Sunday, 16 January 2011

Today, I finished reading Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, by Donald Prothero. It was an unexpectedly dense book (I wasn’t sure I’d finish reading it by the due date); had an interesting first few chapters wherein Prothero mostly responded to stupid claims made by Duane Gish, then finally got to the fossil evidence around page 100. For the next 300 pages, it was a rather dry reading of ‘intermediate’ fossils of all manner of life, ending penultimately with mammals and finally a chapter on humans.

It was only the last chapter (chapter 16) that addressed the “Why It Matters” portion of the book’s title. Under the subheading “Why Should We Care?” Prothero delineates several reasons why rejection of the facts is bad for society. Point #6 is: “Denial of evolution is not just bad science, but it threatens our health and well being.” It was in the short explanatory sentences of this point that I read the most interesting tidbit in the entire book.

Do you remember Baby Fae? I do. Her story (indeed, her entire life) transpired in 1984, when I was just old enough to read about and understand current events myself. I still recall seeing a triptych of pictures in a newspaper which displayed a ‘normal’ human heart, Baby Fae’s severally defective heart, and a baboon heart.

See, when Baby Fae was 12 days old, Dr. Bailey of the Loma Linda University Medical Center fitted her with a baboon heart. It made the evening news, all the headlines, and a great line in one of my favorite songs. She died less than a month later.

I knew all that stuff before. What I didn’t know until today was that Dr. Bailey is a Seventh-Day Adventist and the hospital he worked for was funded by the Adventists. Prothero’s book links Baby Fae’s death with Dr. Bailey’s refusal to accept evolution; when asked by reporters why he didn’t select a chimpanzee heart instead (since the genetic match to a human would be closer than it would between a baboon), Bailey replied that he didn’t believe in evolution.

I looked online, and it appears that Bailey went against the medical community’s general consensus when he suggested the transplant to Baby Fae’s parents. Conversely, the Adventist News Network continues to praise Bailey as a legendary hero who tried his best to undo the botch-job that god performed when he created Baby Fae.

I wish I could find more about this story. The Adventists, like most religions, assuredly promote ignorance and bad science. But in researching Bailey’s background, he had no experience with chimpanzee’s, so he possibly didn’t feel as comfortable working with them even if one was available. And then there are other questions: Are chimps as readily available as baboons? My gut tells me no. Would acquiring a chimp heart have been cost prohibitive? Would the infant have survived even with a chimp heart? What would her quality of life have been? How would Paul Simon have concluded the third verse of his alliterative masterpiece? (One option: “The boy in the bubble / and the child with the chimpanzee heart.”)

But seriously, there just seems to be something missing in the links that supposedly chain Baby Fae’s demise on Dr. Bailey’s ignorance.

Monday, 17 January 2011

In honor of Martin Luther King, I had the day off of work today. Since none of us had left the house since Friday evening – well, unless you count Owen playing on the deck or me taking out the trash – we decided to go out to eat. We went to DaVanni’s.  We all dined for less than twenty bucks which, when we’re feeding three people (well, technically four), is a good deal.

The key to keeping the price under $20 is not buying any beverages. We just had water. Years ago, my wife pointed out that it’s bad to “drink your calories,” and I’ve been cognizant of that ever since, which is one reason why I’ve been able to maintain this stunning physique for so long.

Owen asked why we didn’t get root beer. I thought this was a funny question for him to ask because we usually don’t get a beverage when we go out to eat, but I suppose he saw the root beer logo and was suckered into craving it. I told him it was too much money, as a drink for each of us would have upped the ticket price by over $5.

So now we’ve gotten to the point where ordering a beverage other than water is considered splurging. When we go out to dinner for our anniversary, or for some other festive occasion, then we allow ourselves to get a beverage (usually iced tea). Sometimes, if we go to a fast food establishment, we’ll get just one beverage and share it.

After all, they have free refills.

Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Over six years ago, I acquired a set of headphones for use at work. They were great: the band went up over my head and the part that hung over my ears was comfortable. The best part was that they were cordless. This was an awesome feature, as it allowed me to move around in my cube, walk over to the printer and even to the coffee area and bathroom without having to take off my headphones. I listened to music on them but, since I had them plugged into my computer, I heard a little PING whenever a new email came through, immediately alerting me to the presence of some new spam without having to obsessively check my email.

Well, those headphones stopped functioning about a week ago. The part that plugs into the computer – the antenna portion – seems fine; it’s the headphones themselves that are no longer operative.

Today, during my lunch break, in an effort to mitigate this new found cubicle hell, I ventured to Target and perused their headphone selection.

Results: not good.

For one thing, about a quarter of the headphones were just for MP3 players – meaning I’d have to snap on an iPod or other such device if I wanted to use them. About half of the headphones were the earbud style, you know, so you can feel like you have a Q-tip in your ear all day. I have three sets of those one of my desk drawers at work, and we have more laying around at home. I’m not a fan. Then there were these styles that hook around your glarpo and then hang behind your head, almost on your neck. Okay, I have the same issue with these as I do with earbuds: they don’t stay up. My son would explain this as gravity pulling them down, and I think that’s an accurate enough description for our needs here.

There were more options, though: There were some souped-up headphones that claimed to be the best sound around. They had a cord that was 5 meters long. Though I was attracted to the sue of metric units, I quickly decided that a 16 foot cord would be helpful 1% of the time and annoying 99% of the time. Also, I don’t need the best sound around, so $40 seemed a bit steep for my needs.

I ended up buying a $9.99 pair of simple headphones; the style that came standard with Walkmans in the 1980s. The cords is about five feet long, so I’m sure to be annoyed with the tethering prospects, but, oh well. Tomorrow I’m plugging them in and rocking to some tunes.

Even if it’s not the best sound around.

Oh, one other thing — I felt like I could really feel for this person’s frustration: How Bad Marketing Killed My Dog.

Saturday, 15 January 2011

So, since the books, magazines, papers, memorabilia, memoranda, and knick-knacks above our main bookshelf have now nearly touched the ceiling, we figured it was a good time to sort through that stuff.

We used to have a lot of magazines, but thankfully, we’ve whittled the number down quite a bit. We used to have stacks of Entertainment Weekly, but now we just have a single issue – that one from 1995 that’s entirely dedicated to Star Trek (which, now that I think about it, might be my favorite issue of any magazine, ever). We also have just a single issue of Discover, the one that’s all about Einstein.

We also have a few issues that are noteworthy for being from a special moment in history. For example, I have the issue of Newsweek that came out right after the Challenger explosion, and I even have the one that came out following Dr. King’s assassination.

We also have a couple issues of a magazine titled Every Woman’s (billed as “The Woman’s Guide to Better Living”). They’re from the 1940s and 50s, so the fun in keeping these magazines is that everything inside them has become a sort of time capsule.

Especially the articles and ads about food. I decided to scan in a few images for your viewing pleasure:

So, here’s an image that accompanied an article featuring recipes (what women’s magazine would be complete without recipes?). This food item, at least by 1954 standards, must’ve been so appealing that this same image made the cover of this issue, too! So, what, exactly, is that food? I mean, just looking at it, it doesn’t look too bad, does it? Personally, I don’t care for hard-boiled eggs, but if I came across this sumptuous delicacy at a buffet, I would probably help myself to a nice heaping slice of that stuff in the middle.

Get this: it’s tuna salad molded via a mold tin and mixed with aspic to give it that full-bodied, Jell-o look that you’ve come to expect in your seafood. And that red stuff sitting around the blended fish? Those are cubes of tomato juice mixed, again, with aspic.

I can just imaging myself taking a serving spoonful of those red cubes, believing I’m gonna finish off my meal with some Jell-o, only to nearly vomit on the fact that it’s straight-up pasta sauce. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. And the reason why I know that putting something in my mouth that I believe is a dessert but which, in fact, is some concoction of culinary arts gone horribly awry, is because it happened to me once before. I will never, ever forget that gut-wretching moment that, alas, you will have to wait until February 23rd for me to write about.

