Barack Obama has, for all intents and purposes, clinched the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Hillary will jocky for position in before the upcoming convention. Much speculation has been thrown about as to whether or not she’ll be a vice presidential nominee. I am dubious of that. Dubious that Obama will risk bringing her perceived “baggage” on board, dubious that she would accept. I think it would be a hell of a slate, though, one that has only a single precedent (yes, there is a precedent) but with the roles reversed.

In 1872, Victoria Woodhull—a feminist, a suffragist, a newspaper publisher, a Wall Street player, a spiritualist, and free lover—declared her candidacy for president of the United States. It was a serious bid, make no mistake, and one which virtually split the Women’s Suffrage movement in two. Those who ought to have been her natural allies—Susan B. Anthony chief among them—couldn’t stand her. They attempted to bar her from conventions, they denounced her in their own press, they threw obstructions in her path. Why? She was…immodest.

But the Women’s Suffrage movement was torn. They needed Woodhull because she understood how to work the system. She was popular, with men and women. She understood how money worked. She brought a lot with her, so they were forced to include her in their January 1872 convention as a principle speaker and as one of the “leaders” of the Equal Rights Movement. As Anthony told the convention “Now bless your soulds she was not dragged to the front. She came to Washington from Wall Street with powerful argument and with lots of cash behind her, and I bet you cash is a big thing with Congress.”

Woodhull was one of six women who appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on January 12. Their purpose was to push forward a Declaratory Act which would grant Woman Suffrage by vote of congress. They had twenty thousand signatures. That evening, suffragist and spiritualist Ada Ballou put Woodhull’s name forward as a candidate for president, leading the Equal Rights Party. In May, the Party was officially chartered and Woodhull named as its candidate at Apollo Hall in New York City.

It was a progressive party by any stretch of the imagination. Twenty-three planks formed the Party platform—covering education, suffrage, social and industrial reforms, several of which resonate down to the present: graduated direct taxation, regulation of monopolies, labor laws, and a merit-based civil service to replace cronyism.

Because the Suffrage Movement has always been joined at the hip to Abolition (among other movements), Victoria Woodhull chose Frederick Douglass to be her running mate.

However, it was a publicity choice, one unfortunately not backed by the candidate in question. Douglass did not accept. He was committed to U.S. Grant and the Republicans and had been present at none of the Equal Rights Party events. Woodhull chose to ignore this little problem and ran with Douglass the presumed vice presidential candidate.

By June the Party was deep in debt with donors bailing out. By September it was over.

The Declaratory Act to grant suffrage failed. Anthony and Stanton blamed Woodhull and her “precipitate” bid for the presidency. Not to mention that Woodhull’s “free love” and spiritualist philosophies were unwelcome by the serious-minded and abstemious main line suffragists, who saw sex and booze as the twin shackles binding women to a second-class status (the Temperance Movement, founded the following year, joined suffrage and temperance and led ultimately not only to the 19th Amendment granting women the vote in 1921 but also to the 18th Amendment—Prohibition—which is the only amendment to the Constitution ever to be repealed).

Short-lived as it was, the Woodhull-Douglass ticket has become part of our national folklore, more for what it represented than for anything that it actually accomplished. But a closer look shows that the ideas fueling this ill-fated bid were as progressive as anything one might imagine today. It was, after all, the Equal Rights Party—and Victoria Woodhull was deadly earnest about that. She sought to unchain everyone from the bonds of the past—materially and spiritually.

I have noted in the last several months the word “Progressive” coming to the fore, replacing Liberal. McCain uses Liberal—expectedly, as a cudgel—but Obama, when he says anything like that at all, says Progressive. For a long time, the Right has held a rhetorical high ground and dominated the discourse by controlling the language. It has taken the Left all this time to realize that people react in often Pavlovian thoughtlessness to language and labels and to start using some of those strategies. Most people on the Left tend to believe people are not so simplistic, but time and again we are shown that our expectations of other peoples’ intellectual capactiy are in error. That and the fact that neuro-linguistics tells us this response is anything but simple.

Bush has damaged the country. Badly. To some extent, this is because he has blindly followed his Party line—something conservatives are supposed to be above. Mostly, this is due to his shortcomings as a leader. He doesn’t Get It.

And of course he was handed a raw deal with 9/11. Make no mistake, any president would have had problems dealing with that. We were unfortunate enough to have a mediocre intellect in the White House at the time, but the fall out from that was daunting.

McCain is not a Bush clone—not on any kind of one-to-one basis. But he is bound to a Party that has evolved into what it is under the influence of ideological positions which are untenable. To become the Republican Party of, say, Eisenhower, they must divest themselves of a cumbersome element of what they perceive as their power base. They cannot do this if they win.

In order for the Democrats to become a new kind of Party, one capable of dealing with the coming 90 years, they must have a focus. Progressivism may be it. Different from doctrinaire Liberalism, Progressivism is potentially a causal-based, reality-centered mind-set that could be flexible enough to utilize liberalism and conservatism as need be, something doctrinaire Liberalism could never do.

Obama has rhetorically held himself to be above the usual fray. The minefield of race was a proving ground for him. It is possible that he may be the locus for a resurgent progressivism which could free us from the left-overs of both the Cold War and the Fundamentalist crusades and catalyze the creation of a new American ethos.

