaining of their opponents' tactics or personalities. Overbearing as I may seem, and overwrought as my writing may be, this isn't the point; I could shed these qualities and become a wishy-washy, semiliterate religious skeptic instead, and if I did you can bet your ass I'd be criticized on the basis of these shortcomings instead of indicted for verbosity or recalcitrance. Ad hominems, of course, are all the faithful have. Well, that and the inevitable proposition that goddism is exempt from the ordinary burdens of evidence and demonstrable support because, well, that's how God set things up: the unyielding value of observation, data, mutability and testability on this side, and blind, crass dogma on the other. He's a tricky character, after all.

All this means is that goddists have every imaginable motive for putting people like me in their place. Yet they don't. They withdraw from arguments on the basis of their opponents' alleged uneducability, bitterness, and lack of proper exposure to the real side(s) of [insert religion], or occasionally feing disinterest even after days of back-and-forthing, but that's pretty much the end of it. No in-your-face challenges of substance, no palpable reasons for why godless folks should just keep their "opinions" (which are no more worthy, supposedly, than those of blind goddies) to themselves. Just generalized retorts.

This is not surprising, given what it is believers are blindly and sadly representing. But it's instructive from the standpoint of human psychology, as it demonstrates -- not for the general good -- that a mind selectively deprived of critical thinking properties at an early developmental stage remains irreversibly crippled throughout the lifetime of its owner.

Religious people don't like me painting them in this light. This is understandable, and they'd surely feel this way even if they could somehow become cognizant of their own de facto lobotomies. But I don't care, because for my part I don't like the extreme ramifications of their non-surgical lobotomies, manifested to the discordant tunes of ID creationism, homophobia, opposition to useful medical procedures, and endemic embracing of fucktardation in every imaginable guise. If someone can explain to me the benefits of these solecisms I'm all for learning new things. The point isn't that all believers embrace any or all of these nasties, but that without the pervasiveness of "faith" such things would recede in terms of incidence and impact. I may be asking the impossible, but remain an idealist anyway.

I look forward to people continuing to take their swings at challenges to shittery. Somehow, I'm not especially worried that I happen to not have brought a glove along, or that in fact there's no catcher behind the plate. I know a three-pitch, the-whiffs situation when I see one.

Not-So-Funny Pages

2005-10-31T21:58:00.000-05:00

Every Sunday I head to the store and pick up a copy of the local paper. I quickly discard the ads I don’t need and sections I won’t read. Eventually, I get to the multi-colored jewel at the heart of the paper, The Comics. I love the comics. Well, some of them anyway. A few are simply dreadful, but the good ones, ah the good ones make me howl. Other parts of the paper can make me howl too, but in an entirely different way.

This week’s edition had a couple of major howlers in it. The first was a story concerning Halloween. The lead-in hook consisted of commentary from an Eastern European refugee family. They never celebrated Halloween in their home country, but now that they were US residents they decided to do their best to fit in. The mother of the family said she didn’t quite understand why she was dressing up the kids in costumes but she didn’t want them to feel left out. I kind of like that; the desire to assimilate into a new culture. They have no plans on going back to their old country, so fitting into their adopted home makes a lot more sense than isolation.

Following this was quite a bit of commentary from a variety of people regarding the history and the current macabre nature of Halloween. Some folks advocated getting rid of it. I rather like the idea of a Harvest Festival which some folks suggested. It’s sort of a combo of Halloween and Octoberfest: Cider, a doughnut, and a costume, with skeletons and bats optional. Anyway, the question was asked whether or not all of the death and dismemberment costumery was bad for kids. One local pastor said that he saw no problem with kids dressing up like Luke Skywalker or even Darth Vader, but he “sincerely believe(s) kids reading Harry Potter open the door to the desire to experiment with the supernatural. As long as there’s not that kind of curiosity, let them dress up.” I had to read that twice. Apparently, it has not occurred to the pastor that his entire religion is based on the supernatural, by definition. Now, that was a howler. As it turns out, in a perverse way I agree with him. I wouldn’t want the kids to take the supernatural, especially religion, too serious. Can you say cognitive dissonance Mr. pastor sir?

OK, so I turn the page and there’s a story about a Catholic/Christian “Faith Center” supported by local parishes which is located on the campus of the city’s central high school. Again, in my desire to stem belief in superstitions, particularly amid institutes of learning, I find this a bit disconcerting, but at least it’s not a case where it’s being funded by the taxpayers. The story includes a glowing narrative of how the center welcomes all students, regardless of their faith, with open arms. Yep, everyone’s equal under this roof, and equally respected. Then I got to this nugget: Referring to the varied student body, one of the sisters said “We try to get them to appreciate their religion – our Buddhist teens can become the best Buddhists they can be by honoring God.” Now isn’t that special? I’m no expert on Eastern religions, but from the handful of Buddhist texts I’ve read over the years I discovered that the typical Buddhist does not share the Western concept of God. So, these kids can become the “best Buddhists they can be” by embracing a tenet which is foreign to the very foundation of their religion. Beautiful, just beautiful! Makes me feel like a tabby hacking up a two pound hairball. There’s no disinformation going on here is there? No special treatment for the Christian viewpoint is there? Naaah, they’re too nice and holy and positively special to do that. They wouldn’t try to warp the views of kids, would they? I also got a howl (more like a screech of pain, actually) when I read the following quote from one of the students who regularly visits the center. She was describing how she has learned the meanings of lots of new words by going to the center. Take “dogma” for instance. She learned that “Dogma is laws that can’t be changed.” Poor sod. She got one little piece of it but not the most important part. Not understanding that a central aspect of dogma is its a priori declaration of truth, that is, its simple assertion of its claims as being self evident, often using circular logic in support, is a good example of indoctrination. Perhaps next the good folks at the center will tell her that indoctrination means “Teaching”.

Where’s Calvin and Hobbes when I need it?

The demon haunted mind by Doc Bushwell

2005-10-29T18:38:00.000-04:00

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell - Oscar Wilde

A recent Sunday found my kids and me careening through the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey as participants in the local "Run with the Devil" MiniCooper rally. Yes, I own one of those goofy little automobiles, and my little devil car has struck me wild-eyed and drooling with car lust, causing me to seek congregation with likeminded enthusiasts. The rally was organized by a charming Empire-type couple, complete with accents from somewhere in the UK or its territories, who are very much into things Gothic. Last year's Halloween rally, which the Goth couple also organized, took us through haunts of northwestern New Jersey. This October, we were hot on the tail, and the tale, of the Jersey Devil.

The Jersey Devil was an unknown to me as a Midwesterner. When I lived in the Boston area, the legend barely registered in dark, brooding New England with its own rich tradition of ghosts, witches and hauntings. But the Jersey Devil occupies a prominent spot, along with Tony Soprano, in the Gah-duhn State's mythology. There are many descriptions of the Jersey devil to be found. Here are two articles which provide a reasonably detailed background:"The Jersey Devil of the Pine Barrens," by Anthony Perticaro in strangemag.com and "The Jersey Devil" by Dave Juiliano. In the many accounts of the Jersey Devil, it is emphasized that its sightings were made by "... reliable people such as police, government officials, postmasters, businessman, and other people whose 'integrity is beyond question.'"

Eyewitness accounts from "reliable people," although I might exclude some government officials from this category, are not always so...reliable. When confronted with the unfamiliar, the human mind cobbles together pieces of the known which in turn result in bizarre mental reconstructions. Subtle tweaks of neurotransmitter levels, whether by a toke of spleef, a hit of LSD, a few pints of beer, or allelic variations of serotonin receptors result in profound effects on what we see, feel, and experience. The conscious mind, that intricate network of neurons and neurotransmitters, is thus prone to distraction and interference from external stimuli. Our consciousness is vulnerable to meltdown under high degrees of stress, and even with mild stress, is subject to cognitive glitches.

Humans are notoriously susceptible to bouts of mass hysteria, a phenomenon neatly summarized in this Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia offering is worth a look since it provides links to historical hysterics such as the Salem witch trials, the lively Spring-heeled Jack, "penis panic," and my favorite, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.

As social animals, our brains evolved to be influenced strongly by cultural and environmental context. This certainly has its adaptative advantages to the social unit, for example, group vomiting. If we witness others throwing up, we invariably feel queasy ourselves, even if we do not actively blow chow. This makes sense if one considers a foraging band of early humans. If one of the party ate something toxic, chances were good that others also had partaken of the bad eats. The initial grazer would rid him- or herself of the offending food. Those who witnessed the purge and sympathetically threw up, might then survive to snack, and reproduce, another day. There are many other complex collective behaviors which are thought to have evolved to assure survival of the species. The flip side of these adaptations are inappropriate responses. The origins of collective hysteria likely arise from the evolutionary legacy of "group think."

The Jersey Devil sightings likely arose from gross misinterpretations of natural phenomena spliced with collective hysteria. Notably, the Jersey Devil was said to be a harbinger of war. No doubt many were under stress at the time of the spate of sightings in 1909, the eve of World War I, so "reliability" is a relative term. Curiously, Jersey Devil sightings were mot reported prior to the Iraq incursion or before the World Trade Center towers were decimated in September 2001, the latter affecting many Garden Staters whose family and friends worked at the WTC. Perhaps 21st century life is so saturated with stress that the Jersey Devil has become an anachronism, no longer to be summoned in times of turmoil.

Nonetheless, it was good creepy fun to peer down the sandy road toward the ruins of the Shroud house in Leeds Point, allegedly the birthplace of the inexplicably long-lived demon, and to indulge those tingles of weirdness and the little thrills of warning skittering around in my nervous system. Many humans like to be scared. We like horror shows. We read scary novels. We pay to be frightened.

I like to be frightened, and even when I was a kid, I got an adrenalicious charge out of scary stories and from the dark, hidden places on our family farm. My brother is ten years my senior, and he took particular delight in frightening the bejeezus out of me. His efforts were as simple as foisting off especially rank sci-fi and horror stories on me, and encouraging me to watch television shows like "The Outer Limits." The Outer Limits episode entitled "The Zanti Misfits" kept me awake long into the night, much to my mother's consternation, as I imagined arthropods with humanoid faces scuttling about under my bed.

My brother went to more elaborate lengths to scare me. The rustling and muffled thumps in the dim hayloft of the old barn made me nervous. My sheep, a 4H project, resided in this outbuilding, and in the fall and winter, the interior of barn was ink-dark when I attended to my wooly charges after school. Logically, I knew the bumps and rustling in the loft were the signs of mundane hayloft critters such as rodents and raccoons, but in an effort to allay my irrational fear, I jokingly suggested there might be a hay monster living amongst the bales. Naturally, my brother capitalized on my confession. During his periodic visits home, (he was a grad student in engineering physics at the local university), he secretly constructed a faux hay monster from a dry cleaner's bag which he spray-painted black, and for good measure, added a Zanti-Misfitish visage. He then rigged it up in the rafters of the corn bin, a side room for grain storage in the barn, from which I retrieved ground corn for my sheep. He positioned two small jars, one filled with baking soda and the other vinegar, such that when I opened the door of the bin, the vinegar would spill into the baking soda, inflate the bag with carbon dioxide, and allow it to slowly fall in front of me. That was the theory.

He clandestinely set this up one weekend, and that Saturday evening, accompanied me to the barn to feed the sheep. When I opened the door of the corn bin, my brother and the hungry sheep trailing, I was startled by the two jars clambering down in front of me. I was so discombobulated that the identity of these everyday objects did not register. The jars were followed by an amorphous black thing which settled down on the pile of corn in front of me. I shrieked and jumped back as the sheep shot out the barn door, and my brother emitted a stifled gasp, which in retrospect was probably a laugh. He inched forward as I quavered, "What is that!?" He responded in an uncertain tone that he didn't know, and moved closer to the black object which was now writhing on the cracked corn. He moved his hand forward toward the bin door with caution. Suddenly, the undulating mass burst upwards, and again I jumped away, but at the same time, saw my brother's face grimace in repressed laughter. I then realized he pulled the "monster" up from the corn by means of an invisible-in-the-dark black thread attached to the bag. His plan was for it to inflate with the thread, which was tied to a rafter, to hold it in a vertical position so I could get a good look at the Zanti face. That design failed but the undulation of that bag on the corn was effective. Although I got a good adrenaline rush out of this, it was short-lived since my brother's presence kept me from being well and truly frightened.

Some weeks later, I ambled to the barn at dusk on a Monday evening, and as usual, my sheep followed, eager for their grainy treat. When I opened the corn bin's door, something shot out of the pile of grain straight at me. I tossed the can I used to dip out the corn at the monster, screamed shrilly as only a 12 year old girl can, and sprinted out of the barn. Yet even as a prepubescent sprout, some bit of rational thought clicked away in my head, a vestige of my characteristic skepticism glowed, and my inherent curiosity caused me to go back in and investigate. There, dangling from the rafter in the corn bin, were the remnants of the "hay monster" bag. My brother visited that weekend, and had taken pains to bury the bag in the corn. He swung the thread up over a rafter and tied it to the door such that when I opened it, the hay monster would spring forth from the grain...right at me. Because I was alone, the effect was that much greater, and to this day, I give my big brother a tip o' the harlequin prankster hat for his efforts.

I got a charge out of my brother's scare tactics, and be assured, my dear bonobos, he was the victim of my revenge when I became a young adult. But why did I like these frights? Why do I enjoy Stephen King's novels as I turn the pages for the next thrill? Why did I indulge myself in feelings of unease in the Jersey Devil's territory? I believe that many humans enjoy being frightened because it may be "practice" for real situations of danger. When we are frightened by what we know in the back of our minds is imaginary, our fear is on a tight leash. We are in control of the situation. I am no expert on evolutionary psychology, and as a practitioner of the "hard sciences," I am inclined to view that field as rife with speculation, but I wonder if these bouts of controlled fright constitute a survival mechanism. Perhaps practicing fright conferred an adaptative advantage to those who reflexively were able to maintain some control over their fear when confronted with a real danger.

However, humans can be scared witless, individually and collectively. Humans all too frequently fool themselves into believing quite irrational things are real. The title of my piece alludes to the late Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's wonderful book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. For those of us who look upon the ghouls and demons who will fly through the dark during All Hallow's Eve as quaint figments of imagination, as convenient tools for controlled fear, there are those who are utterly convinced that UFOs routinely abduct hapless humans, that alien fetuses are implanted in human women, that we can dredge up real memories of past lives, and that by a laying on of hands and a hearty "Praise Jesus!" someone can be healed of terrible afflictions. Our demon haunted minds are fully capable of misleading us.

The Demon Haunted World was published in 1996, and nearly ten years later, Sagan's clarion call for rational thought is as urgent as ever. Although the initial rumblings were audible when Sagan was alive, the cacophany of borborygmi has reached new levels since his death. You might ask, my gentle bonobos, what is "borborgymi?" This is the plural of borborygmus, which means "bowel sounds." More and more, it seems that many Americans devalue expertise, and instead elevate "gut-level feeling" as a guide to their thought, to their reality.

