Charles Darwin: Birthday Guy

"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID [intelligent design] is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory." ~ from Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., Case No. 04cv2688

***

Doubtless the blogosphere will be full of Darwin-related posts today, so rather than recreate the wheel, I'll tell you a little story... from whence the Science Dweeb evolved.

When I was very young, up until the age of three, I wore leg braces to correct a congenital hip defect, and was unable to walk very much. My mom, in her young and infinite wisdom, used to take me often in my stroller to the Smithsonian Institution, to see the dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History.

The museum was free (which was ideal for our tiny family's meager budget) and I happened to love dinosaurs, even as a very little girl. I didn't go to preschool. I went to the museums with my mother. I knew my Monets from my Manets, too.

Apparently, I could identify most of the dinosaurs and animals in the main exhibits, and could pronounce their convoluted names with perfect clarity (not that I could repeat such a feat now-- the ravages of aging on the memory apply here) . The most oft-repeated story is about a class of older children, maybe sixth graders, who were visiting the museum with their teacher on a field trip.

My mother and I were in amongst the crowd, but I was totally concealed, being much shorter than everyone else (seated in my low-rider stroller). The teacher, taking her class past every dinosaur, would ask them: Now what is the name of this dinosaur? To which the entire class would not answer, but I did. I kept offering up the names to the questions, unseen by all, in my biggest little girl voice.

Finally, the teacher, wondering where the tiny voice was emanating from that kept saying things like "Brontosaurus!" "Triceratops!" and "Stegosaurus!", discovered me, hidden in the forest of taller children's legs, sitting in my stroller. The teacher asked my mother if I was a midget. I guess that was the only thing she could come up with, as to how a two-year-old could possibly know her dinosaurs so well.

Thanks, Mommy, for starting me out right in a lifetime of wanting to know stuff. I don't think I'll ever stop.

xoxo

***

Now when I'm outside and see a blue jay hopping about, being so fierce and territorial in his little birdlike way, I look at him and smile and remember that some of the dinosaurs I loved so much are still around. They're just a lot smaller than they used to be.

***

Today is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. I don't have the energy or patience to discuss why Ben Stein and his moronic documentary is garnering any attention at all, and why Intelligent Design is even an issue that is still getting discussed, and why sometimes it seems like we haven't gotten very far at all since the Scopes Trial. I'm just going to wish Mr. Darwin a very happy birthday and celebrate that his discovery is still a candle burning brightly against the darkness of misguided and wishful thinking. (Note: I'm unapologetically not posting any pro-ID/anti-evolution comments here, so don't send them.)

An article that gives a nice overview to Darwin and his legacy is here. You can read more about International Darwin Day here. And for every single Darwin-related event in the SF Bay Area, check out evolve2009.org. And last, but not least, the young, bright legal mind at Thaumaturgic Ramblings was smart enough yesterday to post his Darwin Day Eve post, so catch his thoughts here. Survival of the fastest.

One particular event that caught my eye: there's going to be a very interesting lecture at the California Academy of Sciences, given by Dr. Kevin Padian, Professor at the Dept. of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley, on March 24. Dr. Padian will be discussing his experience as an expert witness in the 2005 Pennsylvania trial, Kitzmiller vs. Dover, that ruled against the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. You can find out more about this event here. I've got my ticket.

And watch out for dinosaurs around you. They didn't really all become extinct... some of them evolved. Ain't that a kick in the head? I love it.

The Day After

Today is the traditional first day of my personal "I Hate Turkey" season. I should be wearing an outfit of baggy sweatpants where I've snipped the elastic in the waist, one of my seasonal post-Thanksgiving t-shirts ("JUST SAY NO TO CRACK [POTATOES]!", "FUTURE BREATHARIAN," or "MY BABY IS A FOOD BABY"), with a square of duct tape affixed firmly over my mouth.

But no, I am at work today (which the sad few of us here have deemed the practice to be a hybrid of unsupervised day care and being sent to after-school detention. We have also deemed our presence here at the office to be very un-American of our employers because we should be out supporting Black Friday and our crumbling economy).