But he’d better be damned careful who he picks as his running mate and how he manages his cabinet. Because that’s where the difference will be made.

Would Hillary Clinton be a good choice? She understands the nature of national politics in a way that maybe Obama, in his youth, does not. She could be a powerful resource—Obama’s version of LBJ. But she could also be a weight, binding him to 20th Century Politics As Usual.

Stay tuned.

For three decades I’ve puzzled about the idea held by Christian Fundamentalists that the Bible must be proven absolutely and literally true in every way, or else Christianity is false. The latter clause being accepted as silly, therefore most science of the 19th and 20th century is patently on the wrong course.

I think I finally get it: It isn’t so much about the whole Bible, as about a literal Adam and Eve and serpent and fruit. If one even momentarily entertains the idea that this particular tiny part of the Bible is allegorical, then where is the original sin? If A particular orphan named Adam didn’t bite of a particular forbidden fruit, then the underlying momentary lapse of ancestral judgment for which Christians claim God holds all living people responsible didn’t happen. Therefore Jesus died in vain, if one belongs to a congregation for whom Original Sin is The Big One.

Therefore, one must reject the geology, astronomy, and functional biology as was available to 19th century discoverers like Darwin. One must also reject all the subsequent discoveries that frustratingly and consistently reiterate his conclusions, like the periodic table, plate tectonics, cell biology, quantum theory, biochemistry, radiological dating, germ theory, cosmology, dark matter/string theory, genetics, chaos theory, and so on. If it can cast doubt on the timing or existence of biblical original sin, it must be wrong.

It makes perfect sense, in a narrow world view sort of way.

I stumbled onto this fellow as a respondent on other blogs or the subject in yet others. Herman Cummings is an active proponent of Biblical truth over Scientific Inquiry. Why don’t I just say “Creationism”? Because Herman argues against them, as well. He has nothing good to say about “Intelligent Design”.

He is heir to a higher truth. He knows “The Observations of Moses” that are revealed in a book called “Moses Didn’t Write About Creation!” that was written by … Herman Cummings. In every blog response I can find by him, he cites this book as the final authority. He won’t deign to respond to any direct arguments unless it is predicated by an affidavit of of having read his book.

Here are some Cummings Quotes:

• My name is Herman Cummings. I am the foremost terrestrial authority on the book of Genesis.
• I am the only person I know or ever heard of presently on this Earth that is qualified to teach Biblical Creation. Many school districts are grappling with the doctrine of “Intelligent Design”. Unfortunately, “ID” is an inept and shallow doctrine that merely says that life on Earth is too complex to have developed by chance.
• I’ve already written the governor and members of the education committees of every state legislature. I have hope that officials will introduce legislation that will free the public schools to teach all viable theories of origins, and explanations of the ancient history of life on Earth, removing the threat of (atheist) lawsuits.

Why is this guy different than the folks at the Discovery Institute? Because he takes as his authoritative text, the root of all his arguments, a book that he himself wrote. At least the DI ID’ers claim to have external evidence, although they never produce any when asked. Also, Herman is a columnist for theConservativeVoice.com, home of other luminaries such as Ann Coulter.

Another name to watch out for.

In my daily scan of Creationism related news, I found this historical analysis of presidential faux pas. Author Wm. C. Shelton explains in detail how Dubya’s lowest presidential approval rating in history is not his reason for rating our present leader the “Worst Ever”:

The measure of a bad presidency, for me, is neither popularity nor lack of accomplishment. It is lasting damage to the Republic and the wellbeing of its citizens. Such a judgment requires assessment of past failed presidencies and their impact on our shared history. By that measure, I judge the younger Bush to be the worst U.S. president ever.

The article proceeds to compare and contrast various “bad” policies and decisions of various presidents in light of their eventual historical significance.

So refresh your knowledge of G.W.B’s less luminary predecessors and read this article to get an idea of how history may regard leadership in our current era.

I was meandering in cyberspace, and stumbled onto this column by Australian Michael Ruse: The struggle between evolution and creation: an American problem. This appeals to me after all the news about Australian Ken Ham and his Creation Museum here in the U.S. The muse of Mr. Ruse is that the U.S. is vocally and publicly debating the science of evolution versus competing Biblical philosophies, and their roles in education and culture

But his main point is that this is just a symptom. Ever since the Scopes trial, the vocal Biblical Literalism Fundamentalist minority has been fighting for its life. Part of their claim is that evolution is not as values-neutral as proponents like to claim. Ruse agrees. Evolution theory was bolstered by Darwin’s books with his additions to the theory. But it might have stayed a quiet and intellectual revelation, had it not been for Darwin’s contemporary, scientific and social activist Thomas Huxley.

Huxley, who was known in the popular press as “Pope” Huxley, preached evolution-as- Christianity-alternative non-stop at working men’s clubs, from the podia in presidential addresses, and in debates with clerics, notably Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. Huxley, who invented for himself the religious label of “agnostic”, even aided the founding of the new cathedrals of evolution, stuffed as they were with displays of dinosaurs newly discovered in the American west. Except that these halls of worship were better known as museums of natural history.