Charles Pierce recently published a sharp indictment of this "thinking-with-the-gut" tact in Esquire magazine: Idiot America. To read the whole article, one must fork over $2.95; Pierce's piece has the five Bonobo Hoots of Approval from Doc Bushwell, so it is money well spent. Commentary on Idiot America is making the rounds in the rationalists' corner of the Blogosphere, e.g.,Pharyngula and on one beaming visionary's blogspot among many others. Pierce's words are acerbically witty and angry. With reference to the borborygmic yammerings in our country, he writes:

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.

After all, faith is about the heart and soul and about transcendence. Anything calling itself faith-based is admitting that it is secular and profane. In the way that it relies on the Gut to determine its science, its politics, and even the way it sends its people to war, Idiot America is not a country of faith; it's a faith-based country, fashioning itself in the world, which is not the place where faith is best fashioned.

Hofstadter saw this one coming. "Intellect is pitted against feeling," he wrote, "on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical."

The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident:

Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
Anything can be true if somebody says it on television.
Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

...and as kemibe has noted in his latest three part tour de force in this very blog, truth becomes subjective when ruled by the Gut.

Gut level thinking may serve useful purposes, for example, the instincts which take over and aid us in responding to dangerous situations, thus saving our own hides. But we need to keep much of that gut-level thinking reined in with our rational minds, because allowing the Gut to take over our thoughts leads to uncontrolled, collective fears. These irrational fears clamor that one cannot elevate intellect without sacrificing love and affection, that if one is rational, one cannot be altruistic, and that if one has faith, one cannot give full merit to science. The pervasiveness of the Gut as described in Idiot America makes us vulnerable to collective hysteria. A world of darkness then descends, and our demon haunted minds perceive the ghosts, ghouls and goblins of fear as real.

There are two pumpkins, each carefully selected by my teenagers at a local farm market, sitting on my front stoop. Both kids like scary books and movies as I do, and still relish Halloween, one of the most ancient of holidays in the Western World. They will hollow out the gourds and carve frightening visages on them to scare away the demons and just maybe the Jersey devil. We will light small candles which will flicker in the dark, protected by the pumpkin lanterns. Just as Carl Sagan described science as a candle in the dark world of superstition, so must we nurture our intellects and those of our acquaintances, our families and our communities to keep our demon haunted minds from gaining the upper, and sometimes deceitful, hand.

The throaty cry of the Black Knight

2005-10-23T23:27:00.000-04:00

Many Americans who believe in a Creator do so quietly, harboring as much scorn for their outspoken "leaders" as do the militant atheists allegedly taking over the nation. But the most visible and yammerprone Christians rail incessantly about the leftist American media's failure to properly represent them, and as usual they're campaigning against a phantom adversary. Today, finding media outlets supportive of one's political stance, however paranoid or ramshackle, is not difficult; the Christian world view is scarcely a marginal matter, and every misshapen brainchild of the religious right's singularly rancid collective consciousness is duly cast squarely into the mainstream.

For all their complaining, Christians prone to agitating for patently theocratic aims have done well for themselves in painting those decrying their bigotry and underhandedness as inimical to humankind. Any writer or philosopher who takes aim at religious superstition (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris jump to mind) is tagged intolerant; anyone who does it serially is called an "enemy of God."

Even other skeptics often miss the point, which is never that faith in the supernatural itself -- while inherently nonsensical -- is necessarily destructive, but that faith used to leverage or justify gross political or social misconduct is a vile enemy in every imaginable dimension, because its proponents can justify virtually any solecism, burst of idiocy, or abomination on the basis of an unseen, powerful approbator. Americans forget this far too easily and at a time when it is especially dangerous to do so.

Presently, in the whole kingdom of vile and violent religions, Islamic fundamentalism, with its atrocities toward women, its continual parade of suicide bombings and its anti-Western orientation occupies the throne. But Christians, though less prone these days to outright bloodletting owing more to cultural circumstances than to an intrinsically more humanitarian or useful assortment of beliefs, exhibit no smaller degree of outright lunacy than do Koran warpers and literalists.

Like ultra-high-fidelity malware wrought of a diseased engineering revolution -- the tour de Republican force's astoundingly mindless 21st-century bullshit campaign -- the sizable moron arm of America, which enjoys a near-complete overlap with its most ardently religious demographic, lays the blame for every one of its real and imagined ills at the feet of The Liberals. Despite the fact that Republican Party carries both houses of an unusually redneck-laden Congress in addition to occupying the Oval Office, despite the Plame and DeLay and FEMA scandals and the public revulsion to God-fearing conservatives insinuating themselves in full vainglory into the Terri Schaivo mess, these hapless, nonthinking, nonseeing haters of The Liberals believe that this strawman enemy, not reality, is to blame.

Why? For one essential reason: The Liberals won't roll over and allow Christianity to have its artless, grunting way with schools, with private sex lives, with public policy from A to Zed. Committed Christians are quite literally unable to see what it is that they're demanding, or that their demands conflict not only with constitutional law but with the most permissive of logical frameworks, and are devoid of anything resembling a "love they neighbor" bearing.

A corollary to this is the moron battalion's steadfastly unawareness of the impotence of its own arguments. Its members unfailingly cast forth the gleeful fantasy that they have trounced the opposition even as they nominally choke on the shit sandwich that has just been rammed down their ululating throats. This illusion is easier to maintain in online media, where it is common practice to simply ignore items that damage, inconvenience or dismantle thoroughly any coherent points the morons may have tried to advance.

All of this brings to mind a memorable scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, wherein King Arthur, upon being denied passage over a bridge by the Black Knight, systematically dismembers his adversary with his sword, leaving the Black Knight first hopping on two legs, then one, and finally rendering him a bleeding, sputtering torso. Throughout the "battle," the Black Knight maintains, loosing at the confrontation's terminus a triumphant cry: "I'M IN-VINNNNNNNNNCIBLE!"

Remember, the important thing here isn't that the Black Knight has been sliced to bits. It's that he believes he has won. Any great satirist recognizes that the human capacity for self-deception is indispensable to his trade, and the creators of the Python cinematic series are no exception. And Christian "horsemen" -- in arguing fervently against evolution, against non-Christian religious adherents, against "Nigers," against liberals, and fundamentally against enlightenment, education, and palpable truth -- have this one element on their side: conviction. Conviction breeds effort, and this assures that no matter how extraordinarily fuckheaded or odious or oppositional a given Christian cause becomes, they will stand solidly behind it, throwing into and behind it as much money and votes and force and they can. It's the kind of wide-scale bullying that occasionally raises doubts about whether reality and truth will always prevail in the end, at least stateside, where history is seemingly on the side of the cognizant and the collected.

I'll delve into specific examples later.

The Big Cheese Speaks to You

2005-10-21T20:06:00.000-04:00

Yes. Yes, I am. I am a Cheesian. I believe in the power of Cheese to change people’s lives. Not just any cheese. I’m talking about the Big Cheese. The One-And-Only Original Cheese. No False Cheeses here. No solidified dairy product substitutes of any kind. This is the real deal; The Cheese To Believe In.

I wasn’t always a Cheesian. As a child I knew nothing of Cheese. My parents, strict vegans, forbade even a mention of it in our house. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but I knew something was missing in my life. Some of my childhood chums came from lactose-friendly families, but I found their devotion to the Almighty Aged Curd somewhat foreign, and perhaps a tad mysterious. It was this mystery that was to dog me as I grew. As a teenager, like all teenagers, I had a rebellious streak. I’d go to parties and inevitably, someone would start talking about Cheese. OK, I was curious. I’ll admit that. I figured, nothing serious: a little discussion on Cheddar, perhaps some Brie-talk. But soon my daydreams were filled with thoughts of good, aged Stilton while my intellect was racked by the social and political ramifications of an extra creamy Havarti versus a summer sausage, and beyond. The years passed and the questions deepened. Far into the wee hours I would ponder “Bleu or caviar? Jarlsberg or a hot pretzel?” Finally, one night, filled with an ever deepening sense of desperation, I looked into the bathroom mirror and asked “Straight up or on crackers?” My body shook under the strain, but my heart would shout back “We don’t need no steeenking crackers!” I came to understand that crackers are anathema to the true Cheesian.

And that’s how I was saved. After a decade of wandering aimlessly in the barren aisles of the grocery store of life, past shelves of shiny packages delivering little more than the broken promises leading to a gnawing personal emptiness, I had, at last, accepted the power of the Big Cheese in my life. I was “re-curded”. I had found The Whey. I wasn’t alone. There were others, Cheesians just like me, each of whom had their own conversion experience, and who welcomed me into their community. I joined a study group and began to immerse myself in “the good book of Cheesianity”: The Cheesle. It answered many of my questions about life, the history of mankind and Cheese, and my place in the grand scheme of things. I was filled with a sense of belonging, and a strange, almost overwhelming knowledge of my own knowledge of the overwhelming knowledge and goodness of The Cheese. And, of course, I was filled with the desire to share my overwhelming knowledge of the overwhelming goodness and knowledge of The Cheese with everyone, so that they might also feel this overwhelming overwhelmingness. I met, courted, and married a young woman from my study group. We have three children and we’re home-schooling them in Cheesianity. I figure if it’s Gouda ‘nuff for the old man, it’s Gouda ‘nuff for them! (And some people say Cheesians don’t have a sense of humor!)

This brings me to our present situation. Cheesians are under attack in this country by the lactose-intolerant media giants who control our airwaves and newspapers! Every day, I hear another story regarding anti-Cheesian activist judges or see yet another Hollywood movie promoting anti-Cheesian lifestyles. This country was founded by men who were Cheesians of the highest order! Men who raised dairy cattle on their very own farms! The rich heritage of Cheesianity runs through the history of our country like veins of mold through Roquefort, and it cannot be removed, no matter how hard the revisionists may try.

A case in point is the recent controversy regarding certain theories of the origin of the moon, and the way it is being taught in our schools. All good Cheesians know, even a child of six or seven years knows, that the moon is made of Cheese. It says so right in The Cheesle: “And The Big Cheese placed above the Earth the full Moon, heavy and full of curd, so that man would not have to walk alone in the darkness of early morning, and thus trippeth over yonder milking stool.” (Cheesesis 1:12).

Modern so-called “scientific theories” postulate that the moon is made of rock. This is an absurd idea on its very face as everyone knows rocks sink in virtually any liquid while cheese can float, thus begging the question “Why hasn’t this big rock sunk down to the Earth?” Some may argue that the Apollo program brought back “moon rocks”, but many believe that the “moon walks” themselves were faked. Numerous Internet sites attest to this fact. Further, we must not forget that “Rock-Moon” is just a theory. As such, it would be entirely inappropriate, and certainly unscientific, to proclaim to impressionable youth in our public schools that it is a fact. Cheesians are not asking that the Rock-Moon theory be removed from the classroom. That would be just as bad as leaving it in. All we are asking is that schools “teach the controversy”. In the spirit of honest, open, scientific debate, both sides should be presented to the students. Students should not be fed a theory as a fact by government entities with their own agenda. To do so would be intellectually dishonest. We are willing to include both explanations so why are the Rock-Mooners afraid to? What do they have to hide or fear? Is their position so weak that they can’t afford to offer equal time to other, highly valid, explanations?

Teach the controversy. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the American thing to do!

On the subjectivity of truth: part 3 of 3

2005-10-15T16:08:00.000-04:00

So much for hand-wringing and pointed examples. The scary part? Regardless of the subject matter, to the terminally committed, beliefs that are sufficiently widespread and charged with enough demagoguery do indeed take on the relevance, importance, and power of truth. This might not matter if elected officials were above this grisly trend, but if anything they are especially susceptible, at least under the catastrophically backward ethos of the Bush administration. A superb example is Cheri Yecke, Florida's brand-new K-through-12 education chancellor and an established shitwit who was ousted from a similar post in Minnesota, allegedly owing to a Democratic vendetta. Yecke, the latest in a long line of rowdily inept politicos from afar -- such as the now-exiled Jerry Regier -- who have staggered into the warm, welcoming arms of Florida Gov. Jebediah Bush, exemplifies the sort of state-sanctioned backwardness that has become de rigueur in recent years.

Yecke is a creationist who claims that her personal beliefs will not influence her policy decisions in Florida. Leaving aside the fact that a creationist is indisputably unfit for the post Yecke now holds, she's left a clear trail of creationist machinations in her wake. If it's not her personal beliefs that have driven her attempts to soak all children in her bailiwick in creationist bullshit, then what? A thoughtful examination of the evidence? Accepted NCSE standards? Yecke clearly has no problem substituting beliefs for facts, and in her case such tomfuckery carries dire implications for an already benighted state.

Now this is really disappointing to me. It doesn't bother me that people believe in insensible, contradictory things if it makes them feel better and doesn't interfere in the lives of others. However, there's no such thing as a growing movement that keeps its collective idiocy to itself. And the more their solecistic chattering peppers airwaves, newspapers and the Internet, the more validity their quests appear to hold and the louder they squawk.

The motives of the belligerently incorrect are clear, but has this sort of thing always been so, well, okay? Is is a matter of the blogosphere giving voice to misguided opinions formerly limited to inane reveries and conversations with one or two kindred spirits? Is there a solution?

Eliminating bad beliefs would be helpful, but this is not feasible; it's not difficult to suggest reasons for why they persist, so a better strategy is to simply treat them with all the "respect" (something their proponents claim, a priori, such befuddled histrionics require) they've earned. That is, mock them to the edge of the earth. No amount of iterating and re-iterating how howlingly wombat-shit-stupid these ideas are is too much. If this means making an otherwise "good person" not capable of viewing the world sensibly feel bad, tough shit. A rabid dog isn't morally responsible for its destructive behavior either, but if it attacks you, you're still obligated to beat it down.

At its core this issue is really very simple. I have no quarrel with Christians, fat people or joggers, or, for that matter, people who enjoy wanking to photos of syphilitic cartoon mules with strong NRA ties. But it rankled me when people squander their brains at the clear expense of the general ebb and flow of society. There's enough calamity in the world without mixing in bullshit that cannot fairly be called, as some would have it, a "healthy exchange of ideas." If your Christianity has you yelping inanely about what I should do with my penis, uterus, or petri dish and rushing to the courts in an effort to ensure that your archaic, senseless views are imposed upon others, then I'll tell you you're diseased and if I discover your blog I'll litter it with incendiary rhetoric.

The most troubling thing for you is that I'll be right. The most disturbing thing to me is that I'm outnumbered by decerebrates.

This is no call for a world devoid of fantasy, a universe populated exclusively by soulless, Spocklike organisms whose only purpose is the bland execution of rational acts. I'm as creative as the next person you'll meet. Hell, I even enjoy making up words as I go along, rather like a Shakespeare without one one-thousandth of the skill or notoriety, but thrice the facility with profanity. I merely think that people should confine their lies to purely self-serving motives, as with philanderers aiming to keep suspicious spouses at bay or moneygrubbers on the run from the SEC or the IRS. No one needs to be fed bulshit about the natural world. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to take a turn at being correct, with the dullards among us being disproportionately but rightfully deprived of their chance to shine. Assigning equal value to every idea is intellectual welfare, which is inarguably bad policy.

