Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Proof That There is No “Intelligent Designer”

Salon.com News | Intelligent designer
[Pro "Intelligent Design" attorney, Richard] Thompson reads the final sentence from an early edition of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one … from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

So, Thompson asks, should Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” be kept outside the science classroom because it talks about the Creator with a capital “C” breathing life into early forms?

“No,” concedes [theologist and author, John] Haught.

I wish Haught had answered differently. Here’s what I might have said, had I been asked this question:

Perhaps that section of Darwin’s book should be kept from the science classroom — if doing so would keep children from mistakenly believing that the existence or non-existence of a “Creator” is a scientific question. Sophisticated readers can easily see, though, that Darwin’s reference here to a “Creator” is merely a reflection of his personal religious belief. It doesn’t play any role in the scientific theory to which we turn to Darwin in the first place — that being the origin of species through evolution. This differs dramatically from Intelligent Design — where the existence of a supernatural “Creator” (or a “Designer”, if you prefer) is key. By definition, science is materialist. While individual scientists, like Darwin, may hold religious beliefs, there is no role for supernatural forces within the performance or teaching of science.

Of course, I’ve had a chance to think about what I’d say — and Haught was just stuck up on the stand answering questions.

Later, salon.com’s Gordy Slack asks Thompson:

“So you want to change the definition of science to include the supernatural?”

“Yes,” he says, “we need a total paradigm shift in science.”

Ai-yi-yi.

Yes, by all means! Let’s bring back the good old days of alchemy and astrology and reading a person’s fortune in the entrails of a chicken. Oh… and let’s not forget the “science” of healing people through prayer and laying-on hands. Or drilling holes in the heads of people who have convulsions in order to let the demons out. Antibiotics?!? Who needs ‘em!

Oh… and as for my proof that there is no “intelligent designer”? I’d say the existence of a mind like Richard Thompson’s is all the evidence I need.

460 Volts of Fun!

Salon.com Books | He lost his mind
“I had been truly seriously depressed a number of times in my life, but never to the extent of being ‘clinically’ depressed,” Cott says. “I just didn’t care anymore.” That’s when the electroconvulsive therapy began.” Cott was given 36 treatments over the course of the next two years. When he emerged from them, he could remember nothing from the years 1985 to 2000. Fifteen years of his life — friends he had known, places he had lived, books he had written — had been completely wiped out.

What neither author Jonathan Cott nor salon.com’s Oliver Broudy mention in this interview though — and they really do their readers a disservice thereby — is that this level of memory loss is extremely rare among ECT patients and that there’s no compelling evidence that, when it is seen, it was caused by the ECT.

Here’s the important information you haven’t been given, folks: Severe depression itself appears to cause memory loss AND cognitive difficulties. There’s no persuasive evidence that ECT causes a decline in IQ. Long-term depression, on the other hand, has been pretty conclusively tied to just these kinds of problems. No lie.

I’ve been through this argument a few times in the past with (ick!) Scientologists, so I’ve actually spent some effort investigating the subject.

• Among the studies that have been published in reputable peer-reviewed journals, the majority have found no persuasive evidence that ECT causes brain damage.
• People tend to get all excited about the voltage used during ECT. This displays an ignorance of how electricity works. High voltage doesn’t cause tissue damage. You can get up to 12,000 volts just by touching a doorknob after you’ve shuffled across a carpet in your socks. It’s amperage you’ve got to worry about and ECT’s amperage is very low.
• ECT is a proven method of temporarily (sometimes permanently) relieving severe depression in patients who have not responded to other treatments. It may cause a temporary loss of short-term memory. Some memories of events occurring right around the time of the ECT may be lost permanently. These are the known possible side-effects as have been investigated at length by real scientists whose work is published in real peer-reviewed journals.

I could provide you with links to all kinds of studies that support this but, hey, I’m among friends! I presume you’ll take my word for it. If not, you’ll leave a comment and we’ll have a nice chat about the whole thing.