Ruse follows the history forward to show why he considers this to be An American Problem. The rest of the world’s Christians are content to accept science for what it can provide, and leave to the Bible issues outside of what can be examined. But America was settled in part by religious extremists, exiled from England and other countries for their radical beliefs. This culture is diluted, but still present and very vocal. The founding fathers were well aware of this element, and set the nation up to minimize the damage that they can cause, while allowing them to be themselves.

As the orders of magnitude of scientific understanding kept expanding beyond the narrow scale of the Biblical universe, the Biblical Literalists had to draw a line. It was too late to hold at a geocentric universe, and much too late for a flat Earth. Sin and demonic possession as the causes of disease also gave way to germ theory without much of a fight. But spontaneous divine creation of man is now the sticking point. Any evidence or theory that contradicts direct and intentional divine creation is labeled unholy.

In America the battle between secular government and a theocracy is being fought in the guise of Evolution versus Intelligent Design (or whatever name Scientific Creationism is using). From the vantage of Australia, it is an interesting skirmish. Here in the Bible Belt, it scares me.

We have a nice brewery run by the Schlafly family in our town. A town already renowned for beer. But a relative by marriage is more famous than the beer because of her stance against women’s rights and against progress through knowledge. Yes, Phyllis Schlafly is in the local news with a new controversy. In brief, this Washington University Alumna has been offered an honorary degree, and the faculty is in an uproar.

Why? After all, my own commencement speaker (honoree of the year) at that institution was Bob Hope. He claimed to be the most degreed high school dropout in the world at that time. The link above goes to the article containing the full text of a scathing letter by the faculty about the choice of Schlafly, specifically from the Law School. The flap is because the faculty thinks that honoring an outspoken anti-intellectual with another degree would demean an institution of learning. At least Bob Hope says silly things on purpose.

Our own Erich had put a response up there, but I found the post it by browsing news involving Creationism, another educational priority of Ms. Schlafly. Quoth he:

The problem is that if Ms. Schlafly completely had her way, core values of true academics, including skepticism and tolerance, would be extinguished. Under those conditions, Washington University would cease to exist.

I’ve been following the reviews of the Ben Stein “Expelled” movie since it was first shown. Many of them properly criticize it for its many inherent cinematic flaws. Others angrily take it to task for its clear violations of sense or sensibility. There is also ExpelledExposed.com, the not-mentioning of which I get chided for every time I post about this movie.

Then there are some who applaud it for “speaking the truth” and “opening conversations”. On my second post about this movie, I asked people to send me links to any non-negative review coming from sources outside of the Discovery Institute (Answers in Genesis, EvolutionNews.org, etc). I suspect that there is now an effort afoot to produce as many positive reviews as there are negative ones, in order to keep things “fair and balanced” online.

After the initial spate of bad reviews by reputable critics, various Christian columnists have been lauding it for exposing the religious suppression of the “Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design” and especially the efforts of reviewers (and scientists, and “W” appointed conservative judges) to associate this “scientific theory” with the openly religious (and mostly equivalent) ideas of Creationism. Bad intellectuals, bad experts.

But, what is this Scientific Theory? Well, an idea has to have 3 elements to qualify as a scientific theory :

1. Explain all currently and previously observed facts in the category of interest in terms of natural laws.
2. Describe what facts, if discovered, would prove it false.
3. Make predictions about future (as yet undiscovered) measurements or discoveries, and suggest how these might be found.

As near as I can tell the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design misses on all three counts. (more…)

Yall might could be tiring of my babbling on about Bible study in science classes. But I shall continue. According to this article, Louisiana has, and Florida still may pass amendments to their education codes to give free reign to teachers who choose to use texts other than (and conflicting with) science books to teach biology in science classes. Although these remarkably similar bills don’t actually mention the Bible, Creationism, nor their apparent origin from the Discovery Institute, their intent is clear.

I’ve been following this issue for a while (here’s one of my earlier posts), and continue to find it disturbing.

The main argument they make is that nothing is “proven” in science. Dedicated and well educated scholars have been trying diligently for over 200 years to disprove evolution. Yes, the battle predates the birth of Chas. Darwin! So far, no luck. Every piece of evidence and each new tool reinforces this theory. But with shrewd political action, the anti-science crowd could win enough popular support to hide the actual science from American kids. Theocracy, here we come!

If Pope Urban VIII (nee Cardinal Mafeo Barberini) had the political clout of American Fundamentalists, the Copernican/Galilean theory of heliocentrism might still be challenged in schools.

In a Reuters article, Peru is claiming that

Yale University researchers took more than 40,000 artifacts from the Incan citadel of Machu Picchu in the early 1900s, or 10 times the original estimate, the state news agency reported on Sunday.

That’s quite a load of artifacts, far more than the 5,000 Yale once claimed that it had “borrowed.” You can read about that controversy here. Back in 1911, a history lecturer at Yale, Hiram Bingham, was credited with “discovering” Machu Picchu even thought it was clear that others had visited the site prior to Bingham. Apparently Bingham and his fellow explorers brought back far more than originally reported.