I'm also weary of the people screaming about the inherent lack of morals and values in the god-free mind. That's perhaps the biggest crock of shit of all. Atheists understand all to well how dear our time on Earth is, and are more troubled by the sheer unfairness of the deaths and ruination of innocent life than are the faithful because they do not self-indulgently place such goings-on in the context of sin and an inscrutable (yet certainly caring) deity whose morality -- despite, of course, his very human distaste for homosexuality, atheists, and uppity women -- is "unknowable to us." More than anything alse, I'm just grateful no one tried pumping my head full of this bullshit when I was young. Better to be beaten regularly with a big-buckled belt.

Most people who believe in a divine creator aren't fundagelical yammerbags, and most overweight people aren't self-deluding haters of everything they're not or fails to support their agenda. But the increasingly equivocal use of terms like opinion and the perceived interchangeability of words like evidence, thought, and faith and observation, belief and assertion does not bode well for anything or anyone, anywhere. The world has undergone considerable reformation throughout human history, but hiding from the truth has, I am sure, never proven fruitful or progressive.

On the subjectivity of truth: part 2 of 3

2005-10-14T18:11:00.000-04:00

While religion may be the most prominent locus of shameless bullshit producton and dissemination, it's not the only significant one. (That religious fervor has parallels in other wishful-thinking realms is instructive from the standpoint of viewing a belief in a conscious deity as nothing more than an easily rationalized outcropping of human psychology, but just try to get the afflicted to appreciate this view.)

We now live in a culture in which a mindlessly passionate subset of overweight people -- whose numbers in the U.S. are swelling as quickly as bloatfolks' individual waistlines -- can, motivated by insecurity, rage and denial, sincerely dismiss the numerous well-established health risks of obesity as propaganda churned out by a murky, profiteering cabal comprising Big Pharma, the $40-billion-a-year weight-loss industry, and medical doctors themselves. Never mind that researchers were warning of the health risks of being fat long before opportunists such as Weight Watchers cropped up; set aside also the fact that, as a cardiologist friend of mine notes, "If I were really interested in just my wallet and not in my patients' health, I'd not only tell them to get even fatter, I'd put cigarette vending machines in my waiting room." But this kind of thinking doesn't wash with fat activists, whose credo is all too famailiar: When a group of people is unhappy with their circumstances and cannot change either them or themselves, their best strategy is to simply shift the goalposts. Silly? Not in a culture in which it's increasingly kosher to substitute sheer noise for knowledge.

Strident people of size do not comprehend what a colossal non sequitur it is to go from "Fat people are objects of unnecessary ridicule" to "it's perfectly fine, health-wise, to be fat, even when the chief causes are inactivity and a junk-laden diet." A glance at their bloggery demonstrates that they are not pro-fat so much as they are anti-everything else, including overweight people with the temerity to drop tonnage. As with ID creationism, all it takes is one or two glib spokespeople to serve as patron saints for a given cause -- and obesity has a pair in author and crank extraordinaire Paul Campos, whose "debunking" of obesity's medical implications has been rejected by scientists from coast to coast, and food-industry shill Sandy Szwarc; both know just enough to be dangerous -- and that's all those embracing a given chunk of mottled, moldering bullshit need. (Campos agitates for his cause against a pair of Harvard obesity researchers and rabble-rousing king Michael Fumento here.)

Fat people who have long struggled to lose weight and are well aware of society's often harsh or at best bemused treatment of them are naturally going to lean toward a world view in which the problem isn't obesity but everyone else's rigid insistence on thinness. So the hand-wave and eye-closing techniques of dismissing evidence have become ever more popular, while angry law professors and portly shut-ins have managed, in their minds at least, to elevate their analytical acumen and medical insight to that of MDs and PhDs on the faculty of the world's pre-eminent research universities.

The parallels here with the attacks on the work of investigators with doctorates in the biological sciences by "creation scientists" are striking and undeniable. There is nothing conventionally religious at stake here, but you'd never know it.

In a more sociologically localized vein, a great example of far-flung bullshit in distance running is the well-known "run-walk" method by which undertrained citizens strive to complete 26.2-mile marathons. There is certainly no mark in using this no-hurry strategy -- most often credited to former American elite athlete Jeff Galloway -- but only through egregious leaps of poor reasoning can one conclude that something sufficient to get people to the finish line in one piece is also the most efficient. Galloway, whose efforts have helped fill both marathon fields around the country and his own pockets, has at times been drawn into discussions in which he oversteps the boundaries of his so-called philosophy and finds himself unable to support his more avant-garde claims with anything culled from exercise physiology; at times, it seems he cannot even do basic math. Yet those free of other reference points who complete marathons thanks to this "method" are immediately numbered among his most ardent defenders. He does look more than a little like Jesus these days.

Of course, it's not just right-wingers that close their eyes to truth if favor of the allure of queered notions of cosmic fairness. A fine example, this one also running-related, is the railing against the idea that certain East African peoples possess inborn traits that, on average, make them more talented distance runners. Beating the same equine carcasses over and over has its advantages, because I can quote myself:

...it's helpful to keep in mind that people who refuse to acknowledge that innate differences in certain capabilities between people of different ethnicities exist harbor precisely the same intractable mindset as Bible inerrantists who refuse to acknowledge the lunacy of, among other things, embracing the fable of Noah's Ark -- to say nothing of the rest of the Book of Genesis -- as an actual historical event. (Interestingly, the same people who would freely acknowledge the morphological differences between Northern Europeans, East Africans, and West Africans -- after all, they really have no choice -- bristle at the radical idea that some of these differences might translate into greater physical potential in certain sporting realms.) As with Bible literalists, facts do not sway practitoners of the liberal religion; if anything, their introduction into such discussions is regarded as an annoyance if not an outright attack. So it's pointless for a realist to argue with them if the goal is to convince them of the validity of his position or the frailty of theirs; at best, the realist may amuse himself, and at worst he may grow frustrated. That is, the parallels between hardcore Christianity and the increasingly manifest liberal surrogate are nearly complete.

Finger-waggling social-science types make all sorts of noise about correlation not being causation and the unforgiviable but evils of slavery, but regardless of what we'll one day discover about genetics and distance running vis-a-vis ethnicity, none of what they say ever applies. Like the hyper-religious, these screeching liberals are more concerned with what appears to be desirable (in thier view, that every ethnic group is on a genetic even keel in every possible way; to say otherwise opens doors to nastiness) with what is simply true.

On the subjectivity of truth: part 1 of 3

2005-10-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

"There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate government action."

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

In decades of yore, strategic, full-scale public deception was seemingly the sole purview of politicians, outright crooks, and a comparatively small number of shady businesspeople. Today, as science inexorably pushes back the limitations of technology and the number of available cable television channels expands like Courtney Love's rap sheet, North America has become so overrun with lies and deception that the inevitable has happened: Absolute bullshit -- as long as it placates someone or makes him rich -- is afforded the same treatment as plain truth in almost every sphere of existence. Penn & Teller have parlayed this stain on modernity into an amusing program on Showtime, but even exposés like theirs fail to address the implications of the bullshit epidemic in general, global terms.

Most often, this brand of dishonesty takes the form of individuals quietly fooling themselves in an effort to allay the discomfiting ache of cognitive dissonance. Such maneuvers are sufficiently commonplace to have engendered snippets of charming idiomatic bullshit, e.g., "money isn't everything," "true beauty is on the inside," "the meek shall inherit the earth," and "everything happens for a [divine] reason." Not that all of these are entirely frivolous, but it is useful to examine the circumstances and hence the rationale of those most often heard uttering such axioms.

Then there are the lucrative enterprises that feed this tendency: purveyors of penis-enlargement pills, abdominizer machines, get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, and similar hokum shown on television in the wee hours or distributed in unsolicited e-mails. But a shot of spam or an infomershill is a one-sided stream of blather, and owing to the media though which these niceties propagate, even the most unsupportable claims by definition can and do gush forth unchallenged. Even if 99 out of 100 viewers immediately smell the bullshit, the one holdout, if he bites and buys, provides enough cash flow to keep the offending company in the black. In fact, bullshitters of this variety, because they are rarely pressed directly regarding the alleged merits of their products, make no overt appeals to faux honesty. That is, unlike, say, warmongering government leaders, they don't lie about their lies and are really outside the scope of this diatribe.

More fascinating -- and pertinent -- are the people who, in an open dialogue, can simply flat-out ignore facts even when essentially pinned down and forced to eat them. Many arguments do in fact address complex issues and not-easily-answered questions, but in the online circles in which I travel, disputes far more often occur between emotion-fueled and shallow-minded reactionaries on the one hand and their equally strident but fact-touting counterparts on the other. This may sound arrogant, overly simplistic, or both, but it's true. The faith-based opinion that humans were created in a flash of heavenly magic is simply not as rationally useful as the evidence for natural selection and descent with modification. The private ends achieved by those who champion the supernatural have no worldly value.

Such stubborn assaults on facts by the proud emissaries of cherished beliefs provide an archetype of the sort of excoriating set-tos that have spilled into every cranny of daily life and consume both individuals' time and energy and public resources (e.g., taxes used to fight objectively worthless lawsuits). The evolution versus intelligent-design creationism "debate" is a glaring example of how the power of widespread, lusty and giddily blind desire coupled with political and financial motives can propel an idea with no epistemical merit conceived by and for backwater zealots fearful of science (and of an honest education in general) into the mainstream, and, if they have their way, into the science curricula of American public schools. What with the way things are going in Kitzmiller v. Dover, it's not looking like the creationists are going to score a legal victory anytime soon. But they've managed in fine fashion to convince a lot of previously disengaged Americans that evolution really is fraught with controversy, deception and gross uncertainties, and that incredulity over matters of complexity which are in fact both predicted and explained by biological models is a reasonable substitute for investigation and thought. I'm not sure how many people really do believe in a young Earth or a six-day creation, or in the sort of haphazardly evil and mentally compromised deity as exists in the Christian Bible. But whatever the number, it's too many, and it's not just the bumpkins holed up in trailers in future sites of hurricane or tornado wreckage.

Of course, religious wars -- both those involving one sect versus another and those pitting believers against "secularists" both within and outside of workaday science -- have been going on for aeons, and in a world in which successive generations are successfully inoculated with God despite mounting evidence that the Bible is not only really, really wrong, but way fucking really really wrong, they're not about to stop; despite the categorical failures of an untold number of insane prophecies to be realized, chief among them the return of Christ himself, we really can't prove that Christians have it wrong. That's reason enough for all but a handful of them to toss out facts that are inconvenient while inventing or modifying others to suit. No one should be surprised when scientists and scientifically erudite persons become fed up with the incessant stream of anti-intellectual garbage spewing from fundamentalist mouths and into the pages of mainstream publications, which have never met controversies -- legitimate or shitimate -- they couldn't sell.

Everything but a proboscis

2005-10-06T18:06:00.000-04:00

In case you're wondering what's waiting in the shadows for America's schoolchildren should the teaching of vapid non-theories such as Intelligent Design creationism be allowed in public schools, look no further than creationevidence.org. The progressives behind this operation have set up a special section for Web-savvy kids, featuring a trio of wall-eyed young scholars and a dinosaur named Muncher.

Standard disclaimer: This is not a parody site.

Note the typical references to "evolutionists" and their wrongful ways, along with a sketch of an addled Darwin with a halo of question marks around his head. That's right -- get 'em while they're young. Ironically, the pressures of natural selection themselves are responsible for the extreme psychological plasticity of young 'uns, who in almost all cases stand to benefit greatly from believing exactly what their parents tell or otherwise convey to them. In many cases, their very survival depends on such trust ("Don't eat that nightshade 'shroom; don't feed the lions"), but of course religion -- coupling as it does fear of retribution for not believing with a perverse promise of "salvation" in return for faith -- fully exploits the same quality in a most reprehensible way.

It's no wonder Bible-boppers indoctrinated at a tender age grow up viewing scientists not only as errant but as strictly adversarial. When I was learning the basics about dinosaurs and archaeology as a five- and six-year-old, and later as a schoolkid digesting the standard tenets of the life sciences as fed to me by the Concord School District, my parents and teachers never prefaced any of their lessons with defensive-minded innuendo such as "Despite the claims of creationists..." or "Fundies in their infinite loopiness are often heard to say..." Of course, they didn't have to, and still shouldn't. But with an already choked court system now forced to deal with the implacable backwardness of American fundagelicals in Dover, Pa. (you can follow the goings-on in that case here), Kansas, Cobb County, Ga., Utah, and elsewhere, a certain amount of battling incendiary palaver with inflammable retorts has seemingly become necessary. Politeness and simply waiting for the "obvious" truth to prevail has never worked, and with Christian extremists ever more emboldened under a galactically benighted President, it's even less effective today.

It's heartening that the ID folks appear to be getting their asses handed to them in Harrisburg; they've simply left too obvious a trail over the years that they're nothing more than creationists under a flimsy guise, and thanks to the 1987 SCOTUS ruling barring creationism from American schoolrooms, this will likely kill them in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case regardless of what else is presented therein. The discouraging aspect is knowing that these misguided sentinels of God's will are never going to give up. Swatting a dozen mosquitoes to death never discouraged hordes more from piling out of the wet underbrush and onto tender skin, and these clowns, driven by even baser appetites, are scarcely different.

What's Bred in the Bones: A Special Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District Edition of Bonobic Bloviation

2005-10-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

Diplodocus
This illustration of Diplodocus was prepared by the artist Mary Mason Mitchell in 1910 under the direction of Oliver Perry Hay (1846-1930). Hay was not an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, but he held the title Research Associate, and had office space at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

Publication:
Hay, Oliver P. 1910. On the Manner of Locomotion of the Dinosaurs, Especially Diplodocus, with Remarks on the Origin of the Birds. Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 12, pp. 1-25.

from the Historical Art Gallery, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

******************************************************
This summer marked the 100th anniversary of my maternal grandfather's excursion through France via bicycle. In June 1905, at the age of 21, he, along with two college classmates, boardedThe City of Glasgow, a cattle boat, in Baltimore, Maryland, to work their way across the Atlantic to England. After traveling through the United Kingdom for several days, he and his chums crossed the English Channel and disembarked at Calais, France. From there, they journeyed to Marseilles in southern France by "wheel," then traveled by train from Arles to Bordeaux then on to Paris where the little band had a few adventures. They left France by way of Le Havre, crossed the channel to England, then returned home by steamer to New York City then back to Illinois.