Oh… and in the salon.com interview? When Cott is asked about the Exxon Valdez and isn’t sure what it was? Hell, he’s just sounding like 90% of the people under age 30. I don’t want to be mean, but… what makes Cott think he was such a genuinely smart guy to begin with? If he’s truly lost his memory, then how the hell does he know one way or the other whether he ever knew about the Exxon Valdez? Maybe he’s been secretly looking stuff up in encyclopedias his entire life. He claims his memory is shot and his IQ is lower — yet he was able to write and publish a book (which he, undoubtedly, would very much like all of us to buy). I’m not saying he doesn’t actually have the problems he claims to have — only that you’ve got to wonder. I mean — all things considered.

Acute Pancreatitis

Regular readers will have noticed that some time has gone by since my last post here. It’s because I’ve been in the hospital with acute pancreatitis. According to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse:

Acute pancreatitis usually begins with pain in the upper abdomen that may last for a few days. The pain may be severe and may become constant—just in the abdomen—or it may reach to the back and other areas. It may be sudden and intense or begin as a mild pain that gets worse when food is eaten. Someone with acute pancreatitis often looks and feels very sick. Other symptoms may include

• swollen and tender abdomen
• nausea
• vomiting
• fever
• rapid pulse

Severe cases may cause dehydration and low blood pressure. The heart, lungs, or kidneys may fail. If bleeding occurs in the pancreas, shock and sometimes even death follow.

I was pretty sick for a while there. Happily, none of my major organs failed. My symptoms were pretty much limited to extreme nausea and unbelievably awful abdominal pain.

As an example of just how whacked-out your pancreas can get, consider that for a couple days my serum lipase levels were over 20,000 U/L! Lipase is an enzyme produced by the pancreas and its normal value is between 0 and 160 U/L. Similarly, my serum amylase levels were in the thousands when their normal value is 40-140 U/L.

I also had relatively low blood pressure. At one point I remember it being 80-something over 50-something.

Yep, I was one sick unit.

The thing is, I got the pancreatitis as the result of another medical procedure: an ERCP. Apparently, only about one in twenty people will get pancreatitis from the ERCP and I was just lucky. I had the ERCP (that’s Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography for those of you who love big words as much as I do) to diagnose the extent of my gall stone problem and to remove three stones that had lodged in my common bile duct. (See the illustration above.) They needed to remove the stones in the duct right away because leaving them there would put me at major risk of serious liver problems and/or …. wait for it! … pancreatitis.

Sometimes you just can’t win.

The treatment for pancreatitis is pretty straightforward. They kept me hydrated with IV fluids and gave me lots of IV shots of an excellent painkiller called dilaudid. It’s a kind of morphine. After getting that, pretty much nothing bothered me for a while. Until it would start to wear off. Happily, they didn’t make a big fuss out of increasing the frequency and amount of dilaudid after the first time it wore off before I was due for another dose. I think they just didn’t want to listen to me whine anymore. They also gave me lots of IV phenergan to control the nausea.

Anyway, I’m doing significantly better now and hope to resume my regular daily blogging within a few days. I’ll be indisposed for a little bit in a month or two when they remove my gall bladder. (And good riddance to THAT, I’m telling you.) Meanwhile, acute pancreatitis is taking over first place on my list of things I really REALLY don’t ever want to do again.

Bush Administration To Bring Back Original Salute to Flag

Under God ProCon.org –
School children, in this undated Library of Congress photo, are saluting the flag during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. This type of salute was changed to the “hand over the heart” salute in the Flag Code of 1942. This change came about because of the similarity of this salute with the Nazi salute.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540
Digital ID: fsa 8d34748 Reproduction Number: LC-USW3-041733-E (b&w film nitrate neg.)

Hey, it could happen.

Take Back Jesus

Salon.com | Rescuing Jesus
The American Christian right has hijacked Jesus Christ. It has made him into a brand, a logo, a bumper sticker. It celebrates his suffering on the cross, but largely neglects what he had to say.