This article about the artifact dispute brought back wonderful memories. I had the opportunity to visit Machu Picchu in December, 1998. A friend and I first traveled to Cuzco, an incredible city–300,000 people living 11,800 feet above sea level. Cuzco is also the site of exquisite stone work, and you’ll see it everywhere. In fact, we checked into a hotel where the owner asked us if we wanted an “Inca room” or a regular room (”Inca, o no Inca?). We weren’t certain what it meant to have an “Inca room,” but we ended up paying an extra bit of money. Here’s what we got: one entire wall of our large room consisted of ancient Incan stonework. The hotel had been built around an ancient Incan structure. In Cuzco, you could see stonework consisting of massive stones fitting together absolutely perfectly. You couldn’t help but reach out and touch the stones and wonder how they did it.

I’ll never forget a concert we attended in Cuzco. A man from Italy had fallen in love with Cuzco and bought a concert hall. We were invited to attend for free because we had just met another Italian man who had met the concert hall owner. Everyone was family. We conversed (in Spanish) with dozens of people, all of them so incredibly patient with our slow Spanish.

We had somewhat acclimated to the thin air by having stayed for several days in Quito Ecuador (elevation 9,350 feet). From Cuzco, we travelled to Aguas Calientes), a small town at the base of Machu Picchu.

As you might have read, Machu Picchu is, indeed, a magical place. I’ve never heard of anyone who made the long journey there who was disappointed. I’ve heard, though, that tourist traffic has now grown so large that the site is endangered. During my trip, my companion and I spent one night at a hotel adjacent to Machu Picchu itself (at 7,900 feet above sea level). Our thought was that we wanted to be there as the sun set over this magic place. Later that night, I watched as swarms of bats flew over the site. My companion went to bed early and elected to wake up at 4:30 am to see the sunbeams land on an ancient stone, the marking of the equinox. I’ve sometimes been berated for sleeping, but watching the bats flit about over Machu Picchu in the dark (there were many hundreds of them) was an exalting experience.

Here are a couple of photos I took back in 1998. Mostly, the weather was cloudy and misty. For 30 minutes, though the sun came out, allowing me to see Machu Picchu lit up (click on the photo to see the details).

Although the sunlit Machu Picchu was the most startling version, it was the misty-twilight version that was my favorite, because it invoked meaning-of-life considerations.  Here’s an overlook I photographed in that more typical “mood.”

Below, I’m posting a shot of some of the incredible stonework you can see at the site:

Even though the path to Machu Picchu was not difficult, I felt like it was a substantial endeavor to get there. We took public transportation all the way. As you can see, I thought I was Indiana Jones. Unlike the previous explorers, I didn’t remove anything from this sacred site.

There are many places along our trip where we needed to speak Spanish to be understood. I had studied Spanish in high school and college, and was thrilled to make use of it. After two weeks traveling, I even started to have a few dreams in (halting) Spanish.

I would love to return to Peru. There are lots of stories I could tell about Peru and Machu Picchu (and Ecuador), but I’ll simply suggest that the people, the history and the architecture were all big parts of the trip, the only negative being our time spent in congested and polluted Lima.

This incredible video was posted on Huffpo.    In the video, President Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (who was appearing on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos) repeatedly confused Nepal and Tibet.   Watching this clip, I wonder whether Stephanopoulos caught the problem.   Apparently not, so shame on both of them. 

Ignorance of the real world is the hallmark of the Bush Administration.  Nepal? Tibel? Iran?  Iraq? Whatever.  You know, those foreign countries.  

Here’s something else that got lost in the post.  Hadley is arguing that the Bush Administration is going to Beijing because it’s important to keep an open dialogue with a country with which the U.S. has heated differences.  Gee, talk with the “bad” guys to maintain a relationship in order to better work things out?   That sounds a lot like something Barack Obama said prior to getting roundly criticized by the Bush Administration.  

In 1964, when a living bristlecone pine tree in California was determined to be almost 5,000 years old, it gave Bible literalists a big scare.  After all, literalists (young earthers) believe that the earth is only about 6,000 years old.  Was that bristlecone pine tree around for the “big flood?”   Not quite: young earth adherents argue that that 5,000 year old tree must have been planted right after the waters receded.  Maybe Noah himself came to California to plant it.

But now there’s a newly discovered tree that is even older than the bristlecone pine:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world’s oldest living trees.

The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden.

Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making it the world’s oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.

I’m trying to phrase this carefully, now: 

This newly discovered living tree must have been planted prior to the creation of the universe! 

I don’t quite know how this tree could have been floating around in space prior to the creation of the universe, because there wasn’t even any empty space “back then.”  I wonder if it was ever watered prior to the creation of the universe . . .  If that ancient tree that was the only thing in the universe fell over, would anyone hear it fall? Did God have a treehouse in that tree? If the tree was the only thing in the universe, how would it know which way to grow up?  So many questions. 

This unfortunate discovery of a very very old tree now forces our hands: It’s time to revise the Bible to indicate that the universe is more than 8,000 years old.  That will fix things as long as we don’t discover any 9,000 year old trees and as long as we ignore all of the  scientifically established methods for showing that the earth is actually billions of years old.