Because I am here, I had to forego the modified sweatpants and baggy top in favor of regular clothes (found some that fit, perhaps there is a god) and brought the requisite turkey sandwich for lunch (which has been made more enticing by adding some thick slices of Delice de Bourgogne atop slices of rustic Italian bread, and topped with my homemade cranberry relish, which will be my fruit ration for the next week.). And true to my word, once I finish this post, then I will be off on a virtual spree of visiting you all in blogland for the next 6 hours or so.

***

I hope you all did have a lovely Thanksgiving, and that if you're reading this, you're idling in front of the computer in your jammies today. Even those of you who don't live in the US, I hope you're benefitting from some of that Thanksgiving spirit too, even if you're not feeling the fatness.

We had a very quiet and restful day, mostly. No computers, no phones. Days like this always involve extreme couch-potatoey-ness because our home is very well equipped for the sport of marathon movie watching. Although we've been TV-free for well over a decade (both as individuals and in our coupledom), that doesn't mean we suffer from a deficit of visual entertainment. We have a self-made home theatre, with projector, surround sound speakers and a pull down 10' movie screen that's mounted in the ceiling for hard-core movie watching. Those of you who attended the famous Movie Maven's Movie Marathon for America can attest to this.

The Boy selected The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as our first film of the day. With extreme deference to John Ford, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, this is a boring classic film. The Boy fell asleep, which is added proof because he loves westerns and I don't. So while he snoozed, I swapped that movie for Little Big Man. The Boy's never seen this film (!) and I've seen it many, many times. There's something really fun when a friend watches a really great movie for the first time in your presence.

Even though you cannot watch this film with the idea that it's a documentary, there's enough truth in the relationship between the Native American and Caucasian cultures to provide some historical perspective and give some food for thought at Thanksgiving time. Our national myth of the first Thanksgiving, complete with the deliverance of the English settlers by the Indians with the bounty of this country's native foods adds a poignant sadness to the fact that the cultures of these noble natives were almost completely destroyed 150 years later. Not that I don't want to be thankful for the bountiful life that I have, because I am, but lately it just seems right to be even more focused on our nation's checkered past. Its perceived greatness and promise as well as its tragic cruelties. I still feel sensitized and overly aware of our American myth, as a result of this past election. Everything I read or see makes me view our current situation from the continuum of history that has gotten us to this day.

To me, the best scenes of this film are the ones that feature Chief Dan George. And of those scenes, this one is my favorite:

***

One aside (which has nothing to do with anything really) after watching Little Big Man again is that there was a certain type of actress in the 70s: Faye Dunaway, Julie Christie, Marisa Berenson, to name a few, that had this willowy, high-cheekboned and exotic beauty that is not seen on the screen anymore. Even overly made up, these women had a lanky grace that I identify as a symbol of 70s films.

***

The second viewing selection between feedings were two episodes of Earth: The Biography, made by the BBC in conjunction with the National Geographic Channel. Is it just me, or do the Brits just corner the market on amazing scientific programming? Plus, geologist Iain Stewart is a super hottie, if you like really smart guys who are crazy adventurous and have great accents (I do).

The first episode, "Volcanoes," is simply spectacular. Spectacularly exciting, wildy entertaining, and full of stuff you never knew about our planet and which also makes you very very glad to not be living near a volcano if you can help it. Although it doesn't make you real excited to be living on a moving tectonic plate, either. This episode really puts the concept of our planet and how it came to be formed, and how it continues to evolve, into fascinating perspective.

The second episode, "Atmosphere," was similarly educational, but as The Boy put it, "very intense." And "scary." The last part about greenhouse gasses and melting permafrost and methane was sobering, to say the least.

When faced with a bit of overwhelming reality, the best thing to do is take a break.

That means get some pumpkin pie (not homemade but certainly delicious), a cup of hot cocoa (I'm now a big fan of Mexican Chocolate Abuelita by Nestle ) and plug in some escapist adventure.

For me, that's Matt Damon as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity. You guys can keep your James Bond in all his incarnations.

Plus, you get a trip to Paris in this film.

***

So there you have it. Our little holiday of gluttony, sloth, historical perspective, adventure and general condition of the planet, all in one day. Maybe it is good to be back at work.

