Fishing again

"Evolve, dammit!"

'Nuff said? Dale McGowan's thoughts on bumper fish. I used to have one:

but it kept getting swiped. Once someone left a note on my car wondering indignantly, Mr. Smart Guy, why there are still monkeys?! If my correspondent had stuck around I'd have referred him to Scientific American's response:

This reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

I'm sure that's the answer he was fishing for.

Glasses

Another nice Catholic girl sees the light. Did she put the glasses on? Or take them off?

Raising free-thinkers

Dale McGowan has good ideas about how to "parent beyond belief," humbly and respectfully but confidently, in our religion-saturated culture. A good complement to Chris Phillips' Philosophers' Clubs.

forever young

Just wrote the last paragraph of my little Updike-Williams essay for the next "Baseball in Literature and Culture" volume. I hate shilling for corporate America but I just have to confess: I love this commercial.

A virally-infectious Pepsi commercial featuring a hip-hop-cadenced rendition of the Dylan classic “Forever Young” has been getting a lot of televised play lately. After a slew of rapid-sequence-montage clips drawing on images from sports and popular culture, and before the final, lingering image of Ruth and Jeter capped by the summary slogan “every generation refreshes the world,” we're treated to a split-second of Williams in full swing. That's the immortal image he sought and deserves. In time, let us hope, that ugly other mental picture, the one his wayward son forced upon us, just fades away. The picture of perfection is the one we want to keep.

mind-blowing

"Support for NPR comes from the estate of Richard Leroy Walters, whose life was enriched by NPR, and whose bequest seeks to encourage others to discover public radio."

I'd been curious about Richard Leroy Walters too. Turns out he was a homeless millionaire who divested himself of material possessions, except for a radio tuned to NPR.

That's mind-blowing enough. But then his friend and executor said:

"He was an atheist and I'm a very profound practicing Catholic, and I'd never met an atheist," Belle says. "And that just blew my mind that somebody could not believe in the Lord."

It explains a lot about our politics and culture wars, doesn't it, that an intelligent, professional American can say such a thing in public with a straight face?

Perspective

New Yorker,  7.27.09

"...there are frogs there--who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave..."

Deepak

It's a good day for a domestic provocation.

With "spirituality" like this, who needs magic?

Times notes

Of note in today's Times:

* Henry Louis Gates is a repeat victim of high-profile racial profiling, says Stanley Fish. It happened at Duke ("the plantation") years ago. If the police entered my home under the same circumstances I might very well find myself taking a belligerent stance, too, and decline to produce identification immediately upon demand.

* Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”

The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications.

I taught "Biotechnology and Ethics" last year, we read and discussed "the Singularity." Like other unthinkable things, it may not happen... or it may not happen when Ray Kurzweil and others think it will. But neither is it a mere sci-fi fantasy. Kurzweil may be crazy but he's now on the radar of serious and sober people. We'd better be thinking about how to "cope."

* Dr. George Tiller is only the latest in a long line of tragic victims assaulted or murdered by lunatics who've been stoked by right-wing talk radio hate speech, as Bill Moyers documents. Those of us who preach tolerance must recognize its limits: we must not give the hate-mongers (including all those fairly unbalanced Fox shills) a free pass. They devalue free speech.

* And more happily, it was a pleasure watching the Hall of Fame induction ceremony this afternoon. The Henderson and Rice induction speeches were not that impressive, clearly having been ghosted. But as usual the so-called second-tier inductees stole the show. Joe Gordon's daughter touchingly observed that her Dad, who'd not had a proper funeral, had at last reached his final resting place. Tony Kubek, another warm Voice of the Game from my youth, garrulous as ever, took me back to all those Games of the Week. He and Curt Gowdy were the only game in town, in those pre-ESPN/-Fox Sports days.

Gotta get back to Cooperstown. Mark it: July 25, 2010.

A deathbed non-conversion

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking...the world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides...Five thousand people prayed for me at an Easter service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the largest church in Christendom. A Hindu priest described a large prayer vigil for me held on banks of the Ganges. The Imam of North America told me about his prayers for my recovery. Many Christians and Jews wrote me to tell about theirs. While I do not think that, if there is a god, his plan for me will be altered by prayer, I'm more grateful than I can say to those, including so many whom I've never met, who have pulled for me during my illness. Many of them have asked me how it is possible to face death without the certainty of an afterlife. I can only say that it hasn't been a problem. With reservations about feeble souls, I share the view of a hero of mine, Albert Einstein: I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I, nor would I want to, conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear for absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoting striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." Carl Sagan

Quay-lin

Dispatch from the cave. Thinking more about memory's unanticipated triggers...

On the road to the water park yesterday we passed one of my former abodes, an apartment where I lived for a year (not the luxury digs referenced previously, but a more cave-like efficiency in Hermitage, TN). It tripped memories of move-in night, August '88, when Dan Quayle's acceptance speech at the GOP convention was on in the background.

What I didn't know then was that I would one day come to think of him as the Sarah Palin of his time. Thank goodness she didn't get to become the Dan Quayle of hers. But I suppose she still aspires to be the next Dubya.