[Here is an explanation of why the young earth folks are absolutely wrong when they attack the validity of Carbon-14 dating and here's an extensive list of reputable articles on radiometric dating]

I read quite a few textbook quotes from this report and I must agree:  they are shockingly inaccurate.  This book repeatedly pushes the conservative line, even when the facts don’t support it–just like the Bush Administration.   The existence of this high school textbook is yet more evidence that we are living in a post-fact era. 

Here’s the press release from CFI:

The Center for Inquiry (CFI), an international think tank promoting science and secularism, released a 25-page report today detailing what it calls “egregious errors” sufficient enough to warrant “immediate correction,” in a widely used civics textbook found in many secondary schools around the country, including advanced placement courses. CFI believes that the textbook American Government: Institutions and Policies, 10th edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) contains inaccurate and misleading statements, in particular in its analysis of global warming and certain constitutional law issues. In response, CFI’s legal experts have analyzed the textbook and prepared a critique that sets forth recommended changes. 

Derek Araujo, a lawyer and executive director for CFI’s New York office, spearheaded the textbook review project. Araujo stated that he was “surprised and dismayed that a textbook used in advanced placement courses would contain clearly erroneous statements about significant issues, such as global warming and school prayer.”

I was reading this ZDNet blog about the Browser becoming the new Desktop, and one question came to mind. What happened to the promise of inter-operable parts of your computer environment?

About 15 years back, when computers were going to create the paperless office, all of the operating system and desktop teams were promising this glowing future when you could mix and match components seamlessly. You can have one spell checker, one email program, one internet interface, one text editor, one math interface (as for spreadsheet formulas), and so on. But they didn’t have to be from the same source! WordPerfect would work with 1-2-3 would work with Usenet (email), and their respective parts could be called up by your schedule program. This didn’t come to be.

Now, for example, you have one spell checker for each brand of each component. Microsoft did follow the Lotus model, and integrated text, spreadsheets, and email so that they share a spell checker. But there is no way to use the Microsoft spell checker from (for example) your web design program (unless you do buy it from MS). Nor can you use it from your browser, even if you are still shackled to IE. Sure, FireFox comes with spell checking, but you have to train it for your special needs from scratch.

It would be nice if I only had to remember one set of special formula commands that do the same things in several different programs, too.

But sadly, this promise faded away, possibly buried under the tons of paper records that office computers now generate for (as near as I can tell) strictly CYA reasons.

I have just finished reading Neil Shubin’s new book: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008). Shubin is one of those writers who writes to you as though he is speaking to you.  He manages to keep his sentences short yet friendly while he takes you on a mind-blowing journey from single-celled organisms up to his detailed explorations of human animals. Shubin is Provost of the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as a professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago.

The audience that really needs to read Shubin’s book will actively avoid reading it, of course.  Just think of the frustration that creationists already have with their idea that evolution teaches that “humans descended from monkeys.”  I hear this wrongheaded claim repeatedly and it gets quite tedious explaining to the creationist ignoramuses that no modern believer in evolution believes that humans descended from “monkeys.”  The irony of correcting creationists, however, is that the story of how the Earth’s creatures evolved is actually incredibly more interesting and challenging than the creationist’s simplistic version of evolution.  For instance, human ancestors include not only primates; they include fish too, and reptiles and worms.  Neil Shubin takes us on this awesome journey and there is much to share along the way.

I previously wrote about one of the incredible transitional forms discussed by Shubin, tiktaalik, an ancient fish that crawled out of the water. Tiktaalik, however, is only one of numerous transitional forms.  In fact, if there is a deep lesson to learn from reading Your Inner Fish, it is that every form, every plant and every animal, is literally and truly a transitional form.  Each of the earths living organisms is on a journey from what it used to be, heading toward what it is becoming.  Those who are on this journey include human animals, of course.  We can’t easily see where we are going, but the information provided by fossils, DNA and other objective evidence tells us where we’ve been.

One of the many transitional forms Shubin describes is the trithrledont, part mammal and part reptile, the telltale mark being tiny bumps and ridges on its teeth that included tooth-to-tooth occlusion (70). Shubin doesn’t only work in labs and classrooms.  He had a major part in finding some of the incredible fossils he describes, including trithrledont.   I especially enjoyed his description of how one develops an “eye” for finding fossils. 

Over time, I began to learn the visual cues for other kinds of bones: long bones, jawbones and skull parts.  Once you see these things you never lose the ability to find them.  Just as a great fisherman can read the water and see the fish within, so a fossil finder uses a catalog of search images that make fossils seem to jump out from the rocks.

Looking for fossils is hard work, but Shubin reminds us what is at stake:

Early mammals were small.  Very small.  Their teeth were not much more than 2 mm long.  To spot them, you had to be very careful and, more often, very lucky.  If the tooth was covered by a crumb of rock or even a few grains of sand, you might never see it…. occasionally… I’d hit the jackpot and see a deep connection for the first time…. I was seeing some of the first evidence of our pattern of precise chewing, only in a tiny mammal 190 million years old.  The power of these moments was something I’ll never forget.  Here, cracking rocks in the dirt, I was discovering objects that could change the way people think.  That juxtaposition between the most childlike, even humbling, activities and one of the great human intellectual aspirations has never been lost on me.  I try to remind myself of it each time I dig somewhere new.