Salon.com columnist Alessandro Camon has done a wonderful job of describing a situation that’s really bothered me for quite a while. Liberals have foolishly allowed the right-wing “born again” crowd to redefine what it is to be a Christian. Look, it’s not like I’m all that good a Christian myself. I don’t pay nearly enough attention to helping the poor and downtrodden. Sometimes I’m petty. Sometimes I’m just plain mean. But, hey, at least I think I’ve got a fairly good grip on what Jesus actually was all about. He sure wasn’t about tax breaks for the rich, trashing the environment, or waging war for oil. People like Tom DeLay and George W. Bush call themselves Christians — but ignore their words and, instead, consider their acts.

They’re not Christians at all.

Interview with Peter Perl Regarding Tom DeLay

The ‘Real’ Tom DeLay
I came to see him as a Christian fundamentalist whose belief runs so deep that he sees the world in very black and white terms. He has an apocalyptic view of the end of the world in which believers in Jesus Christ ascend to heaven, and others go to hell. His personal beliefs are his own right. I get concerned, personally, when people like that are essentially running the country and allow those views to color their actions.

Here’s something interesting: the Washington Post had writer Peter Perl available for a live online Q&A today regarding the time he spent closely following Tom DeLay back in 2001 in preparation for an “in depth” article about the politician. Perl got to know him pretty well back then and, no doubt about it, DeLay is even scarier than I’d thought.

Female Chauvinist Pigs

Powell’s Books – Review-a-Day – Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy, reviewed by Salon.com
After all, being a woman faced with infinite images of other women taking their clothes off, gyrating, tittering, moaning and pushing product can be exhausting and demoralizing. (Shockingly, there are those rare mornings that the New York Times online goes down better without the Victoria’s Secret pop-up ads.) Raunch, like so much of mass culture, is both out of our control and impossible to ignore. We must develop a smarter strategy for living with it than simply wishing it would go away.

Well, I can tell you right now what that strategy should be: Realize that this raunchy stuff is essentially ridiculous. Realize that the depictions on Howard Stern’s show or in a Victoria’s Secret store window display have nothing to do with serious genuine human interaction. These images of women as sex kittens aren’t threatening or degrading. They’re…silly. Realize that there’s nothing wrong with a woman dressing up in one of these ridiculous outfits if she wants to — as part of a game of sorts.

This book review appeared in my email inbox just this morning and it certainly fits in well with our discussion of those shocking plastic boobs and butts, doesn’t it? Do check out the entire article on Powell’s web site. Reviewer Christine Smallwood has used Ariel Levy’s book as a springboard for providing an interesting perspective on the history and politics of female sexuality.

I stand by my original opinion, though. Far too many people are spending far too much time obsessing about the meaning of sex.

It’s just sex, people. Relax.

Victoria’s Secret is Out! Plastic Tits are In!

With a Pose Here, a Boa There, Tysons Store Tones Down Displays
Lifelike female mannequins dressed in rhinestone garters, fishnet stockings and feathery thongs had been posed in suggestive positions when the store opened last week. The displays of tiny underwear caused an uproar among some parents and shoppers, who have planned a protest for this morning.

These are people who desperately need to get a life.

Despite the changes — mostly in the positions of the mannequins or, in one case, the addition of a boa draped over a see-through bra — protest organizers said they weren’t stopping plans to gather at the store.

Yes! Finally! Someone is taking a stand against this wanton public exposure of plastic tits. So… like…do these people forbid their children from stripping their Barbie dolls naked in order to change their little outfits? Or — maybe Barbie’s okay. At least back when I had a Barbie doll, Barbies didn’t have nipples. As Janet Jackson recently reminded us: It’s the NIPPLE that’s the really pornographic part of the human breast.

According to Andrea Laffferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition,

“We don’t know if they are going to do this again. People are very upset about it. And the fact that they would do it once shows they lack judgment and that there is a moral deficit at Victoria’s Secret.”

Ah… a kook! I do so enjoy kooks. And Ms Lafferty is a helpful kook! She’s very thoughtfully provided photographs of the Victoria’s Secret display windows on her group’s web site. Just click here

I particularly like the last photo — a close-up of the offending plastic nipple. They’re all good, though. In one picture, the photographer (Ms Lafferty herself, I presume) can be seen in the reflection of a mirror behind the mannequin. In another photo a couple of apparently normal men are smiling good-naturedly at the display.