My grandfather kept a journal of his travels. This diary provides a glimpse at a time past and into the thoughts of a man whose familial legacy was known to me, but whom I never really knew because he died before I was born. Based on recollections of my mother, aunts and uncles, I knew my grandfather was a pillar of the community and a good church-goer, a Presbyterian, I believe. However, my grandfather as a young man offered decidedly jaundiced observations on religion. This makes me wonder if he practiced his faith in its benign form as described by Richard Dawkins' article, Opiate of the Masses, published in Prospect,

As with many drugs, refined Gerin oil [Dawkins' pharmaceutically derived allusion to religion - Doc Bushwell] in low doses is largely harmless, and can even serve as a social lubricant on occasions such as marriages, funerals and ceremonies of state. Experts differ over whether such social use, though harmless in itself, is a risk factor for upgrading to harder and more addictive forms of the drug.

Religion was not viewed as any kind of all consuming occupation of thought on either the maternal or paternal side of the family even as it served as a social lubricant in our community. My maternal grandfather vehemently believed that tolerance of others' creeds was not enough, but that acceptance was the ideal. He eschewed dogma, and thus had no use for fundamentalism of any stripe. This might explain why I was quickly yanked out of a Sunday school class after telling my mother and father that I had a heated argument with a Sunday school teacher over the question of "Does God hear the prayers of the Jews?" The instructor stuck to his surpisingly fundie-for-a-mainstream-Prod assertion that God did not hear the prayers of his Chosen People. Not long after the incident, the Sunday school teacher was no longer instructing 10 and 11 year old students. This experience left an indelible imprint on my young mind: religion could be pretty fucked up.

The study of science, including Darwin's Theory of Evolution, in my family was never in conflict with the benign doses of Gerin oil imbibed by our household. In fact, my scientific curiosity was abundantly encouraged by my father, who studied bacteriology and chemistry as a college student, and my mother, the descendant of my enlightened grandfather. There was never any doubt that we shared common ancestry with the great apes, and that all in my little world, humans in the house, cattle in the pasture, and corn in the fields, traced our lines back to primordial ooze. With a nod to Stephen Jay Gould's writings in Rock of Ages, our Sunday attendance at and activity in the local Methodist church occupied a separate magesterium from the realm of science. This was the rubric from my earliest memories.

When I was a little kid, my response to the What-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up query was, "A paleontologist!" Like many kids, I was infatuated with dinosaurs and the great mammals of the Pleistocene such as sabre-toothed cats, dire wolves and mammoths. My sister was 15 years my senior so when I was around five or six years old, and squeaking out that 20 dollar word, "paleontology," which no doubt served as a parlor trick for my mother's bridge club, she let me look at her college biology textbooks. I could read reasonably well at the time, and tried to pick out bits from her books. As I grew up, I continued to expand on my knowledge, but eventually veered from the naturalist sciences to the molecular.

My grandfather mentioned "Uncle Perry" in his diary. Oliver Perry Hay was my grandfather's father's brother, and thus my great-great uncle. When I was a kid with paleontological aspirations, I remember my mother saying that her father's uncle was a paleontologist. As an undergraduate in the days before the Internet, I looked up Uncle Perry in Who's Who of American Scientists in the college biology library and learned a little more about him. I learned even more about my relative this past summer, when my mother gave me the old monograph (cover pictured along with a photo of Uncle Perry), Descriptions of Some Pleistocene Vertebrates Found in the United States, 1920, Proc. United States National Museum, 58: 83-146,written by Uncle Perry and his memorial biography, written by his son, William P. Hay. She believed I, among all the family, would most appreciate these old papers, and she was right.

Uncle Perry's primary interest was vertebrate paleontology. He published numerous monographs, including articles on evidence for early man in North America. His most significant contribution to the field was an authoritative two volume bibliography and catalogue of Pleistocence vertebrates. This remains an important reference in the field. Uncle Perry's chronology follows:

born in Saluda, Indiana, on 22 May 1846.

moved with family to farm near Bradford, Illinois

1870: A.B., Eureka College, Illinois

1870-1872: professor of natural sciences, Eureka College

1873: A.M., Eureka College

1874-1876: professor of natural sciences, Oskaloosa College, Iowa

1876-1877: graduate student at Yale University

1879-1892: professor of biology and geology, Butler College

1884: Ph.D., Indiana University

1884-1888: assistant, Arkansas Geological Survey

1890-1891: president, Indiana Academy of Science

1891-1894: assistant, Indiana Geological Survey

1895-1897: assistant curator of zoology, Field Museum of Natural History

1901-1907: assistant, then associate, curator of vertebrate paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, NYC

1902-1905: associate editor, American Geologist

1902: publishes his Bibliography and Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata of North America

1907-1911: returns to Washington; pursues private investigations in paleontology

1908: publishes his The Fossil Turtles of North America

1912-1917: research associate, Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.

1917-1926: associate, Carnegie Institution

1923-1927: publishes his The Pleistocene of North American, in three volumes

dies at Washington, D.C., on 2 November 1930.

As noted in the time line, Uncle Perry attended Eureka College. It was convenient for him and moreover, according to his biography:

He was probably influenced in this selection by the fact that he had united with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and looked forward to entering the ministry of that demonination.

However, he was not to join the ministry:

Toward the end of his college course, his dreams of the ministry had faded away, and he had applied himself more and more to science.He supplemented the meager courses of the college by reading such scientific books as he could buy or borrow, and before he graduated had impressed his professors with his ability and promise in this field of work.

As outlined above, Uncle Perry's graduate training was somewhat prolonged, but he became a professor of geology and biology at Butler University. In addition to courses in his specialties, he also taught chemistry and physics. However, he did not remain at Butler:

In 1892, his position at Butler having become untenable because of his views on evolution, (italics, DocBushwell), he resigned and removed to Chicago.

Apparently, Uncle Perry's advocacy of Darwin's Theory of Evolution was more than Butler University could bear, and so, he moved on. All in all, his departure was probably for the best, given the path his career took. Here was a boy who grew up on a central Illinois farm, and knew no other educational outcome than the ministry. Apparently, little Eureka College opened his eyes. That he embraced the concept of evolution in the late 19th century and pursued his interests so tenaciously is a testament to a man of rational thought, someone whom I'm proud to call a relative.

Some 113 years after my great-great uncle left Butler University, no doubt badgered out of the institution, the anti-evolutionists are still at it with the most current and visible challenge being the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. There's plenty of press coverage:

A Web of Faith, Law, and Science in Evolution Suit

Darwin's (First) Day in Court

The National Center for Science Education's site dedicated to the trial - a Bonobo's Thumbs-up Recommendation!

Although I harbored no early ecclesiatical ambition like my great-great uncle, I likewise followed a scientific path. As I matured, the social lubricant of religion, even in its most benign form, became less and less significant to me, and I arrived where I am now: an agnostic for whom religion just isn't relevant. In keeping with my maternal grandfather's legacy, channeled to me through my mother, I typically have subscribed to a live and let live philosophy toward those who embrace faith. That was fairly easy to follow when fewer did not attempt to inflict their beliefs on me or on the public at large, which irks my vague beliefs in Jeffersonian politics.

The continuing erosion of the boundaries between church and state makes my stance of tolerance more precarious. I am not taken aback by frank creationism, i.e., the young earth concept and literal interpretation of Genesis, as taught in private schools which are founded on religious fundamentalism. That is pretty much par for the course, and at least one knows exactly the footing on which the proponents of the young earth stand.

It is the insidious incursion of creationism in the guise of Intelligent Design (ID) into science curricula and public thought which elicits an especially visceral response in me. ID is a slick repackaging of creationism which is motivated by fundamentalists in sheeps' clothing. ID does not meet the criteria for a bona fide scientific theory yet speaks in the language of science. As with its earlier incarnation of "creation science," ID has recruited a few scientists to speak on its behalf. It is often difficult for the public at large to understand that this is not a debate of two scientific theories, but of a religious belief versus a scientific theory. The popular media does not help matters much when they attempt to be "balanced" and "pluralistic, " sending in reporters who are more focused on public affairs than science-based journalists, with Cornelia Dean, a science writer for the New York Times among the notable exceptions.

As it stands, the scientific underpinnings of the theory of evolution, rightly named as the central unifiying concept in biology, are complex and cannot be readily explained in the age of soundbites and fast, flashy graphics. If it is true that many Americans cannot provide the definition of a molecule, then the scientific community is in for a real challenge, but it is one which cannot be ignored. It is essential for the scientific community to speak out against ID and in support of evolution. The National Center for Science Education (see my list of links to the right) provides a number of articles and links to prominent scientific organizations which have made public statements regarding ID.

As a practicing scientist and as a parent, I keep an eagle eye on science curriculum although in the school districts which my kids have been and are currently enrolled don't reside in communities which would brook teachings in ID. Besides, my kids are beyond evangelical hope as evidenced by their desire for Flying Spaghetti Monster posters to hang up in their rooms.

Maybe my visceral reaction to ID is bred in my bones from my common ancestry with Uncle Perry. I can only imagine that he would be thrilled by the scientific advancements in evolutionary biology which has allowed us to see our molecular fossil tree. I can only imagine he would be disheartened that the irrational, fearful reaction to evolution continues, and that people still are unable to separate the two magesteria. I can also imagine that he might just look up from his careful studies of Pleistocene fossils and add his voice to the growing chorus of scientists who are finally raising their heads from their lab benches and speaking out against ID, my small voice among them.

Minestrone for the Masses

2005-09-27T11:40:00.000-04:00

What with my little review of my hometown soda fountain below and now this, it would seem that I am at risk for turning the Refuge into a food blog. I assure you that I will not be veering into regular essays on the trappings of banal domesticity. However, I think this is damn fine minestrone. I typically make it during the cooler months of the year, so as a nod to the recent autumnal equinox, I figured I'd toss it out here on the Bushwell blog.

Buon appetito, you bonobos!

Minestrone

Adapted from Food and Wine, vol. 1 (5) Sept. 1978, p. 58.
serves 12 or more

This minestrone soup recipe produces something more akin to a stew rather than a mere soup. It has a rustic, robust yet nourishing and comforting quality to it, and for this reason, I often make this soup as a gift for parents of a new baby, and also enjoy serving it to good friends and family. Thus making this minestrone, albeit involved, is a labor of love.

I have included suggestions for a vegetarian version in the notes following the recipe.

Ingredients:

8 cups chicken stock, either homemade or canned

3-4 beef soup bones (also beef shanks or meaty ribs will work)

4-5 T virgin olive oil

3 medium sized onions, peeled, halved and coarsely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

3 large ribs of celery, chopped

4 carrots, trimmed, peeled, and sliced (fairly thick slices, ~ 1/4 inch or so)

1 large green pepper, seeded, de-ribbed, and coarsely chopped

1-2 tsp salt

10-12 grinds of black pepper (or 1/4 tsp)

large pinch of rosemary, dried or fresh

1 bay leaf

3 zucchini, washed and skin on, trimmed, halved lengthwise and sliced medium-thick

1 cup (or so) fresh mushrooms, sliced

1 cup coarsely chopped parsley (no stems!)

3-4 cups canned white beans, e.g., Progresso cannellini, also called white kidney beans, drained and rinsed.

1 pound sweet Italian sausage links

1 and 1/4 cups (~10 oz) of ditilini or other very small pasta (vermicelli broken into 1 inch lengths works, too but I prefer ditilini)

8 fresh plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and corasely chopped (alternatively a 16 oz can of well drained Progresso plum/Italian tomatoes will work, but fresh is superior)

3 cups or so fresh spinach leaves, washed, de-stemmed, and coarsely shredded.

"Gremolatta" garnish(optional but really tasty)

Reserved (see directions) 1/2 cup of parsley

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

Toast for accompaniment

loaf of Italian bread

high quality virgin or extra virgin olive oil

Parmesan cheese

Directions:

In medium sized uncovered saucepan or stockpot, brown beef bones over medium heat in 1T olive oil. Add chicken stock and simmer with beef for 15 minutes to intensify flavor. Do this while preparing vegetables. Stock may sit covered while the vegetables are sauteed.

In second large stockpot, add 4 T olive oil and heat at medium flame or setting until olive oil is hot and shimmering (not smoking!) then add onions and garlic. Saute until translucent while stirring (~3-5 minutes).
Add celery, carrots, and green pepper. Toss to coat vegetables in oil. Add salt, black pepper, rosemary and bay leaf and toss again quickly. Lower heat to a low flame or setting, cover the pot and cook for 5-8 minutes to “sweat” the juices out of the vegetables. At this point, they will lose their rawness but will still be quite firm.

Uncover the pot, raise the heat to medium-high and give the vegetable mixture several quick tosses for a minute or two. Add the sliced zucchini and toss for another minute or two. Add the mushrooms and again, toss for a minute or two.

Add 1/2 cup of the chopped parsley, reserving the other half cup for the garnish. Toss to mix. Pour in the hot enriched stock (remove bones first and reserve for step 6). Add beans. Lower the heat to medium-low or less and simmer the soup, uncovered fro 10 minutes or until vegetables are just tender. Remove bay leaf and adjust seasoning, i.e., add salt (likely not necessary if using canned stock) or more pepper.

Make the optional garnish by combining the 1/2 cup of reserved parsley, the chopped basil and the minced garlic.

The soup can be prepared ahead to this point. For same day preparation, simply turn off heat and cover it, and take a break. If you’re doing this a day ahead, refrigerate the soup. Also, if preparing the soup a day ahead, the sausage preparation “de-meating” of the beef bones, tomato and spinach and garnish preparation may be done on the day or serving. Allow an hour or so to reheat soup and continue with the preparations.

Boil sausage links in 2-3 quarts of water for 15-20 minutes. If soup was refrigerated, bring back to a low boil/simmer. Meanwhile, remove the meat from the reserved beef bones. Trim fat. Add to soup. When sausage is done, microwave the links on microwave safe dish covered with a paper towel (also cover top of sausages with paper towel or waxed paper to prevent splattering) at high power for one minute, then turn sausages over and microwave one minute or so more. Allow to cool, cut in half lengthwise, then slice medium-thick on the bias.

Raise heat to medium and bring soup to somewhat more than a simmer, i.e., moderate boil.. Add ditilini or vermicelli to hot simmering soup and cook about 2-3 minutes. Then add tomatoes, spinach and sausage until heated through, another 5 minutes or so. Turn the heat off or down to a bare minimum simmer before serving.

Just before serving soup, prepare accompanying toast by slicing Italian bread (ciabatta works well) to 1 inch or so thickness. Brush one side with olive oil, then sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese (~2 tsps to 1 T). Toast in toaster oven (or under broiler but keep a sharp eye on the bread since they can burn rapidly) until cheese begins to bubble and turn brown around the edges. If this is too much trouble, good quality sliced and warmed Italian bread is a good accompaniment.

To serve soup, add a generous pinch of the parsley/basil/garlic to each bowl and ladle soup over this. Alternatively, place the garnish in a small bowl on the side with garnish to be added to taste by each individual. Serve with the Parmesan/olive oil toast.