There are many good lessons in Your Inner Fish.  For example, Shubin tells us about the non-obvious connections between teeth, breasts, feathers and hair: they all developed from skin (79).  He describes how worms are yet another good example of a transitional form. Evolutionarily speaking, it is from worms that we got our heads (96).  But don’t go thinking that we have evolved completely beyond the simple forms of worms.  In utero, each of us initially becomes a simple tube “with a fold of swelling at the head end and another at the tail” (101).  Those cells can unfold themselves into a large animal only by doing their extraordinary biochemical magic.  Most importantly, those tiny cells need to know how to talk to each other.  Such communication was a complex development that did not occur until halfway through the history of life on Earth.  Where is the halfway point?  Shubin illustrates how long it is taken for the human animal to get where it is:

Take the entire 4.5 billion year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the president.  Until June, the only organisms were single celled microbes such as algae, bacteria and amoeba.  The first animal with a head did not appear until October.  The first human appears on December 31 (119).

We are reminded by Shubin of the many ways that we are still like single-celled organisms.  (more…)

This is a view on my way home from work tonight.   The 180-foot tall Compton Hill Water Tower is decorated, at its base, by traffic lights and the lighted traffic flowing by during this long exposure shot. 

Located near my home, in St. Louis, Missouri, the Compton Hill Water Tower:

is a remnant of another time. When it was built, William McKinley was president, and the population of St. Louis was just over half a million. The water tower was built on a 36 acre park, called Reservoir Park, where the wealthier families of German descent chose to make their homes. But the city was outgrowing the existing water delivery system. The pumps used to send water through the city created dangerous surges in pressure, making pipes rattle and shake. In an effort to equalize water pressure, a 5 feet wide, 100 feet tall standpipe was installed. For cosmetic appeal, the tower was built in 1898 to camouflage the standpipe. 

Where are all the historical accounts of all of those dead people who climbed out of their graves and mingled with normal living people on Good Friday?  There’s only one plausible answer.  There are no such historical accounts because the Bible is incorrect.  Formerly dead people never crawled out of their graves and visited normal living people. 

Nontheless, Bible literalists (there are millions of such people) continue to claim that everything in the Bible is literally true. Then why aren’t there any historical (non-Christian) accounts of all of the incredible things that happened at the moment Jesus allegedly died?  

Supposedly there were earthquakes. Supposedly, dead people became alive again and crawled out of their graves, then “they began to walk around, appearing to many in Jerusalem.”  Nothing like this has happened before or since (except on zombie movies).  Why, then the absolute silence in reputable history books?  Why don’t the Gospel writers (other than Matthew) mention these incredible “events”?   This deafening silence is yet more proof that the Bible is not literally true. 

Here’s the relevant passages from Matthew:

27:51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,  
27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. 
27:54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

I recently spoke with two Bible literalists about these spectacular claims in Matthew. They both explained that these amazing events were obvious to everyone back then and people simply passed them off by word of mouth.  Thus, no need for any historical account of this incredible day.  I don’t buy this “explanation” for a second.  That would be like saying that there is no need for written acounts of 9/11 because we have a rich historical account.  Contrary to the claims of the two literalists,  if a man’s crucifixion really led to earthquakes and then many people climbed out of their graves and walked around, mingling with many “living” people, there would be many–MANY– (Christian and non-Christian) books written about these extraordinary events. 

If even ONE dead person really crawled out of a grave and walked around, it would be the story of the year.  Such an extraordinary event would be documented in millions of books, magazines and other documents.  

For much more information on the highly suspicious historical silence regarding the many alleged miracles of Christianity, spend a bit of time at Earl Doherty’s terrific site: Jesus Puzzle.  Doherty tells us to pay special attention to the lack of any Christian writings detailing the alleged life and miracles of Jesus for an eye-p0pping forty years subsequent to the alleged death and resurrection of Jesus (The above link takes you to Doherty’s home page–then click on “Putting the Jesus Puzzle Together in 12 Easy Pieces”).  Here’s the summary of Doherty’s main article (a link to the more detailed article is provided at that location):

The Gospel story, with its figure of Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be found before the Gospels. In Christian writings earlier than Mark, including almost all of the New Testament epistles, as well as in many writings from the second century, the object of Christian faith is never spoken of as a human man who had recently lived, taught, performed miracles, suffered and died at the hands of human authorities, or rose from a tomb outside Jerusalem. There is no sign in the epistles of Mary or Joseph, Judas or John the Baptist, no birth story, teaching or appointment of apostles by Jesus, no mention of holy places or sites of Jesus’ career, not even the hill of Calvary or the empty tomb. This silence is so pervasive and so perplexing that attempted explanations for it have proven inadequate.

Today is Easter. Colorful eggs (pagan tradition), bunnies and chicks (pagan symbols), and consuming dangerous levels of foamy sweetener in scary yellow bites (Peeps™). Let’s not forget the “meaning behind it”: The anniversary of yet another demi-god risen from the dead. I enjoy this take on that subject.