The Traditional Values Coalition website itself is really worth a visit, too, by the way. It’s really REALLY poorly designed in a 4-column arrangement (with the far right column inexplicably left empty) and a truly obnoxious marquee scroll across the left 3 columns. The color scheme is in what I’ve come to think of as “right-wing-nutjob-red-white-and-blue”. There’s an odd drawing up at the top of the home page featuring an African-American boy with what appears to be a bad case of the mumps and some sort of strange skin-color-changing disease on his face. (Maybe it’s that disease Michael Jackson has, eh?) These people are really just tons of fun. They seem to be especially wound up about homosexuality. That’s one of their big objections to the Victoria’s Secret display — the “lesbian like” poses of the mannequins.

If you ask me, the Traditional Values Coalition people are spending way too much time thinking about sex — but not in a good way. In a creepy way.

Don’t Let the Endangered Species Act Become Extinct

Congress took the first step last week toward gutting the 30-year old Endangered Species Act, America’s safety net for fish and wildlife at the edge of extinction, voting 229 to 193 for legislation crafted by House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo. If it becomes law, the bill will eliminate the requirement for “critical habitat” for endangered species and make the government pay developers and polluters not to kill publicly owned fish and wildlife.

Doesn’t that just really REALLY suck?

You bet it does. The Sierra Club is making it easy for you to tell your Senators that you want them to vote NO NO NO! on this terrible bill. Click here to send a letter.

In coming months, you’re going to hear from some members of the Bush administration that it’s necessary to loosen — or completely eliminate — some of the environmental protection laws in order to assure that Americans have access to cheap energy. THAT IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL LIE. A move like that would be completely wrong-headed!! What our country needs is to dedicate our best minds and tax dollars towards development of renewable, non-polluting, environmentally friendly, homegrown energy. This isn’t just the pipe dream of a bunch of liberal tree-huggers, friends. The technologies are already out there — we just need to commit to using them.

Sigh… stuff like this Pombo bill really bends me out of shape. Can you tell? Make sure you send that letter to your Senators, okay?

Victoria’s Secret Leaves Little to the Imagination

Skimpy Underwear, Ample Commentary At Tysons Corner
“Well,” said Steina Rubin of Bethesda, “I find it just totally disgusting.” And, no, she would not be shopping there. “I’m not entering a whorehouse,” she said. “I come to the mall with my daughter. It’s disgusting. And I’m from Europe !”

Bwahahahahaha!!!!!!

And, as we all know, no one understands “slutwear” like the Europeans! Heh, heh, heh…

Apparently the new Victoria’s Secret store at Tysons Corner (an especially swanky shopping mall here in northern Virginia — I’ve been told the Jordanian royals used to fly in to shop there) has a window display featuring mannequins in mildly naughty poses wearing skimpy lingerie. From the description (and photo! you must check out the photo!) in this Washington Post story, the poses are really pretty tame — 1950′s cheesecake-y type stuff. It’s not like they’ve got the mannequins going down on one another or anything!

You have to admit, though, that would be pretty entertaining in its way. I’m reminded of how, when I was a kid and would be playing with my Barbie doll out in the livingroom, I would sometimes come back from a bathroom break to find that my brother had his GI Joe raping my Barbie. Mommmmmm! Tell him to stop it!! Heh, heh… I guess GI Joe developed a few issues out there driving his plastic jeep around on the driveway for so long….

Anyway, the usual morons are going completely berserk over the Victoria’s Secret display. One woman in the article complains that she can’t let her 13-year-old daughter enter the store to shop for a bra with a display like this in place. Helloooooo??? Who sends their 13-year-old to buy a bra at Victoria’s Secret anyway? Victoria’s Secret has always been geared towards young adult women who want to buy sexy underwear (and the men who buy it for them.) 13-year-old girls should buy their bras at Sears. Or JC Penney. Or, if their idiotic status-obsessed mothers insist on paying twice as much for the same item, at Lord & Taylor or Macy’s.