Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Incurious, unempathetic, soulless dead-eyed bug. That’s our former vice president, who had a heart transplant and doesn’t really care much about who the donor was.
When I came out from under the anesthetic after the transplant, I was euphoric. I’d had–I’d been given the gift of additional lives, additional years of life. For the family of the donor, they’d just been [through] some terrible tragedy, they’d lost a family member. Can’t tell why, obviously, when you don’t know the details, but the way I think of it from a psychological standpoint is that it’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart. And I always thank the donor, generically thank donors for the gift that I’ve been given, but I don’t spend time wondering who had it, what they’d done, what kind of person.
Generic thank yous, generic bombing, generic military-industrial complex spending. He’s just an empty generic human being, I guess.
I’m just wondering if the family of the donor can ask for it back. It’s obvious he’s not using it.
Now available for pre-order, it’s A Better Life: 100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God. I’m one of them, but don’t worry, my picture is buried somewhere in the middle, so you can leave this lovely book out somewhere without making people gak. It really does look good!
The Dallas Observer has a good history of creationist meddling in the Texas textbook wars. The Gablers, Phyllis Schlafly, Ray Bohlin, the Discovery Institute…they all get a mention, and the sordid descent of the Texas Board of Education into chaos and stupidity are all explained. It doesn’t have a real ending yet, but there are some promising suggestions that the creationists’ influence is beginning to wane.
So you won’t be surprised that I really like that Erin Podolak has asked, Can We Stop Talking About Carl Sagan?
It feels like I’m committing an act of science communication sacrilege here, but I have a confession to make: Carl Sagan means absolutely nothing to me. No more than any other dude from my parents 1970′s yearbooks that could rock the turtle neck/blazer combo with the best of them. There, my secret is out.
I’m not saying I don’t like Sagan – I’m saying Sagan has zero influence on me or what I do. To me, Sagan is a stereotypical old white guy scientist who made some show that a lot of people really liked more than 30 years ago. That show – Cosmos: A Personal Voyage -was on air nearly a decade before I was even born. The reason I bring up my own age is because I’m as old, if not older, than the prime audience for science communication. I think anyone can learn to appreciate science at any age in life, but we stand the best chance at convincing people that science is something they can understand (and even do themselves) early in life when their beliefs are not so entrenched.
So then why, WHY as science communicators do we keep going around and around among ourselves about how Sagan – who is so far outside my life experience, let alone that of people younger than me – was the greatest science communicator of all time? We keep talking about who will (or won’t) be the next Carl Sagan but I promise you, no high school kid gives a f*&^ about Carl Sagan let alone whether or not science communicators think he was great. We spend so much time and energy talking about a guy that isn’t relevant anymore. The topics of space, the natural world, and how to communicate wonder are totally relevant to the public and to the science writing community. But, this one guy? Nope.
Oh, good. Now I can confess that I too was not a Sagan fan boy. I liked him all right, I appreciated what he was doing for astronomy, and I’m not going to argue with you if he inspired you. He did great work! But his voice didn’t resonate with me.
To me, he was completely overshadowed by that other white guy with a documentary popularizing science at the same time, Jacob Bronowski. There was no comparison. I watched Cosmos and learned stuff, but the man who inspired me and made me think was Bronowski. You do appreciate that different people will respond to different messages, right?
My other big inspirations in the 70s, when I was getting fired up to go study science, were Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, EO Wilson (that those last two were feuding was so discouraging to me), and Jacques Cousteau. A bit later I was avidly reading Peter Kropotkin and Aldo Leopold. When I was acquiring a focus on developmental biology, it was D’Arcy Thompson, John Tyler Bonner, and Gould (again!) — and when I really was deeply into the field, the brains that blew me away with their work were those of Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and Susan Oyama. Notice — they were biologists or biology-centered. It was nothing personal against Sagan, he just wasn’t writing about things that interested me as much.
Another important point, though, is “this one guy? Nope.” I worry that one of the problems we see in getting people focused on a movement is idolatry and hero worship — if you’ve got only one name in your roster of science heroes, you’ve got a serious deficiency: get out more. Read more. I don’t care how great Sagan might have been, Sagan is not enough. And if you want an example of a related problem, notice this complaint on Podolak’s blog: No more reading your blog for me, what a shame.
Really, dude? If someone doesn’t share your same idols in all things, you won’t read them any more?