Oh, if you don’t believe that those are the ingredients, here’s the facing page:

And it’s time for one more gentle rip on Every Woman’s. Now here are two plates of food that don’t look too bad; the top one features corned beef hash with peas, and the bottom one is a spread of broiled lamb chops with peas. Okay, even if those aren’t the sort of things you care to eat, at least there’s nothing weird about them. …Right?

Think again, future human! Take a look at that lower plate of food (and you can click on the picture for a bigger version). Do you see that glob of otherworldly green? What is Stokey’s advertising department trying to get us to eat? It’s not quite applesauce, and it’s not quite cranberries. Is it more aspic? Did some form of aspic have to accompany every meal in the 1950s? Or perhaps it’s a parrot fish’s abandoned mucous cocoon.

Yum! Who’s hungry?

Thursday, 13 January 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I listed off the books I read in 2010. I mentioned that I had read God Hates You, Hate Him Back, a book I received free from the publisher with the intent that I write a review of it. Well, HERE’S MY REVIEW. So, you know, more stuff to read!

And noticed how, in my post for January 11^th, I complained that I’m sick of hearing of Loughner as an “alleged” shooter? Well, now, apparently, he’s been upgraded to “suspect.” Yeah, it’s true. They called him a “suspect” at least three times on my drive home from work this evening. Oh, that’s so much better.

In other news: Court orders blood transfusion for baby boy.

This evening, my wife and I watched the film Thank You For Smoking. It was decent; worth a watch. We seem to have stumbled upon this sub-genre of comedies that are designed to look like a documentary in parts. It’s hard to explain but, we’ll be watching the movie, and it’s constructed in the usual narrative format, when, all of the sudden, they’ll be a narrator of a quick succession of cuts designed to imitate a news clip. Idiocracy was like that. So was The Darwin Awards. I think Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was like that in places, too. It seems to be a mini-trend going on lately.

Friday, 14 January 2011

Today we watched the documentary Man on Wire. It details the story of Philippe Petit’s desire to highwire walk between the Twin Towers. I know, it doesn’t sound that compelling. I first heard of the documentary in the weeks leading up to the 2009 Oscar ceremony. I didn’t know anything about it but, when we watched the Oscar ceremony, Man on Wire won the award for Best Documentary. The short clips and very brief words they said about the film really pique our interest, and so we immediately put it on our Netflix queue.

That’s where it sat for nearly two years.

The disk finally arrived in our mailbox a couple of days ago.

And it was a very well-made documentary! At one point, I even told Jennifer that I was nervous – to which she replied, “that shows that they did a good job making this.”

Man on Wire has the converse of the cliché that I mentioned above: it’s a typical documentary, but it’s liberally interspersed with drama; as if we’re suddenly watching a work of fiction. The footage is sped up in these parts, reminiscent of Vaudeville and silent films. The film is also almost entirely in black-and-white.

The ending is no secret: Petit did tightrope between the Twin Towers, as is common knowledge. The fun, though, is seeing how he planned it out. The planning was extensive; including several trips back and forth between America and Europe, numerous dry runs, and lots of site scouting. I had been unaware that Petit performed his stunt without permission from either the city of New York or the Twin Towers management. Seeing how he and his troupe got around security at every step made for an engaging story. With the beefed-up security since 9/11, it’s tough to see how anyone could do something like this again.

Go rent it.

Tuesday, 11 January 2011

Know what I’m sick of hearing? That Jared Loughner is an “alleged” shooter in last weekend’s Tuscon massacre. Here’s an article that hits you with that clunker right off the bat.

I know, I know, his actions have not been proven in a court of law yet. Kind of reminds me of how we didn’t know for sure if OJ killed his wife or not until the courts told us that, no, he didn’t. Or, at least they told us that no, we don’t know.

As the alleged author of this blog, I’m going to allege that Loughner was the killer in all six cases. I know I’m really going out on a limb here, but since I’m not a politician or a lawyer, I don’t have to couch my writing in all sorts of silly caveats.

I’m going to go get something to eat now. Food, allegedly, keeps me alive. Whatever. I ain’t buyin’ it ’til the courts say so.