Notes:

This is not a simple quick and easy recipe, but well worth the time and effort. The preparation of all the vegetables consumes some time. I typically have the vegetables for steps 1 through 6 ready before I brown the beef bones and simmer them in the stock. If this is a same day preparation for dinner that evening, I usually start around noon. It takes, including vegetable chopping time, about 2 hours or so to get to step 6. In the event of leftovers (and this does make a wonderful leftover and freezes well) add a bit of water to the soup before reheating.

This recipe can be readily converted to a vegetarian version. Obviously, just omit the meat products and substitute a good quality vegetable stock for the chicken stock. I would also suggest adding a small de-seeded and finely chopped chile pepper along with the green pepper, and adding a teaspoon of fennel seeds along with the rosemary and bay leaf.

A good red Italian wine, e.g. sangiovese, works well with the soup. Addition of antipasti and canolli (I buy these at local Italian markets) turns this into a full-fledged informal dinner party entrée.

A note concerning the piles of bonobo scat (comments) on this blog

2005-09-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

To the primates who stumble into this monkey house:

I see that the Chimp Refuge has attracted shitflies of spam to the piles of bonobo scat. So, I have enabled a word verification feature in the comments field. As always, anyone can enter comments. One needn't register on Blogger.com to heap abuse on me or stroke my already insufferable ego, or otherwise toss up your own anonymous yammerings. However, you will have to type in a word of funky font to do so.

Thanks and please resume your bonobic activities,

Doc Bushwell

A sucker for the Sucker State (and a plug for a friend's business)

2005-09-24T13:35:00.000-04:00

In August, I had the pleasure of returning to my homeland, namely the Land of Lincoln, or as others dub it, the Prairie State. I recall learning as a kid that another nickname for Illinois was the Sucker State. Although my mother offered a throwaway explanation that this had to do with folks sucking on oranges (huh? Most likely she just yanked that out of thin air to ward off my childish queries), it wasn't terribly satisfying. But in this age of instant information, I gleaned this from the Netstate.com site which offers a treasure trove o' trivia when it comes to information on the big fifty:

The Sucker State: There are a few of theories about the origin of this interesting nickname. One has it that the name was the result of a comparison between the large number of miners going to and coming from the Galena Lead Mines in 1822 and the fish. According to Malcolm Townsend, in his U.S.: An Index to the United States of America (1890), "An old miner said to them 'Ye put me in [the] mind of suckers, they do go up the river in the spring spawn, and all return down ag'in in the fall.'"

Malcolm Townsend talks about another possible origin of the nickname. Evidently, the prairies were filled, in many places by crawfish holes. Travelers were able to suck cool pure water from these holes using long, hollow reeds. According to Malcolm Townsend, whenever a traveler would happen upon one of these holes, he would cry out "A sucker, a sucker!"

Yet another theory, offered by former Governor Thomas Ford in A History of Illinois (1854), has it that this nickname referred to the poor folk of southern Illinois that moved into the state to escape the suppression of wealthy landowners in the southern states. According to Ford, sucker was a reference to the sprouts off the main stem and roots of tobacco plants. These suckers will sap nutrients from the main plant and are stripped off by farmers and thrown away. In the same way, according to Ford, "These poor emigrants from the slave States were jeeringly and derisively called "suckers," because there were asserted to be a burthen upon the people of wealth; and when they removed to Illinois they were supposed to have stripped themselves off from the parent stem and gone away to perish like the "sucker" of the tobacco plant. This name was given to the Illinoisans at the Galena mines by the Missourians."

OK, that's more thorough than the sucking on citrus fruit derivation. I tend to think I must have been pestering my mother at the time, and this was as good a means as any to shut me up. Of course, the Sucker State could also relate to the voters of Illinois and the politicians whom they are suckered into electing, with Barack Obama as a welcome exception. The bumbling corruption of Illinois politics was good preparation for living in states who really know what they are doing in terms of political shenanigans, namely Massachusetts and New Jersey.

The purpose of the trips (two successive weekends) was primarily to escort my daughter for an extended visit with her grandmother, she of the sucking oranges explanation. Although my kid is pretty independent, air travel has its vagaries, and my feeling is that my daughter is a little too young for solo sodomization by the airline industry. So that, and some cheap flights from Philly to Midway-Chicago, gave me a good reason to head home with her.

During the first leg of the Illinois sojourn, we attended a family reunion in northwestern Illinois, the stomping grounds of the maternal side of my family. This town has the distinction of being The Hog Capital of the World, or so it designates itself. The high population of hogs in Henry County is celebrated with great jubilation every Labor Day weekend during Hog Days. The festival is replete with many noteworthy events including a 4 mile road race which attracts many local runners (I ran in this, and posted one of my better times as a middle-aged hobbyjogger), a "Hogatta Regatta" (races with remote-controlled model boats, not a crew race), and a beauty pageant. The winners of the pageant were formerly known as the "Pork Princess" or the"Pork Queen" but due to the sensitivities of the corn fed yet svelte contestants, I believe the titles have been changed to the more bland 'Royalty." A true highlight of Hog Days is the featured cuisine, namely barbecued pork sandwiches which are washed down nicely with a cold lemon shake-up.

We arrived at the Hog Capital of the World about three weeks or so before Hog Days, so we missed the Hogtacular Experience and those delicious pork sandwiches. Nonetheless, the family reunion had much to offer. It was great to see my aunts and various cousins, and sample classic Midwestern delicacies such as baked bean casserole, creamed corn casserole, generic canned food casserole and finally, a toxically sweet blueberry cobbler. Not a diet soda was to be found in the cooler, but instead, can after can of cherry cola and Mountain Dew. There was no Budweiser or Old Style buried in the cooler. The park where the reunion was taking place was dry, and with the lingering Presbyterian/Methodist heritage of my family, they aren't a bunch of big drinkers although they have moved well enough beyond prohibitionist Protestant orthodoxy to tipple the occasional glass of wine or beer.

There was nothing high falutin' about the reunion, and the lack of any pretension was exactly the refreshment I needed. I love living on the East Coast, and there are as many salt of the earth types out here as there are in any other region of the USA. I also relish living in college towns because there is a vibrancy about them, and I appreciate the overarching intellectuality which tends to permeate these places. However, there's a flip side to living in communities which harbor academically high octane Ivy League universities, and that is the stifling miasma of elitism and entitlement. Typically, I can hold my own in this kind of environment, but occasionally, it causes me to feel peevish. The cure for this irritability is to go back to my roots in flyover country for a healthy dose of reality and good old Midwestern earnestness.

During my second trip to the Sucker State, this time to retrieve my daughter who was now a bit further downstate than where I had left her the previous weekend, I visited a high school classmate. She left the corporate life in Connecticut to purchase, renovate, and re-open her grandfather's and father's old business which had since passed out of the family's hands. This place was a popular hang out when I was in grade school. It was within easy walking distance from the school so we would wander over for post-class refreshments. The tin ceiling with its elaborate embossed design, the marble topped soda fountain, and the glass enclosed cases for the homemade candy all stick in my memory. My friend and her sister have done a spectacular job with the renovation, retaining those memorable features, and apparently received some financial incentives from the Sucker State since their store is considered part of a downtown revitalization process. Their candy, made in the back of the store, is wonderful, but their milkshakes and malts are thick dairylicious nectar of the gods. They ship their candy in the cooler months, but one must seek out their store and the newly refurbished marble topped soda fountain for the ambosial milkshakes. Here is the link to their business:

Flesor's Candy Kitchen

An aside regarding the hexagonal motif on the Candy Kitchen web site: this reflects the pattern of ceramic tile floor. I note this because a scientist friend to whom I sent the link asked, "Why are they using figures of cyclohexane to advertise their business?" Har.

And speaking of science and what with all my yammerings above about pleasurable foods, excluding the generic canned food casserole, I recently heard a couple of colleagues present an overview of the link between obesity and inflammation. An obese person is in a chronic state of low grade inflammation. Adipose cells themselves release molecules called chemokines (so far, seven of these are overexpressed in adipocytes a.k.a. fat cells), most notably monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1). MCP-1 then recruits macrophages to white adipose tissue (WAT). Macrophages ("white blood cells," an integral part of the immune system) infiltrate WAT and release mediators of inflammation, thus fueling the smoldering inflammatory fire. This is a simple picture of a complex process, but the pro-inflammatory state of obesity appears to be a contributor to insulin resistance and to an array of cardiovascular problems.

Although the obesity-inflammation connection has been studied and out in the scientific literature for a while now, this was the first time I heard it summarized so well. Even though I am far from obese, it was nonetheless alarming, even for a moderately overweight individual, to realize that a 15 to 20 pound excess of flab might just be enticing macrophages to release inflammatory mediators albeit at a perhaps lower level. WAT is not metabolically inert, and in fact, may be regarded as an endocrine organ with effects on both peripheral tissues and the central nervous system. All the more reason to for me keep on perambulatin', and make those pleasurable foods like hometown milkshakes and pork sandwiches occasional treats.

Hurakan or Yahweh?

2005-08-29T14:02:00.000-04:00

As a Midwesterner-by-birth, and Midwesterner-at-heart, tornadoes epitomize the Big, Bad Storm for me. The flat terrain of the region where I grew up afforded excellent views of roiling squall lines as they marched across the prairie. This was exciting, in that negative-ion charged kind of way, but also frightening, because occasionally, the monster thunderstorms would drop a twister from their wall clouds. Although we were driven to our basement twice when I was a kid, whatever tornado passed nearby did no more damage than uprooting a few big maple trees in our yard, ripping some shingles off the house and barn roofs, and flattening the neighbor's silo like an accordion. Still, these storms made an impression on my psyche, and I experience recurring dreams in which I try to make my way to shelter as the storm approaches. In some of these dreams, I am back on the family farm and attempting to round up the passle of semi-feral cats so that I can take them to safety. Maybe that dream imagery was a harbinger of my current duties in my workplace. Curiously, I wake up refreshed after these dreams.

Tornadoes are devastating storms to be sure, and the big ones like the Great Plains twisters cause significant loss of life and property damage. The Xenia (Ohio) tornado and the storm system which spawned it and other funnel clouds are prime examples. Yet, their destructiveness seems more concentrated compared to a powerful hurricane, such as the one which is battering Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as I write this.

Although I'm familiar with tornadoes, and fortunately with passing familiarity since I have not experienced direct hits on my various homes, I encountered a hurricane only once, and I was mightily impressed. Leaving our kids with their maternal grandmother, my husband and I traveled to Chatham, MA over Labor Day weekend, 1996, to attend a wedding and otherwise enjoy the company of a bunch of longtime friends who were re-uniting for the event. Hurricane Eduardo was brewing to the south that weekend, and worked itself up to a Category 4 storm as it approached the Outer Banks of the Carolinas. Then the bugger took a turn and began to make a beeline toward New England. Its track took dead aim at Chatham which is nestled in the elbow of Cape Cod.

Our friends' wedding, both ceremony and reception, took place at a nice resort on the coast. During the ceremony, the outriders of Eduardo streaked across the sky. As the reception was well underway, we periodically dropped by the resort's bar with its television and well informed bartenders to get updates on the storm. The guests became increasingly nervous. Many opted to leave early and drive back to Boston. We were staying in a glass walled suite of a little bed and breakfast. I was torn between getting stuck in that fishbowl (our proprietor assured us of shelter in her house) or mired in traffic on Rt. 6. My husband, a.k.a. "The Weather Yenta," checked out the radar and predicted the cooler waters offshore would weaken the storm, and that the jet stream would push the eye eastward. So we decided to stay put, and with that decision, proceeded to imbibe plenty of good red wine. Later, we joined a number of guests from the wedding at a local restaurant for a New England version of a hurricane party.

Sure enough, Eduardo diminished to barely a category 1, and its eye passed closer to Nantucket, thus reinforcing my husband's insufferable amateur meterological predilections. However, if the winds and rain which hit late that night and the next morning were characteristic of a category 1 storm, or even a strong tropical depression, I cannot fathom the experience of hurricanes in the category 3 through 5 range. Tornadoes arrive and are gone in a flash. Wimpy Eduardo was bad enough for a much longer period. The prospect of howling winds of 100+ mph for hours is horrific. Fortunately, hurricanes of that magnitude are rare along the northern Atlantic seaboard and in New England although historically, some big ones have hit these regions, as noted in the National Hurricane Center's historical archives.

In a fit of perimenopausal insomnia, I woke up around two o' clock this morning. I turned on the television and began channel flipping in an effort to find something mindnumbing enough to lull me back to sleep. Electronic Ambien, if you will. Out of curiosity, I checked out the talking heads on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. The televised news coverage of the hurricane struck me as ghoulish. Maybe it was just me, but I discerned a perverse "Oh, wow! Maybe New Orleans will be sunk!" tone in the reports. It was like the yammering newscasters wanted this monsterfucker of a storm to smack into the Big Easy and drown it in a toxic flood despite protestations, e.g. "terrible tragedy," to the contrary. More egregious was the MSNBC newscaster's repeated use of "storm of biblical proportions." My insomnia addled brain was taken aback: "Biblical proportions? What the fuck?" I recall he tossed in a few "apocalyptic's," too. Maybe I am oversensitized by the depressing developments pertaining to "intelligent design" as a proposed part of "education" in this country, and for hate-spurting commentary like that of Pat Robertson. Well, OK, so maybe assassinations of particularly noxious heads of state and icky dictators might be a more cost-effective means of meddling in foreign nations' affairs, but did Robertson actually have to articulate this for crapssake? In any case, I immediately read sub-text into the phrase, "storm of biblical proportions" which was bearing down on New Orleans. Yeah, buddy! Let that big mothafukkah of a storm hit those libertines and faggots and drown 'em all. That's what Jesus wants! And you'll turn into a pillar of salt if you stop on I-10 to turn around and look.

Eventually, I felt drowsiness encroaching on my ill-defined outrage , so I shut off the tube, and went to sleep. This morning, I checked out the MSNBC web site, and there it was: "storm of biblical proportions." A couple of hours later, the phrase was absent from the web site. I can only hope there were objections raised to it. Why inject religion into this, and on an MSNBC broadcast/web site to boot? If this were some Christian cable network, it would be less grating, although I wouldn't be watching such. But the use of the phrase solidifies my paranoia regarding the collusion of the American Idiot mainstream media (thank you, Billie Joe Armstrong) and "certain special interest groups."

The word "hurricane" derives from Hurakan, the Mayan creation god who also presided over thunderstorms, hurricanes, and whirlwinds. It is understandable that ancient, pre-technological mankind interpreted natural disasters as anger of the gods. Unfortunately, it would appear that there are those of the 21st century who do as well.

Poison Pill

2005-08-22T21:04:00.000-04:00

Big Pharma stocks plopped into the dumper today like so many fecal pellets, thanks to the Vioxx debacle. Back in the day, that is, when I was a young sprout fresh out of my post-doc, Merck was the place to be if pharmaceutical research was your gig. How the mighty "America's Most Admired Company" has fallen. Roy Vagelos must be spinning in his...no wait, Dr. Vagelos is still alive. Well, he must be quite pained by what happened to his former company.