Then, of course, the other reality is that these people are all human beings, not saints. Feynman was a pickup artist of the worst sort; Einstein was a jerk to his wife; James Watson is a racist bigot. When we set up individuals as idols who must be respected, we’re simply setting ourselves up for disappointment. Appreciate the work they do with an appropriate perspective on their strengths and limitations.
So can we stop talking about Carl Sagan now? Yes, if you’d like; no, if you’d rather.
How about if we talk about Jacques Monod
For the Philippines!
A revelation! Women have had a perfect way to protect themselves from rape all along, as defense attorney in a rape case explains.
"All she would have had to do was to close her legs . . . it’s as simple as that," he told the jury. "Why didn’t she do that? . . . The reason she didn’t do that was because the sex was consensual, as easy as that."
Just…close…your legs, and you’re impervious to rape? This crime has been perpetrated throughout civilization for thousands of years, and now for the first time ever, a lawyer has had the stunning insight into all they’ve ever had to do was execute this trivial little maneuver with two appendages. This evidence was irrelevant:
When he tried to kiss and grope her she clearly said no, and was clearly saying no as he bent her against a wall and raped her.
It doesn’t matter if you say no, if you fail to make the Impenetrable Closed Legs Maneuver.
No word yet on whether this brilliant argument got his client off.
They’re doing some fundraising for their Darwin on the Palouse event in February. I spoke there a while back — it’s a great event in an area that needs this perspective.
Just cross the Idaho border, and what do you find? Doug Wilson and the New Saint Andrews College, where you can get steeped in both creationist literalism and racist apologetics. I suspect that they get quite a bit more cash flow than the humanists, so anything you can do to offset the imbalance will be appreciated.
The same thing the Yanks ought to do with their vapid celebrities: time to build the ‘B’ Ark. I have an aversion to those horrible little puff pieces about the Royals that come out of the British press, but I get a lot of my news out of the UK, and every once in a while one of those stories comes wafting by on the data stream, like a giant flocculent, spongy turd packaged in candy floss — and I get an unpleasant splat in my face. So I found myself reading with horror some noise about Prince Charles and homeopathy. Because I love you all so much, I figured I’d share.
After a plodding long prologue somberly discussing the history of Charles’s doddering brain encountering 16th century alchemical balderdash and haranguing the British Medical Association with it, and with his founding of various money sinks for bunkum, we get to his toxic effects on the citizenry.
Nevertheless, Charles’s support has, in no small part, led to a surge in the number of patients seeking such treatments. Nearly six million Britons now see complementary practitioners each year, and one in four would like access to be universally available on the NHS. (Currently, treatments are accessible only in some areas, including Bristol and Lothian.) Over-the-counter remedies, such as arnica cream, have seen a 24 per cent growth in sales in the past decade.
Rachel Roberts, chief executive of the Homeopathy Research Institute, admits that she was once sceptical about holistic medicine but was won over by Charles’s endorsement of the practice. The royal physician is Dr Peter Fisher, clinical director at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine and an accredited homeopath.
“The Royal family have huge resources and access to everything medicine has to offer, yet they choose homeopathy,” explains Roberts. “I thought, ‘Why would they use it if it doesn’t work?’”
She sees Charles as a revolutionary. “He’s outspoken about his beliefs and doesn’t appear to care that he’s going against the tide of opinion,” she says. “He gives homeopathy a voice. Now we’re seeing a U-turn in how it is being received, and the rest of the world is catching up to where Prince Charles has been for decades.”
Oooh! A bunch of filthy rich people are promoting something insanely stupid, but surely they couldn’t have got to where they are now without being clever and wise and all that, surely? Do I really need to inform the British public that your prince achieved his status in the world entirely by virtue of being born to the right parents, and he didn’t have to earn a bit of it?
Just a suggestion: go read The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain’s Favourite Fetish
I’ve had it, whoever you are. For years, you’ve been forwarding your “jokes” to me — your crass, tasteless, racist, crude “jokes” — and you’ve ignored my early requests to stop sending them to me, and over the last few years I’ve just been hitting delete when I see your name. But I can’t simply ignore them in good conscience any more; your last collection of dumbass observations was simply too hateful and bigoted.
The next time I receive anything from you, I’ll be posting it here, with your full name and address and IP number. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that most often your headers have a peculiarity, subject lines that include an odd appended note like “[SEC=UNOFFICIAL]” or “[SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]”, and you’re apparently forwarding stuff sent from an Australian at defence.gov.au. Vile stuff. I’ll also expose his address, too.
I’m not sitting back silently while you spread the hate you consider comedy anymore.Go scuttle under a rock where you belong.