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Today I added to Owen’s college fund. Well, I guess I’m always adding to it in that he has a porcelain piggy bank that I drop coins into almost daily, but today I brought in all the coins and paper money and deposited them into his account.

This is a bigger to-do than you might think. For one thing, in order to keep Owen’s money in a high-interest account, I have it in a special certificate (I think that’s what it’s called) that renews yearly. That means I can’t withdraw or deposit from the account for 12 months. The withdrawl part is fine, because I have never withdrawn from the account. But for deposits, I wait until a letter arrives in the mail telling me the certificate is expiring. I then have 30 days to go in and renew the certificate and (if I desire) add more money to it.

However! The credit union does not have a coin counting machine, and they won’t accept ten pounds of coins being dumped on their counter, either. So, for the fifth year in a row now, I’ve ventured over to TCF Bank and used their coin counter. But there’s a problem with this, too: TCF charges almost 10% of the proceeds if you’re not a member. I am not a member.

“But wait,” you ask, “Why not just get an account at TCF and then you can deposit the money right there with no fees?”

That’s a good question. The answer is: Because TCF is a lousy company and I do not wish to do business with them. Also, one reason why I make myself rare at Cub is because TCF employees annoy the crap out of me even when I’m at Cub.

Anyway, I’ve never had to pay their coin-counting extortionist fees. Here’s how I beat the system (this time): I rely on the good graces of a co-worker. He’s a TCF member, and he has generously tagged along with me so that, should they ask for a member signature (and they did this time), he can provide it and we get away with no loss of cash. He even made the coin counting a little funner this time by having us first guess how many items would not be accept by the counter (e.g., Canadian coins) and estimating how much money was in the jar I brought with me.

Oh – and that brings me to my next point: There wasn’t a heck of a lot of coins in the jar. Around 30 bucks, actually. Of course, I deposited more than that, because Owen also had some paper money, but, still…I wish it would’ve racked up a little higher than that. Living in an apartment means my wife and I funnel off all quarters (for laundry) before they make it into his piggy bank, and this year we began setting aside money for Isla’s college fund. My wife figures that, at the rate we’re going, Owen and Isla will each be able to take one college course one day. Her estimate did not take inflation or interest into account (wow, an unintentional pun), but I still see her point.

Hey, at least we’re trying. Owen and Isla already have far more (= an infinite) money set aside for college than we did when we were that age.

Want to read more about the Zimmermans? Read my wife’s recent blog post HERE.

Saturday, 08 January 2011

You might recall that last September I spoke at the Maple Grove Critical Thinkers’ Club on the topic of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Following my presentation that day, the club’s president invited me to come back and speak just on the topic of atheism. My friend, Eric, had accompanied me back in September, so he was asked to come speak on atheism, too.

So, today I was back at Champp’s in Maple Grove, along with Eric, to deliver a presentation about atheism. After introducing ourselves, Eric offered the definition of several terms, including atheist, agnostic, freethinker, apatheist, antitheist, humanist, and secularist. I then spoke in more detail about atheism and agnosticism. I pointed out that since agnosticism references only knowledge (not religious knowledge necessarily), and that since we all have gaps in our knowledge, then we are all agnostics. I pointed out how it was unfair that most people dismiss agnostics as being unconcerned with looking at the evidences offered for gods’ existences or being too stupid to understand the data. I likewise pointed out that, as an atheist, I am not dogmatically saying gods do not exist (that would make me an antitheist), but that I am merely saying I see no compelling evidence that any exist.

Eric then listed off a few famous atheists from the recent past and the present. I quickly followed this up by noting that we are all born as atheists (since we are not born believing in any gods) and that, according to a recent article by Ricky Gervais, there are 2,870 deities and so, unless anyone in the audience was Hindu, it was safe to say we are all ~99% atheist.

We also discussed some of the logical problems with a supernatural god and whether a person could be both atheist and spiritual.

As before, the Q and A portion that followed was the most interesting part of the morning. One questioner wondered why we should be so concerned. The (quick) answer: because religion does lots of damage, the good it does could be done without belief, and in our country, as in many others, public policy is dictated by silly, outmoded beliefs.