The idea behind the specific cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors was a good one: target the enzyme suspected as being a prime mediator of inflammation, and leave its close relative, COX-1, which helps the stomach/gut lining stay happy and healthy, alone. In theory, this specific inhibition would spare the gut from ulceration and other nasty stuff which the less specific non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen can cause in some patients. There was a lot of nice biochemistry done on the COX-2 and COX-1 enzymes and their inhibitors. This research gave me that "ain't it cool?" tingly feeling, and also inspired me to think along the same mechanistic lines for a viral enzyme which was my research raison d’être for a few years. Several companies raced to the clinic with their COX-2 inhibitors, among them the aforementioned Merck.

New drugs are subjected to extensive clinical trials. Among the Vioxx trials were the VIGOR and APPROVe Phase III clinical studies. During the VIGOR clinical trial, in which Vioxx was compared to naproxen ("Alleve" is a brand of this OTC drug), there were indications that there was a four fold higher risk of heart attacks for the Vioxx treated patients enrolled in this clinical trial (0.4% of the Vioxx-treated vs 0.1% of the naproxen treated patients). Merck development scientists/clinicians believed that this was because of naproxen's cardioprotective effects although allegedly, there were rumblings via internal e-mails that Vioxx might be the cause. However, the APPROVe trial, which was designed to see if Vioxx would help prevent development of colon cancer, showed an increased risk of atherothrombotic ("clotting") events against control groups who were not taking naproxen. At that point, Merck could not dismiss the findings, and had to pull the drug.

The big question is...did Merck withhold negative results during the clinical trials? If this is the case, and there are indications that it is, Merck is going to have to pay the Litigation Piper. Withholding or suppressing clinical trial results is reprehensible. Gilmartin's (the former CEO) resignation speaks volumes.

Equally reprehensible were Merck's marketing tactics. Vioxx was originally targetted for a smaller group of patients, but was pushed aggressively by Merck for a much larger demographic. This demographic included patients with compromised cardiovascular health which made them more suseptible to the mechanism based toxicity of Vioxx. Also, keep in mind that not every physician is as skilled in pharmacology as he or she should be when whipping out those Rx pads. Some MD's may rely solely on pharma sales reps' information when they should also be keeping up with the medical literature. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Another problem was Merck's push to the FDA for "fast-tracking" Vioxx. This process is descibed more fully here. Its original intent was to move ahead new drugs directed toward unmet medical needs and for catasrophic diseases like AIDS or cancer. Whether Vioxx qualifies for this status is questionable to my bench monkey mind. Certainly, there were other drugs which, although not ideal, were taking care of inflammatory disease. Plus, diseases like osteoarthritis are chronic, and patients will be taking the drug for a long period of time, years perhaps, and safety is of the utmost concern. It would seem careful, extensive clinical trials to ensure safety would be in order, not fast tracking as appropriate for HIV and HCV antivirals or oncologics where adverse effects are more acceptable risks.

Hopefully, the whole fiasco will effect a sea change in pharma and in the FDA. In my opinion, one of the worst developments for the pharma industry was the event of direct to consumer (DTC) advertising for drugs. DTC marketing for Rx drugs is bad for the patient, bad for the physician and bad for the pharma company. There is a movement away from this. One big pharma has voluntarily imposed a 1 year moratorium on DTC ads for a year after a new drug is launched. Maybe others will follow suit.

Here is a truism: all drugs are poison - whether they help you or kill you is a matter of dosage. No drug is absolutely safe. The consumer must be well informed when it comes to medication, but given the level of scientific illiteracy in this country, I'm not optimistic that will ever happen. Elimination of DTC ads, more independent reviews of clinical trials (the FDA is a staggeringly bloated bureaucracy, so independent reviews will need to be conducted outside the agency), and better education of prescribing physicians (and not solely by pharma sales reps) would be positive steps.

That said, tort law reform is well overdue. There are drugs taken off the market which some patients desperately need. For the few percent, and tragically, this may be a fatal few percent, who experience adverse effects, there are many, the majority even, who do not, and for whom the drug is valuable. Then comes the hard decision: is the drug taken off the market because of exhaustive litigation? There are fewer and fewer obstetricians and anesthesiologists practicing due to soaring malpractice premiums which are driven by litigation.

Christ on celecoxib, I have a headache just thinking about all this. I think I'll go take...a pill.

___________________________________________
Addendum

Some answers to questions from "not up on this:"

What is Aleve? a NSAID?

Yes, Aleve is naproxen sodium, a non-steroidal antiinflammatory drug. It is a non-specific inhibitor of both cyclooxygenases, COX-1 and COX-2. These enzymes are both needed to make prostaglandins, an important class of biomolecules involved in all sorts of signaling processes in the body.

Does taking Advil also protect the heart for someone who can stomach it?

Where does Celebrex fit in this? Isn't it a NSAID too? Why or how is it diffrent than say Advil?

I'm going to address these questions by providing a bit of background on the balance of prostaglandins which activate platelets, and thus can cause them to stick together (clotting), and those which have antiplatelet properties (anti-clotting). For a straightforward explanation of platelets and what they do, check out this little article.

The prostaglandin which signals platelets to clump up and form a clot (this appropriately occurs when you get wounded) is called thromboxane A2 (TxA2). Platelets carry the COX-1 isoform which makes TxA2. Now COX-2, the other cyclooxygenase isoform, was long believed to be only upregulated as a response to biomolecules which induce inflammation. This inducible COX-2 was thought to be present only in cells which mediate inflammation, and thus was part of the impetus to seek COX-2 inhibitors to treat inflammatory diseases. However, it turns out that COX-2 is present in many tissues, including the vascular endothelium (this is the inner layer of cells lining blood vessels and has direct contact with blood). One of its key products is prostacyclin, or PGI2. PGI2 acts to prevent platelet aggregation. So, TxA2 and PGI2 levels are normally balanced to keep platelets in homeostasis. This is illustrated in the figure above in the upper left hand corner, e.g. the "normal" balance.

Any drug which inhibits cyclooxygenase can alter this balance. Low dose aspirin selectively inhibits COX-1 which decreases the level of the pro-clotting TxA2, and thus achieves an antithrombotic (anticlotting) effect (upper right hand panel; low levels of TxA2 = antithrombotic). Thus, low dose aspirin is recommended to prevent clotting. Now NSAIDs like naproxen and ibuprofen inhibit both COX-1 and COX-2. Thus, the levels of proclotting TxA2 and and the anticlotting/antithrombotic PGI2 are decreased. Because naproxen and ibuprofen also reduce PGI2, their cardioprotective effect may not be as good as that of low dose aspirin. The selective COX-2 inhibitors like Vioxx and Celebrex (also a selective COX-2 inhibitor like Vioxx; Bextra is another drug in this class) only decrease the "good" anticlotting PGI2 while leaving TxA2 levels alone. This selects for a pro-thrombotic/proclotting state (bottom right panel), and thus may increase the risk of heart attacks due to blood clots.

Bottom line: low dose aspirin appears to be the best bet for decreasing the risk of inappropriate clot formation, and Advil and Aleve are less so. It's likely that the risk for clot formation is a class effect in the COX-2 inhibitors. However, other vascular modulators may contribute to increased risk of thrombosis, and underlying disease in the patients being treated with these drugs must be considered, e.g., someone with distinct cardiovascular risk factors is probably not a good candidate to take this specific class of drugs.

Figure taken from F. Krotz et al. (2005) "Selective COX-2 Inihibitors and Risk of Myocardial Infarction," Journal of Vascular Research, 42: 312-324.
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Doc Bushwell's Fun With Science Glossary
Isoform: Multiple molecular forms of a given protein (or iso enzymes or isozymes if they are enzymes). Isoforms can usually be separated by electrophoresis or some other separation technique. They exist because of multiple gene loci or multiple alleles (also called allelomorphs / allelozymes or allozymes) or subunit interaction or secondary changes - such as post-translational modification. Definition courtesy of Glossary of Terms Used in Molecular Genetics.

post-translational modification. After a protein has been synthesized via the process of translation, e.g. DNA => RNA is transcription then RNA => protein is translation, other enzymes can come along and add embellishments to the protein. These may include addition of sugar moieties (glycosylation) or phosphate groups (phosphorylation) among others. Definition courtesy of what resides in Doc Bushwell's memory banks.

Pink and blue matter

2005-08-09T20:27:00.000-04:00

So my elder kid is off in Boston for summer school at the World's Greatest University. Don't be impressed. If a high school student has a B average, seems motivated, and the parents are willing to fork over tuition, the W.G.U, more appropriately known as the World's Greediest University, is quite happy to take him or her in like Flint.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, my son traveled by train to visit dear old Mumsy and Pops. On the day of his return trip, I knew we were cutting it close when I decided to offer a lunchtime sacrifice of animal flesh to the patriotic altar of the Weber grill. I figured if my kid and spouse left a half hour before the departure time, all would be well since the Amtrak site said the train was running 6 minutes late. They took off. Not long after his father delivered him at the station, I received a call from my son, who said he didn't have much time to talk since the battery was low on his cell phone. He was unable to find the notice for his train on either the monitor or the board. I advised him to go talk to the ticket agent, and then...the connection cut out. I hoped for the best, and over the course of the evening, I tracked the train which he allegedly boarded. The arrival time for the train on which he might, or might not, have traveled, came and went, followed shortly by a call from a concerned adult in Cambridge who was awaiting his return. I assumed he caught the next train, which was running an hour late. In spite of this rational assumption, I nonetheless was freaking out with motherly worry: "Why didn't he use a pay phone and call me!!??" Finally, a good three hours after he was supposed to arrive in Boston, he called and all was well. Nonetheless, winding down from worried mother mode was slow, so I didn't go to sleep until the wee hours of the morning, and was thus semi-wiped out for the duration of the next day.

Lesson learned by the kid: make sure the cell phone is charged before a trip and have some spare change in the old pocket.

Now my otherwise intelligent son's lack of attention to contigency plans or other means of ordered thinking simply may be due to adolescence, but his thought process also hints of the differential functioning of the male and female mind. Although my friend, Pete, may be better known in the Boston region for his athletic prowess (placed 23rd in the U.S. Men's Olympic Marathon Trials five years ago), he is an accomplished fellow in other areas, including his vocation which is scientifically oriented. He also has a propensity for wry observations of people and life. When comparing the ways in which men and women organize their memories, Pete said something to this effect: women's minds are like Rolodexes with everything in their place which can be quickly accessed, whereas men's minds are like an Etch-a-Sketch: capable of holding a great deal of detail but prone to erasure.

I have often quoted Pete's droll observation because I think it is true in that men and women process information differently. What I find fascinating is that although men and women take divergent paths at problem solving, they arrive at the same conclusions whether by Rolodex or Etch-a-Sketch. Having survived the past couple of decades or so, I recall the rampant feminist-inspired orthodoxy which held that most male and female human behaviors, aside from those directed toward mating, were culturally ingrained. However, as a budding scientist in the 70's, I had my doubts as to the politically correct sociological canon. This was solidified when I became a card-carrying scientist (I keep the card in my wallet) and became involved in the study of steroid biochemistry. I knew that the gonads and adrenals contained the requisite steroidogenic enzymes to produce hormones like our old friends, the progestins, estrogens, androgens, and corticoids, but I learned that the brain also has a set of of steroidogenic enzymes which synthesize steroids in situ. These steroids exert either non-genomic effects or genomic effects in the brain.

Neuroactive steroids, also called neurosteroids, act at the non-genomic level, meaning that they do not influence gene transcription. Their roles in the CNS are not completely elucidated but a signficant amount of research has ensued since their discovery in 1981. A good, albeit fairly technical, review article entitled "Neurosteroids and Psychiatric Disorders" by C.E. Marx describes the various neurosteroids, their interactions with receptors in the brain, and how they may modulate neurotransmitter function. Neurosteroids distinguish themselves from their gonadal and adrenal brethren by interaction with a different class of receptors called ligand-gated ion channels. Here's a neat little animation representing such a receptor: Ion channel at work! In this movie, the grey blob which attaches itself to the receptor (from the right) is the ligand. When it binds, the channel opens up and lets ions pass through to the other side of the cell. This causes a response, namely altering the excitability of the nerve cells. Thus neurosteroids which bind to these channels can exert effects in a timeframe of seconds.

The brain also contains another class of proteins to which steroids bind called nuclear hormone receptors (NHR). When steroids bind to their NHR partners, they act at the genomic level, meaning that they can "turn on" gene expression. In a simple model, a steroid, like testosterone or estrone, diffuses into the cell, then binds to the NHR. The activated NHR then relocates, or translocates as cell biologists like to say, to the cell's nucleus where it, along with other protein partners, sits down on a segment of DNA and turns on a gene which then goes on to express a particular protein. Here's a cartoon of the androgen receptor and its protein partners which illustrates how this funcitons. Note that it's quite different than the ion channel example above. In contrast to the rapid effects of the ligand-gated ion channels, NHR-induced changes at the genomic level take place over a much longer period of time, e.g. hours to days.

With the knowledge that steroids bind to these two major receptor classes in the brain, and exert a wide range of effects, it comes as no surprise that men's and women's brains appear to have different neural architecture and processing. These observations have been greatly aided by the advent of more precise imaging techniques. PET scans and MRI have allowed neuroscientists to gaze into the living human brain. Jill Goldstein, a principal investigator at the WGU's Medical School, used imaging technology to study brain function in schizophrenics and healthy patients. Her pioneering work revealed sex-based differences in the etiology of the disease as well as differences in control male and female subjects. Among Goldstein et al.'s findings for healthy male and female brains were the following:

The frontal cortex, where many higher cognitive functions occur, is bulkier in women than in men.

The limbic cortex, involved with emotional response, is bigger in women's brains.

The parietal cortex, which is associated with spatial perception, is larger in men's brains.

The amygdala, that part of the brain which is associated with heightened emotional arousal, is larger in the male brain.

The larger versus smaller comparisons are proportional, i.e., the size of a sub-structure is considered in comparison to overall volume of each brain. Typically, the proportionate size of a part of the brain is thought to correspond to its importance to the organism. Primates are visual animals, so the brain sub-structures associated with vision tend to be larger. Olfactory-oriented animals, like dogs or rats for example, have larger sub-structures associated with the sense of smell. Thus, the differences in the sizes of human male and female brain sub-structures suggests that hormones may play a role in shaping these areas. It is believed that hormones in the pre-natal environment assist in differentiation of the fetal brain. In laboratory animals, those areas with high densities of steroid NHR's during brain development correspond to the same regions which diverge in men's and women's brains. It is likely that the differences in the male and female brain are intrinsic, and present from birth.

This is only the tip of the neural iceberg with regard to the complexity of research directed at the human male and female brain function. Since this is a blog, and I tend to be too wordy as it is, I'm not going to attempt to write a scholarly review. I have a copy of an accessible-to-the-layman article from the May 2005 issue of Scientific American entitled "His Brain, Her Brain" by Larry Cahill. If you're interested in obtaining this for further reading, please let me know.