Anyway, why not use this day to remember others of the many born-to-a-virgin half-breed godlings whose power was recognized at adolescence, who grew to great renown at maturity, who were persecuted, exiled, and/or executed by the powers that be, and died and came back to life, somehow earning eternal reward for themselves and others. Like Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Adonis/Bacchus, Krishna, Dionysus…

The recent rains have rising tides. A friend of mine sent the following frazzled missive this morn:

“… been busy and intense here… Spent two days moving everything under the house and in the shed, up to my porches… full now of STUFF…. STUFF… everywhere… water is 5 feet deep now under the house… expected crest… I hope not over right under the floor boards… I hope… very very close…. what a mess… could come inside… questions about the exact final height…. here… hope not….. talk to you later… ” [all ellipses in the original]

His house is on the Meramec River. More on it today than usual. He also lives just across that river from the Times Beach community of 1980’s dioxin fame. Certainly washed clean, by now.

His hope, you may have gathered, is that the flood peaks before it rises above his floor boards. Right now, the issue is in question. This may be a new record flood level in the area, and his house was only built on 100 year flood stilts.

It seems to me that Darwinism is to this election cycle as Family Values and Abortion have been to previous ones. There has been a recent rash of books and now a movie all pointing out how a conspiracy of elites are following the Darwin manifesto to create a facist atheist state.

Am I overstating it? Read this criticism (including their own release blurb) of Ben Stein’s new movie, “Expelled”. This movie about how bully tactics are what keeps the theory of evolution uncontested is scheduled for a mid-April release. But is already playing to mega-churches and closed-door sessions of school boards and state legislatures. Mainstream press has not yet officially had access to it.

Legislatures? According to NowPress.com in this short article:

The invitation to “Expelled” is just for legislators and their spouses, along with legislative aides. The press and public is excluded.

House Minority Leader Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, asked House general counsel Jeremiah Hawkes if that’s legal — since Florida law requires open meetings whenever two or more lawmakers meet to discuss pending business. Hawkes replied that, as long as they just watch the film and don’t discuss the issue or arrange any future votes, it’s technically legal.

Why? Because Florida just modified its education policy to require the Evolution to be mentioned in biology classes as a Scientific Theory. Two representatives have now introduced bills that would allow teachers to present discussion of “Intelligent Design” in science classes. The Florida Family Policy Council (one of the many branches of Focus on the Family) is the group sponsoring the showing.

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We do many inefficient things.  Why don’t we simply do those things differently, in a more efficient way?  Often, we don’t change things because we’ve done them a certain way for so long that it would take too much time and psychological effort to do them in new ways, even though the new ways would be easier and more inefficient in the long run.

The QWERTY keyboard is a great example. We could rearrange our keyboards, which would cause us to struggle with our new configurations for a few months or years, but then we’d all be better for the change.  We don’t do this, however.  It would take too much initial effort.

Scientific theories are quite often strained by the discovery of new evidence that doesn’t fit the theory, yet we cling to the old inadequate theories.   This is another tendency toward path dependence.   For example, until the 17th century, “epicycles” were used to explain the perceived retrograde motion of planets and stars.  Epicycles were finally discarded in response to Kepler’s work.   Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific progress does not occur smoothly, but rather in the form of periodic revolutions that that he termed paradigm shifts. The fact that scientists tend to hold onto old unworkable theories longer than they should can be seen as another manifestation of path dependence.

It would make a lot of sense to simplify the spellings of many words used in the English language.  We don’t do this, however.  It would take too much time and effort in the short run, even though it would be well worth our while in the long run.  And shouldn’t we all switch over to a universal language, so everyone could understand everyone else?  Esperanto, anyone?

We don’t have the determination to make many long-term improvements due to the time and energy it would take to make the short-term change.

I thought of path dependence yesterday when I drove past the campus of St. Louis University, a large Jesuit college in St. Louis, Missouri.  I attended the St. Louis University school of Law.  I know many people who have received fine educations from St. Louis University.  I know that many of the people associated with University are good-hearted people who do wonderful things for the community.  On the other hand, St. Louis University is a school based upon an unsubstantiated belief that a bloody crucifixion occurring 2000 years ago “saved” humankind.  What does my well-reputed school of law have to do with claims that a man/God visited Earth to save his wretchedly undeserving children?  Many people would say nothing at all. The Law School is attend by many students who don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus. It could be argued that the education provided by the St. Louis University School of Law could equally be provided by a university that didn’t make any claim that a man named Jesus rose from the dead.  After all, I attended law school for three years and never once heard Jesus discussed in any law school class.  So, why is it that a law school that teaches nothing about Jesus is considered to be a Jesuit law school?  Good question.  I consider it to be another manifestation of path dependence.  The buildings and administration of an existing Jesuit college simply made for a good foundation for the Law School.  The Jesuits would argue that the SLU School of Law is as good as it is because it is Catholic.  They would hear some good arguments that this is not the reason from some of the many fine law schools that are not Catholic, however.

Speaking of law, the legal principle of stare decisis holds that an ongoing legal dispute should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that way.   (more…)

Today is/was Leap Day, or that extra day wedged into the Intercalary Year to fudge for God not having created a year with a whole number of days to help keep things straight. I received an email from a friend asking how often does Leap Day come on a Friday? I’m used to fielding odd math questions.