Another person asked how we (Eric and I) felt about near-death and out-of-body experiences. I compared those things to Star Wars (I guess Star Wars is on my mind lately): even if it was proven that people can move things around with their minds, or that our consciousness survives after death, this still does not prove the existence of deities.

Another comment was: “It seems to me that you guys took your bad experience from your fundamentalist upbringings and then threw out all religions based on one bad experience.” She followed this up by saying that when she goes to her local Buddhist temple, she feels connected to god in that she feels at one with the universe, and senses something larger than herself. I replied by pointing out that the Witnesses “proofs” for god are taken from the bible, so since I discovered that the bible is a pile of shit, then this means not just the Witnesses, but all Christian, Jewish and Muslim sects likewise have no valid argument for god(s). I added that the burden of proof is on the person saying something exists. So, for example, if Ganesha does exist, I can’t be faulted for not believing in her until her existence is proven to me. I also conceded that Eric and I should’ve added “god” to our list of definitions early in our presentation, because if we redefine god to mean “the universe,” then, yes I believe in god. I compared this to the popular graffiti from the 1960s: “Clapton is God;” if ‘god’ is defined as the guitarist Eric Clapton, then I not only whole-heartily believe in him, but I fully understand why people would love him.

One of my favorite comments was when an older gentleman said that he had once attended an atheist gathering and they all seemed like bummed-out curmudgeons. Conversely, he visited the local Hindu temple and found that everyone there was very excited to see him and they seemed full of happiness. When I mentioned this to my wife, her immediate response was, “That’s called love-bombing.” But my response was different, I said that I’d noticed, in my time, that drunk people are happier than sober people.

Sunday, 09 January 2011

We began our house-hunting adventures today. I absolutely hate looking for houses. Our new realtor is a major improvement over the last one, but I still found the experience frustrating, annoying and, at least for the moment, depressing. That’s all I’m saying about it, and I’m only saying that because I figure I have to say something about today.If you want more details, contact my wife, who is both more mentally stable regarding this sort of thing and doesn’t find it to be the terrible, terrible experience that I do.

In other news, I made a pot of tea for me, my wife, and my mom-in-law today. Want to know how stupid I am sometimes? Of course you do:

The label on the tin of loose tea says “1.5 teaspoons.” So, not wanting to waste this expensive brew, I carefully measured out 1.5 teaspoons and added it to the insert in our cast-iron teapot. After adding in the water and waiting the appropriate 2 minutes, I aliquoted (yes, it’s a word) some into the three mugs. As I did so, I said, “Wow, this is really weak looking tea. My wife pointed out that the 1.5 teaspoons was likely referencing each serving (=mug), not an entire pot. After all, the tea store has no idea how large my pot is.

Monday, 10 January 2011

Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but my cell phone provider is AT&T and I absolutely hate their “service” and I used to hate the phone the sold me, until I sold it for a profit through Craig’s List and bought a non-AT&T phone as a substitution. My old Verizon phone (which does not work on an AT&T plan, otherwise I’d be using it right now) is sitting in a box under our bed waiting for July of this year when I can switch back.

“Hey,” you ask, “if you liked your Verizon phone so much, why did you switch to AT&T in the first place?”

That’s a great question. The answer is: My wife. Yeah, she wanted an iPhone, and Apple stupidly decided to join forces with AT&T. That’s like if Brian Wilson started partnering with Mariah Carey for song-writing. Anyway, she wanted an iPhone, so we had to switch. Fuck that. I’m switching back to Verizon as soon as my indentured servitude to AT&T expires, and my wife can do whatever she wants with her cell phone future.

Anyway, I bring this up because it seems I’m not the only one who’s noticed this unholy alliance between one company that makes great products and one company that, well, hasn’t done anything of note since their name became outdated: Apple on AT&T.

For slightly more satisfying reading, here’s an article I read today about why the letters X and Z appear in so many drug names.

And finally, here’s a dog that’s smarter than most people I’ve ever met: Border Collie recognizes names for 1,022 items.