As with any research directed toward human biology and behavior, misinterpretation abounds. Enter Lawrence Summers, the current president of the W.G.U.

Summers is a controversial president. He caused a ruckus in those hallowed ivy halls by his notion that the undergrad curriculum should be overhauled to reflect modern times, supporting the expansion of the Harvard campus across the Charles into Boston, and twitting Cornel West so much that West was driven to join the faculty in Einsteinville. The first two of these are commendable; the latter one, well, I have yet to see West "keepin' it real," as a putative intellectual role model for the minority students in the Einsteinville regional public school system. That's no surprise since he surely didn't hang out in the 'hood in the far more diverse Cambridge Public Schools, and evidently preferred to associate with Ivory Tower types or Famous People of Color. But I digress...

Larry Summers truly stirred the pot early this year at a conference on women and minorities in science and engineering. When contemplating the small number of women at the elite levels of the field, he speculated that perhaps the reason women are underrepresented is that their innate ability in math and science is less than that of men. As one might imagine, the shit hit the fan upon those remarks, which Summers flailingly noted were supposed to be controversial. Here is the transcript of Larry Summer's fateful speech. As predictable as the screams of outrage were, so were the "Oh, this is an overreaction" responses. Interestingly, none of the "overreaction" responses came from women scientists and engineers.

The chilly atmosphere for women scientists, particularly at the senior level, is well recognized within the W.G.U. Although I am not a liberty to name them, I personally know two women scientists on the faculty who have attested this to me, and they were among a significant group to protest Summer's remarks. So, it wasn't just the women's studies humanities types who were outraged. It hit much closer to home.

The much beleaguered Larry Summers was correct in his observation that there are differences in men's and women's brains, but he really needed to do his homework on this complex research area before that speech. Women's and men's scores for tests of general intelligence are equivalent. Now test scores in math suggest that guys have a bit of an edge, and with men's ability to tap into spatial reasoning, something that really boosts mathematical understanding, maybe there's something to this. However, there are women and girls who possess this enhanced spatial reasoning component. Me , for example. I can mentally twirl three dimensional objects around in my little noggin, which has certainly helped me envision molecules in three dimensions. Who knows? Maybe my parietal lobe was slightly "androgenized" when pre-I was in utero. Also, there's evidence that women and men arrive at equivalent mathematical solutions using different neural networks.

Even if men have a slight edge in mathematics, which might barely register as statistically significant, environment acts as a huge multiplier of very small differences, i.e., boys are encouraged to excel at math whereas girls are not, or were not. I say "were" because the younger generation of women increasingly embraces math, and consequently, any gap between boys and girls in standardized math scores is rapidly closing. Anecdotally, my son's AP calculus class was divided almost equally between young men and women, something one did not see when I was a teenager.

As different as men and women are morphologically and behaviorally, it's little wonder that our respective brain structures show variation. Heck, I regard men as a separate species. I have worked in a predominantly male field for years now (there are more young women in the discipline these days, but as one rises throught the ranks, you see fewer old broads), and by and large, I truly appreciate the male mind although at times I find you guys baffling. Rolodex or Etch-a-Sketch...viva la difference!

Big Tick and Ugly Deer

2005-07-29T02:36:00.000-04:00

Although I still pine for my former home in the Boston area, I am consoled by the relative proximity of The City, the Big Apple, the place where, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, that is to say, New York City. A visit to NYC satisfies me when I'm jonesing for a fix of the urban. It's an easy day trip by train from the central part of the Gaaah-dun State, the neighboring butt of many New Yorkers' jokes and overall contempt, but the source of many home-grown, Jersey Fresh comedians' shtick. I guess you have to possess a good sense of humor to live in Hoboken.

The NJ Transit, PATH and Amtrak trains rumble through some outstanding examples of urban blight. The branch of the NJ Transit system with which I am most familiar makes its way through what epitomized the Garden State in my Midwestern-imprinted mind for a long time: abandoned warehouses, empty, cratered parking lots, grim housing projects, and contaminated marshlands which harbor schools of three-eyed fish. However, the Garden State is appropriately named if one ventures to my little corner of the state. Here are bucolic stretches of farmlands and horsey estates, older villages, pockets of McMansions hemmed in by zoning laws, and woods full of tall trees characteristic of the mid-Atlantic hardwood forest.

The township where I live cherishes and protects its green space, and my immediate neighborhood is surrounded by woods. A preserve and an arboretum are within a mile of my digs. Looking out from my deck, I face a copse of trees whose lacework of leaves, bark and underbrush screen the sight of the other units in the small development. Sweet gums, tulip trees, and maples line the woods' edge. I especially enjoy these surroundings during my early morning perambulations. Currently, these bouts of low key exercise are composed of a lot of walking interspersed with fits of jogging, the intervals of which increase weekly as my fitness slowly but surely returns. Wood thrushes call out in flute-like tones as the sky brightens, and occasionally, screech owls will hoot as they settle down for the day. I've spotted wild turkeys out foraging for their breakfast.

It's tempting to set forth and blaze a trail in these woods, rather than confining myself to asphalt and grass. Back in the Boston area, there are 50 miles of well tended trails around Lincoln and Concord. These trails meander through woods and meadows in conservation land and private property where owners have granted permission for the trails' establishment and maintenance. These were created through the auspices of the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, and are popular among local long distance runners, who are appreciative of such forgiving surfaces.

Here in Einsteinville, the Autumn Hill Reservation and Herrontown Woods have trails, but they are not as well maintained as the Lincoln, MA system. There is an extensive trail system around the Institute for Advanced Study, but I have yet to check this out. Hopefully, they are more akin to the Lincoln system. Stay tuned.

It's frustrating to see these trail-free expanses of woods along my route, especially since the sparse undergrowth beneath the dense tree canopy would make it appear that creating trails wouldn't be so difficult. However, property owners around here are a possessive bunch as evidenced by the blaring yellow or orange flyers which announce "Posted: Private Property. No trespassing!" tacked to the tree trunks of the along the perimeter of their land. Thus potential lowlife bushwackers are warned, and it seems unlikely that the owners would be willing to let runners and hikers careen through their property. It is not only the gaudy flyers which give me pause when I consider spontaneous trailblazing, but also the sinister devil deer which lurk in the forest.

Yes, I fear the Bambis of Central Jersey. Well, maybe I loathe them. Or fear and loathe them. I admit that I like them as a tenderloin draped in a cognac-based sauce, centered on a fine plate, and with a glass of the old kroovy-like Cab. Sauv. on the side or ground up into "deer balls" then simmered in a ketchup and Welch's Concord grape jelly concoction in a slow cooker. This is a Wisconsin delicacy if ever there was one, and is best washed down with Augsburger Dark.

With the encroachment of humans into their territory, and with no four legged predators to keep their numbers in check, the deer have made hay with their population in Einsteinville, which now stands in the 1100-1300 range in an area estimated to adequately support only 300 of their number. The swollen herd has caused deer-meets-car incidents to increase. Back in Cambridge, I avoided clueless Ivied-out students who wandered out on the streets as I wended my way around Harvard Square. Here I needn't drive in the Ivy students' habitat, but the roads in the township and surrounding countryside take me smack dab into deer territory. My side-of-the-road rapid scanning perception clicks into high paranoid gear as I drive along the Jersey backroads. In a year plus of living here, I've had some close calls, that deer-in-the-headlights scenario, but thankfully, the beasts kept their burning demon eyes at the side of the road instead of directly in front of my car's path. Still, the presence of visible deer in my peripheral vision causes me to flinch and slow down defensively in anticipation of the animal flinging itself in front of my Mini-Cooper.

The deer-car crashes are bad enough, but there is something more insidious which the devil deer bring to the community, and far less obvious, until one starts gathering epidemiological anecdotes from folks in the borough and the township. My elder kid brought home a tidbit of such information gleaned in his high school biology class. His teacher asked the students who among them had contracted Lyme disease, and to raise their hands if they had been infected. My son, still less than 18 months removed from an urban, deerless setting, was one of two out of twenty students in the class who had not contracted the disease. Although we moved from an area of the country where Lyme disease is endemic, deer don't roam freely through the streets of Cambridge, so that part of Middlesex County, MA, is considered low risk for Lyme disease. The wildlife population of the People's Republic boasts skunks, rats, and the odd drunk or junkie here and there, but no Ixodes scapularis lurk on these mammals. Maybe other virulent organisms stake their claim in Cambridge, for example, Larry Summers, but no deer ticks abound along Massachusetts Avenue. I was incredulous at my son's news.

I'm not the only one who has noted the drawbacks of the backyard deer and their eight-legged pals. One of the side effects of living in towns which host Ivy League universities is the presence of Famous People. Yes, there are a number of Famous People who live around here. One of them is Paul Krugman, who is a professor in the Dept. of Economics at Princeton, and a columnist for the New York Times. I like Krugman's writings. He's intelligent as hell, and has a sharp, sometimes biting, sense of humor. As a Famous Person here in Einsteinville, he has something to say about deer:

Oh, Deer

SYNOPSIS: When you're stuck on the computer all day the pesky deer can be your only friends

A troop of about a dozen deer just tromped through the snow in our backyard - a fairly common sight in Princeton (lately I've been seeing this group daily) but still a welcome break when you're slaving away at the computer.

But I'm tormented. I know rationally that deer are a huge nuisance, and even a menace: most of our neighbors have had Lyme disease. I support culling; I think it's irresponsible to feed them.

But they're so adorable ...

Originally published on the Official Paul Krugman Site, 2.18.03 from the Unofficial Paul Krugman website.

Professor Krugman speaks to me. Yes, I admit it. I think the damned things are adorable, too, and really quite graceful except perhaps when launched upon the hood of a vehicle. The critters seem well adapted to their suburban/ex-urban environment, and with no cougars, wolves or even Princeton Tigers to feast upon them, their numbers do not abate. The township's approach to this has been to contract with a culling service. These guys are sharp shooters with guns and with bows as their weapons. By taking on a quasi-lupine role, they attempt to reduce the deer population.

Not surprisingly, the deer herd culling service contract caused a hue and cry among Einsteinville's precious set, including Famous People, who raised objections to the deer herd culling endeavor. One of these Famous People is the accomplished writer, Joyce Carol Oates. Now I recognize that Ms. Oates is a literary lioness of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the interest of Educating Myself in contemporary American literature, I made valiant attempts to enjoy her work, but personal tastes led me to other novelists, a couple of whom are noted in my profile. Ms. Kingsolver and Ms. Divakaruni both appear to be hale and hearty women, but for all her formidable intellectualism, Ms. Oates' physical appearance, when extrapolated to an animal totem, recalls nothing other than...a deer. I am not the only one who discerns a connection between the great authoress and this critter.

Oates writes of her studio (from Joyce Carol Oates: In the studio, the American Poetry Review, Jul/Aug 2003)

It's a room much longer than it is wide, extending from the courtyard of our partly glass-walled house in suburban/rural Hopewell Township, New Jersey (approximately three miles from the high-decibel intensity of Princeton) into an area of pine trees, holly bushes and Korean dogwood through which deer, singly, or does-with-fawns, or small herds, are always drifting. Like the rest of the house my study has a good deal of glass: my immediate study area, where my desk is located, is brightly lighted during the day by seven windows and a skylight.

With reference to Oates' essay from which the quote above was taken, Melissa Pritchard, who counts Oates as friend, mentor and confidante, confirms the deer metaphor:

I think of Joyce Carol Oates as a deer, fleet and superbly alert yet always slightly startled by the world, slightly wary, lovely as only swiftness of movement and movement's fluid grace can be, lovely without guile or selfish intent Â– and her writing, both act and art, like running, too, in running's constant motion, with its eternal impulse to grace of movement and gift of expression, from this, the embodiment of eloquence comes. I am struck by quality of permeability in her as well, absorbing everything, censoring nothing, responding sensitively, empathetically, bravely, and again, if I return to the image of the deer, that agile, surefooted creature arrowing between heaven and earth, aware on all possible levels, subearthly, earthly, celestially, cellularly. She is courageous, unafraid of truths brutal or brilliant, horrifying or divine. And within this deerlike grace unafraid, resides an untrammeled spirit, eternally questing, upheld by the muscled spring of the leg, the pumping of the arms, the breath that sustains, in attunement, in harmony with, the tensile, mercurial mind.

Clearly, Oates identifies with the deer. This is further reinforced by her belief that Princeton exudes "high-decibel intensity." She must indeed be an exquisitely sensitive creature if she describes this sleepy little borough like that. Frankly, given how habituated her Odocoilean pals are to the town, I'm surprised we don't find them queueing up at Thomas Sweet for ice cream or the MacCarter Theatre for a play . The beasts seem far better habituated to the high-decibel life than does the doe-eyed novelist.

Ms. Oates, along with others, argue that the hunters might bag a university student jogging along the trails around the Institute for Advanced Study, and that the community is not given ample warning when the shootings are to take place. My own observation of prominently displayed signs posted around the local preservations, advising that shooters would be out and about during certain months, serves as ample warning to me to take my perambulations to the canal path during said time. Another argument is that stray bullets can travel up to a mile. One would hope that the term "sharpshooter" implies someone who's a better shot than Bernie with a few Budweisers in his belly, but yeah, I can see that as a cause for concern. Net and bolt traps garnered protest among various animal rights activists, including another Famous Person, ethicist and university professor (also Oates' friend), Peter Singer, who said he would prefer a "more humane" method of reducing the herd.

Even though I am callous former agrarian, I would give a nod to the Famous People's objections were it not for Oates' publicized protest against township laws which forbid feeding the damn deer. Yes, humans feeding the deer. It may be a "right" to do what you will in your own domain, but cripes, why act as enablers to the deer's burgeoning population? I can only imagine how the City of Cambridge would react if Alan Dershowitz decided to set out food for the local alley rats.

As Krugman notes, actively aiding and abetting the pesky, albeit adorable, deer is objectionable. Fortunately, the New Jersey courts upheld the ban. Oates' protest to the matter certainly implies that she was feeding the animals. To me, her argument against culling loses some steam since she's interfering with the animals' natural lifestyle by setting out deer chow for them: crumbs for a starving man and all that.

Given the aforementioned Peter Singer's philosophical bent on animal rights, it's perfectly consistent that he would take umbrage at the deer being shot or trapped with nets then "bolted." Captive bolt guns, the same devices employed to kill animals in slaughterhouses, are similarly used to kill the deer after capture. Singer, also on the Princeton faculty, is famous, and infamous, for his statement: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." He argues against speciesism with a convincingly pragmatic tone, that is, the life of a human is not necessarily more important than that of say, a mouse, but considers the value of each life on an individual basis. Check out the FAQ section on his web site. His answers to the questions posited are indeed thought-provoking.