And with that, I am off to pay my visits to you!

;-)

Mushroom cloud/exploding stomach image from here. The Day After reference definitely an homage to the Russian menace exploitation of the Reagan era.

A Paean to Penicillin

I guess I could have also titled this post a "Canticle to Ciprofloxacin hydrochloride" since I'm actually allergic to penicillin but then you might not have known what I was talking about. (Although I know you are all very brilliant minds and you would have figured it out quickly.)

Last night I finally took myself over to Urgent Care to get a prescription for this stuff because after a week of "oh, I think it's going away..." I realized that I needed some real medicine. (No worries, I'm fine.) But anyway.

The thing I walked away most grateful for last night, besides the extremely nice people that helped me-- from the intake lady to the doctor to the pharmacist who let me sneak in and filled my prescription in like 30 seconds even though they were closed-- was how freaking lucky I am to have received a slim plastic bottle of pills that will make me feel all better by tomorrow or the next day. Even though I am going to take the entire week's dosage and I hope that you take ALL of your antibiotics like you are supposed to because it's very very very important and I'll get back to that later.

I can't help thinking about what it must have been like to live 100, 200 years ago with a minor illness, which although not life threatening is certainly life-annoying and can get much worse if left unchecked, without the benefit of something like penicillin. I've always loved to read the biographies of scientists who made major discoveries to the benefit of all mankind. Louis Pasteur, you are the man. Marie Curie, you're even more the man because no one wanted you to study science in the first place.

One of the books on my nightstand that I'm chipping away at before bedtime is about Joseph Priestly and Antoine Lavoisier, one a humble English minister type and the other a French nobleman who was eventually guillotined during the Terror, and their quest to discover oxygen. Subject might not sound like a blockbuster but in the history of important knowledge that's benefited humankind, it is. What strikes me about both these guys is that their lives were not easy, got totally messed up by religous zealotry (one in the strict sense, and one by the religion of political fervor) and how the human mind can be so single-mindedly brilliant when it wants to be.

The tiny list of scientific explorers I mention here helped to pave a way to an improved quality of life for all of us, and they did it without the benefit of government grants, readily available ingredients, laboratories or assistance, and sometimes working under life-threatening circumstances. That type of perseverance, to the understanding of our physical universe with the side effect of benefiting fellow humans and generations to come that could build on their discoveries, always fills me with pride and hope that we can do more and be more as a species, regardless of our gender, religion or nationality.

I am not going to talk about Sarah Palin and the fruit flies again. But to me, now, she is the ready poster girl for a subset of people who not only walk around clueless, but could possibly impede the future and direction of scientific inquiry. This is not a rant but if you want to read a well-reasoned and informed one, check out Andrew Sullivan. Now I'm not saying that all of us have to geek out on science like me. I used to hang out after school in junior high and help my biology teacher separate and count fruit flies, not for extra credit, but because I thought it was very cool to be a tiny part of a scientific process, even at the age of 12. So even back then, I knew that studying fruit flies wasn't just blowing smoke up someone's ass. (Certainly at age 12, a person can find lots of things to do after school besides observing Drosophila melanogaster.)

What I hope is that our country will turn back the clock on eight years of morality-induced prejudice leading to anti-scientific inquiry. I wrote a post recently about change and what we might be willing to do to help move our country forward, to the benefit of all Americans and the world. I'm thinking maybe one avenue for me might be to help support issues regarding the advancement of scientific research. Not just because of the Cipro. But because to me, Science can be a tool to advance Hope, and wasn't that also a theme of this election? Making life better for all of us in a measureable, meaningful way?

But first I must address why I woke up at 1:20am and found myself here in front of the computer. (Actually, I was thirsty. So I'll get my drink of water and catch you all later.)

***

ps.: For a hair-raising but very important read on why we all need to do our share to help prevent the development of super-resistant strains of bacteria, read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague. It's like reading The Andromeda Strain or The Stand and then coming to the uncomfortable realization that you're reading non-fiction. Want to believe in a real Armageddon? Good chance it could come from a microbe. And there's no mention of the Rapture, either.