Anyway, the answer is every 28 years, ignoring century years not divisible by 400. I first got that by running the year cursor forward on the Windows clock setting window. Then I worked out why this is.

Look at any 4 year period. It has exactly 1,461 days, or 208 weeks plus 5 days. Again, unless it crosses a non-leap century year (like 2100). So every leap year the day of the week moves back by 5 days. How many ⁵/₇ ths does it take to get back to a whole number? Yep, seven. So 4 year periods by 7 cycles is 28 years.

What about Sadie Hawkin’s Day? November 19th, and has been since Al Capp invented it in 1937. But Leap Day is the date on which it is traditionally acceptable (in English tradition) for a woman to propose to a man. Thus the confusion.

In the January 31, 2008 edition of Nature, author Dan Jones reviews what evolution indicates about human killing humans.  As with many human behaviors, the evolutionists divide on whether killing of other humans is an adaptation (a change in organisms that allows them to live more successfully in an environment) or a “byproduct of urges toward some other goal.”  There are intriguing arguments for both sides. 

Some have suggested that individual murder is more likely a byproduct, whereas organized violence (such as the type we see in wars) is more often an adaptation.  What is the biological evidence pointing to something other than byproduct?  A 1997 study found that “the average volume of the orbitofrontal cortex between men and women accounts for about half of the variation in antisocial behavior between the sexes.” Combine this with Jane Goodall’s observations of gang violence in chimpanzees, where “the adult males of one community systematically attacked and killed the males of another group over a period of years, with the victorious group eventually absorbing the remaining victims.” 

It is incredibly hard to weed out the cultural factors from the biological, of course.  Here’s something I found interesting.  Interpersonal attacks leading to death have declined dramatically over the past few centuries.

After rising from an average of 32 homicides per 100,000 people per year in the 13th and 14th centuries to 41 in the 15th, the murder rate has steadily dropped in every subsequent century, 21.9, 11, 3.2, 2.6 and finally 1.4 in the 20th century.

Not that anyone is suggesting that human biological evolution could account for this decline in human killings.  This period of eight centuries is much too short a time period for evolution to have had any meaningful effect.  (more…)

I subscribe to Funny Times, a monthly humor publication filled with cartoons and humorous essays.  I consider it great bang for the buck, at a cost of about two dollars per issue.

In the March 2008 edition of Funny Times, Phil Proctor compiled some stunning statistics in his column (he calls his column “Planet Proctor”).  The context of his recent column is that the mother of two of his friends was born 99 years ago.  What was the U.S. like when she was born?  Here’s a sampling:

The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.  Only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub.  Only 8% had a telephone.  A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.  There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads. . . . . Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated in California. . .  the population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30 . . . More than 95% of all births in the US took place at home.  90% of all US physicians had no college education. . . Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.  Crossword puzzles, canned beer and iced tea hadn’t been invented. . .  the American flag had 45 stars. . . . There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. . . There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US. . . Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores.

I received this email from a regular reader in response to one of my responses to my Creationism in Florida Schools post:

“The real question that comes to my mind after reading this St. Petersburg Times poll is, should we allow popular demand to decide what is taught in science classes?”

How about for deciding what is taught in science, deciding tax policy, setting social programs, setting foreign policy, etc., etc., etc.? Should we allow popular demand to decide for these as well? I think we currently do, and I think it is with the same disastrous results. The next logical question is how should we pick the deciders? The problem is, we will never move to the next logical question.

What was considered ancient political wisdom at the time of the Caesars was: If the people can vote themselves bread and circuses, they will. Concentration of capital is the primary benefit of a taxation system. It allows big things to be done by a people of whom no individual member can afford. Government social programs (a form of insurance that used to be the province of churches, thus the tradition of tithing) are an example of dilution of capital. As is the Economic Stimulus Package that raced through our government checks and balances without much of either.

The examples of Ancient Greece, the Medici families (practically an empire unto themselves), the California legislature, and the Summerhill project (as described in the book by A.S. Neill) show that, once people get used to controlling their own disbursments as a group, they eventually regularly (but not always) behave in a responsible manner toward the group, and therefore unselfishly benefit themselves. Good things can, and usually do, come of it.

But a key word is “eventually”. They must vote themselves “pork” for long enough to see the damage done by not providing for the greater good. Our system would prevent sufficient damage to let people see how bad these decisions can be. So we are perpetually in the broad borderlands between doing something good, and fiscal collapse.

The Federal Government was set up as a coordinator between the States of the union, and to limit the power of States where it may interfere with rights of the people. Phrases like “Provide for the Common Defense” and “Insure domestic tranquility” come to mind. Early in the 20th century, legislators went hog wild amending the constitution.

Then we had a rash of arguably unconstitutional federal programs established, such as Income Tax and Social Security (technically, these are voluntary). But the federal income tax was set up to pay for the common defense (war debts). And with over 20 workers per retiree, who would mind 5% for retirement insurance, half paid by the employer? Rather than deal with charging the states that then pass the charges on to the residents as state taxes, it was more expedient to charge people directly, originally based on the ability to pay. The personal deduction was originally above the median family income. Now the deductible is well below the poverty level. Also there are now only 7 workers per retiree, and falling (14% to FICA).

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