Although my views on animal rights certainly are skewed toward species bias, with humans coming out on top, I am simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by Professor Singer's philosophical writings. High on the repulsion list is his review of Dutch biologist Midas Dekker's book, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality. Singer writes that bestiality ought to be illegal only because the act has potential to cause pain and suffering to the animal. For example, porking a chicken invariably results in the hen's death due to internal injury. However, Singer implies in the review that if no harm is done, then why not engage in bestiality? After all, we are as much animals as any other, and to cast horror and shame on the practice of fucking non-human mammals, as long as one doesn't hurt them, is rank speciesism. Again, my human bias runs rampant here. There are many objections to this practice, not the least of which is that a less-than-articulate animal, like a cow or a sheep, cannot give consent to an eager and tumescent farm lad. Zoonoses and the "Ewwwww!" factor also spring to mind. But, hey, there's something for everyone. Why else deck out cows in lingerie?

Yes, I am a speciesist. As a human animal evolved to be an opportunistic ominvore, I eat meat, and I wear leather as the occasion dictates, typically just in the guise of shoes with no leather S&M wear in my closet, since I am a dominatrix only in spirit, and a timid one at that. I don't fuck with non-human animals. I respect others' dietary choices with regard to lacto-ovo-vegetarianism or veganism if presented with reasons of health, dislike of the taste and texture of flesh, or the desire to leave smaller environmental footprint as in the case of veganism. But the rationale of "not eating anything with a face" leaves me cold. That, dear reader, is pure and flagrant kingdomism, i.e. Kingdom Animalia, Kingdom Plantae. As a former student of plant physiology, I can tell you that plants and animals, although very different in many respects, share common features at the molecular level. Plants, albeit non-sentient as far as we know, cf. Day of the Triffids, are as vibrantly alive as any animal. To be truly consistent with my views of the common themes of life at the molecular level, and to avoid kingdomism, I'd have to become a Jain. That's too rigorous a lifestyle for me to adopt, so I may as well eat animal flesh, which has on occasion included venison.

It's less the deer versus vehicle issue that troubles me, statisically speaking, than the high rate of Lyme disease infection in the Garden State. The bug which causes the infection is Borrelia burgdorferi. It's a wiley bacterium since it must evade the host defense systems in order to colonize mammalian tissues. It does this by shifting around its protein expression by differential regulation of its genetic complement. Crafty little bugger. Here's an excellent summary of Borrelia, the tick vector and lifecycle, symptoms of the disease, and much more in the online Textbook of Bacteriology written by Kenneth Todar, Dept. of Bacteriology, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Quick intervention with doxycycline, the current antibiotic of choice, is in order after a suspected tick bite. The trouble is, in the absence of the characteristic "bull's eye" rash, which only occurs in 60-80% of the bite victims, the symptoms of early stage infection mimic a lot of other infections. Joint pain and neurological symptoms occur in late stage infection, and this is where things can be potentially nasty. It's an unsettling disease. A look at the Center for Disease Control's map of Lyme incidence by county shows a lot of deep blue in this region. In the interest of full public health disclosure, the incidences of gonorrhea and clamydia infections are higher in Mercer County, but Lyme is third. Mammals other than deer, like the white footed mouse, and birds carry the tick, but these hoofed critters are prime suspects since adult ticks preferentially feed upon white tailed deer. Quoted from K. Todar's article:

A relationship has been observed between the abundance of deer and the abundance of deer ticks in some parts United States. Reducing and managing deer populations in geographic areas where Lyme disease occurs may reduce tick abundance.

In the interest of "fairness," here is the Mercer County Deer Alliance web site which has not been updated for two years. The deer advocates support non-lethal means of reducing the population, and in fact, the culling contractor instituted a pilot program in which the does are brought down with tranquilizer guns, then tagged with a device which releases a deer contraceptive. So the deer can boink all they wish, and not reproduce. This is a pretty nifty idea, but it is more costly than lethal culling. The other tactic is to control the ticks themselves. These ticks like brush, so removing such is an option, but undoubtedly, those who wish to leave the Bambis be will also strenuously object to pesticides liberally applied to the woods.

When I was a kid, I remember how sad I was when Bambi's mother was killed by the hunter in the Disney movie. Oh, fawns, cartoon characters or breathing, long limbed beasties, seemed so cute then. Now, when I spot a real-life doe, buck or fawn, I not only see a graceful creature, but a walking bundle of zoonosis. And I would cheer raucously should I again view Bambi's mother's cinematic demise. Goddamn devil deer.

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Doc Bushwell's Let's Have Fun with Science Glossary:

zoonosis, pl.zoonoses: a disease in animals which can be transmitted to humans.

A placeholder

2005-07-12T20:22:00.000-04:00

I'm somewhat wired this evening with a number of thoughts pinging around my cerebral cortex, not unlike a BB let loose in a corrugated steel shed. A friend was just diagnosed with glioblastoma, possibly stage II, and is scheduled for surgery in just a few hours. He has been otherwise quite fit and healthy, but noticed some odd cognitive disjoints. A scan in the MRI revealed the brain tumor. Scary stuff. The prognosis for gliomas isn't exactly rosy.

In the 18th or even 19th century, by all rights I would be a wizened old grandmother or even long dead, but in the early 21st century, I mentally view myself as not terribly different in many ways than "me" in my late 20s/early 30s. It is thus a rude shock to find that it is more difficult to regain fitness than it was 20, or even 10 years ago, that the results of my blood tests are not as pristine and perfect as they once were, and I am sometimes taken aback when I see a dowdy matron, crowned aplenty with salt n' pepper curls, in the mirror's reflection. But being an old broad has its perks, no doubt about that. Still, the news of my friend gives me pause as mortality taps me on the shoulder during my merry march toward cronehood.

The placeholder, just to whet the appetites of the two or three individuals who might drop by the chimp refuge, is for the following which will be blogged in the near future:

Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Krugman, Odocoileus virginiana, Ixodes scapularis and a garden trowel. Circle the four which belong together.

Pink and blue matter: some bonobic observations of men's and women's brains.

I want to be Steve

2005-07-06T20:18:00.000-04:00

This essay, "How Quantum Physics Can Teach Biologists About Evolution,"appeared in this morning's New York Times, and reminded me of this nifty endeavor, Project Steve, described as:

...the National Center for Science Education's (NCSE) "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from Darwinism."

Only about 1% of scientists are named Steve, or variants thereof like Stephen (Project Steve was named such in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould) yet thousands of "Steves" have signed on in support of eaching evolution in public schools. [Note added in proof; OK, not "thousands" but around 500 or so "Steves" have signed on; but "thousands" has a nice ring to it.] Unfortunately, I am neither a Stephanie nor a Stefania, so I am not qualified to become a NCSE Steve but I can still get the T-shirt!

One of the FAQ's of the Project Steve site discusses the noticeable lack of biologists on the creationists' lists. Of the creationist oriented scientists I have encountered over the years, or perhaps I should further qualify, those scientists who discounted evolution and adhered to the "creation in 6 days" myth, none were biologists or biochemists. Typically they were chemists of the more physical type or "computer scientists" although I think that "scientist" is a loose term for these techocratically hued IT nerds. One guy, a chemist, had written in his various organic chem. texts, "This book belongs to God," and various bellicose verses taken from the Old Testament. This fellow was a real lord-love-a-duck fundie curiosity.

Check out the National Center for Science Education. I'll link it to the Refuge. It's an in-depth resource for defense of teaching evolution in public schools.

The essay in the NYT makes a good point. Most of us practicing scientists have our heads buried in our real work at the bench, and thus the alarm calls warning us of creationist encroachment in our schools are muffled. The concept of theory is often misconstrued by the layman, thus adding niggling doubt to those observing the debate. But the facts remain, evolution is consistent with science, and there are no data supporting "intelligent design" or a whip it up in 6 days Earth. We need to raise our heads from the bench, or onerous midyear reviews if we are scientific management, a.k.a. feline guidance assistants, and speak in one voice. "Evolution! It's not just a theory. It's good science!"

On a related note, my younger kid, a performing-arts-drama-queen type, kicked butt on the science section of her standardized state middle school exam. Well, yes, it was just a standardized test, but as I have told her many times, regardless of what one chooses as a vocation, a solid understanding of science and math serves one well in this world,and that includes coursework on evolution.

Big Fat Golden Goose Eggs (also to be found on Cognitive Emesis)

2005-07-03T13:46:00.000-04:00

Several thunderstorms of Midwestern caliber recently passed through the Land o' Ten Thousand Superfund sites, a.k.a. The Gaaah-dun State, which assured that the Saturday morning air, though laden with dripping moisture, was a darned site more bearable than the cloacal conditions in benighted regions of South Florida, at least as described by the Chief Cognitive Emetic. I hauled my jiggling ass out for an early perambulation with the extra motivation of having obtained a good glimpse of my posterior, ballooning toward barnlike proportions, in the expansive mirrors of a friend's bathroom during a recent visit post-vino.

I know what I need to do to reverse the trend toward buttocks of agricultural outbuilding size. An EFD (Every Fucking Day) plan of lurching bipedal locomotion, and just saying "no" to gorfy junk scattered about at departmental meetings as well as too copious amounts of good food, seem to be the ticket toward decreased adiposity, but only with consistency of these practices over a goodly amount of time. The requirement for this endeavor got me to thinking about the Fattists, oft the brunt of flowery and simultaneously scatological verbosity on this very site, and their rampant braying that the obesity epidemic is a false alarm created by collusion of the medical community and greedy Big Pharma. These ruminations, as inspired by the Campos camp, causes me to come clean and confess the reality of my situation:

I am not the amorphously shaped, menopausal drudge as described above. In truth, I am a reprehensibly wealthy research minion of the pharmaceutical industry. I giggle with glee, digging deep with the heels of my Manolo Blahniks, as I tread up the backs of blue-haired Medicare ladies whilst clambering to my late model Porsche Carrera. There, I rip open my tidy white lab coat, revealing my bosom straining the weft of a snug Juicy T-shirt, legs akimbo beneath my little Prada skirt. I then pull my mane of hair loose from its sensible ponytail. My mouth forms a little pout as I run over various patients and Canadian-bound consumers in search of the bargain basement prescription, on my route to my pied-a-terre in Tribeca. This makes for an ever so bumpy ride after all. I yearn to upgrade my other residence, an all too modest 6 bedroom cottage tucked away in the Hamptons, but that will only come if I, in league with my sinister colleagues, bring forth multiple medications for the obese or even barely overweight. Thus, I am motivated, no, make that hungry to discover the Magic Fat pill which will do a damn slight bit of good, cause multitudes of side effects, but will put reams and reams of dead Presidents in my Gucci pocketbook.

Well, perhaps I have slightly exaggerated my appearance and my financial situation. "Dowdy matron" suits me just fine, and as for my salary, I can't complain but in this affluent neck of the woods, I ain't among the rich. But unfortunately, I know all too well that the industry is pursuing drugs for obesity, but not for the reasons that the Fattists claim. Big Pharma has not concocted the obesity epidemic with their partners in crime, the medical establishment, but rather, in its typical voracious fashion, seized upon the trend toward decreased physical activity and burgeoning gullets as a large (pun intended) market opportunity.

Although we bench monkeys would like to think that good science drives discovery research, and in fact this is not an uncommon event, the pecuniary creatures in market analysis have in the past decade or more, increasingly worked their wiles earlier and earlier in the stages in the drug discovery process. "Good science" is not always first and foremost in marketing's greedy mindset. Consequently, many pharma companies have research efforts directed toward obesity. Woe to those who do not. Other than the niche-directed biotech boutiques, to remain "competitive," obesity targets must be on the research docket {Aside: "targets" meaning discreet biochemical entities such as enzymes and receptors which have potential to be affected pharmacologically.} Now, in terms of pure science, I have to admit there's a certain degree of "Ah ha!" coolness to some of the targets related to obesity. The "Ah ha!" factor is an especially seductive influence in a scientist's work. Hours of tedium are whittled away in experiments for that moment of discovery. I suspect that little spurts of dopamine are released at those moments, tickling the reward centers of the brain, and thereby making the process addictive. For example, interesting enzymes involved with fatty acid metabolism and certain GPCRs, which appear to regulate satiety, represent potential, and challenging, targets. {Second aside: GPCRs = G-protein coupled receptors; remember this, my comrades in emesis, since I may very well use this term again in subsequent verbal vomitus.} But those of us grizzled old veterans, as tempted by the "Ah ha!" factor as we might be, know the pitfalls of bringing forward drugs for chronic indications, and certainly obesity falls into the latter category.

For drugs that treat chronic conditions, for example, high blood pressure or arthritis, the safety of the meds is of great concern. The patient takes these drugs daily for months or years, more likely, so adverse side effects are not particularly tolerable, in contrast to a cancer patient who bears the brunt of cytotoxic chemicals coursing through his or her system in the effort to drive back tumor growth although a thought-trend in oncology is to approach cancer as a chronic state. Unfortunately, with the rush to market certain cox-2 inhibitors, safety and proper direction of the drug toward its intended patient group, went out the window. The Vioxx debacle, in my opinion, was a wake-up call to both the pharma industry and the FDA, but that's the subject for another screed. Drugs cost a fucktacular amount of money to bring to market, and the proper trials to determine efficacy and long term safety of a potential obesity drug (let's not forget Fen-phen; I'm sure Wyeth would like to forget it) will add significantly to this cost. All in the name of what? A 10-20% weight loss versus placebo?

One Friday evening at the local watering hole, a group of us shlub scientists were lamenting the research efforts directed toward obesity. One of the sr. chemists working on an obesity target, himself a moderately portly fellow who was scarfing down pizza and drinking beer like the rest of us, opined that his intellectual blood, sweat and tears were being spilled on a hypothetical pill which a 300 pound person would swallow, only to lose a walloping ten pounds as a result, then sue the manufacturer when his or her stools take on the ballistic strength of an AK-47 or when once pliant skin becomes an infected, arid wasteland due to some pharmacologically induced fuckup in fat metabolism. All of us gathered around that pub table recognized that yes, there exists a population of the morbidly obese who quite likely have some genetic variant predisposing them to the condition, but this population of folks does not exactly represent a billion dollar market. To a person, we investigators each believed that diet and exercise are first line treatments for most garden-variety obesity.

So to the Fattists who believe that the pharma industry wants you to be fat, well, to an extent you are right since your obesity shines like a golden egg to the devils in pharma marketing. However, let me assure you, many of us who actually try to discover drugs wish you'd just walk, bike, swim or run more, and eat less, so we can direct our attention and our "Ah ha!" cravings toward drugs to treat cancer, infectious disease, immune disorders, neurological disease, and such.

Sailing in uncharted waters (from June 26, 2005)

2005-07-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

Although I am nearly braindead this evening as the result of a long drive from Cambridge MA to Princeton NJ, I am compelled to plaster my first ever yammerings in my brand new little piece of blogdom.

Blogs cause shivers to trill and skitter along my spine like nervous, neural-sheathed shrews. Blogs are inherently so public, and although I consider myself a gregarious sort, my tendency is to nurture and to guard my own, and others', privacy. But such scruples be damned! It's the Golden Age of Self-Absorption so...

Avast, ye scum! Monsters be here!