Picture: Twin Astroboys

Comment Elsewhere: God and Vegetarianism

Over at Acephalous, where I learned that the creators of South Park also wrote a musical based on the Packer expedition, I commented on Sarah Palin's invocation of the immortal sentiment, "If God didn't intend us to eat [X], then why did he make them edible?" I remarked:

The theology is twisted. God didn't intend for humans to eat animals. Genesis, Chapter ONE*:

29: And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30: And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Only later, after the abomination and destruction of all life but Noah&Co., does God permit the eating of meat. Chapter Nine:

1: And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
2: And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
3: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

God then goes on to start writing the rules of Kashrut. God may have made animals (and people) edible, but allowing them to be eaten was Plan B.

* KJV, since I'm sure she wouldn't accept any other translation.

Quoted: We can do that?

Just browsing through some ScienceBlogs stuff and ran across the following passage:

Producing proteins in the lab (often in bacteria) is pretty routine work. However, producing a posttranslationally modified protein can be much more difficult, because you generally have to have access to an enzyme that will perform the desired modification. On the other hand, it is generally much simpler to mutate the source DNA, and then use that DNA to produce a modified protein (generally with one amino acid substituted for another)

Routine? Simpler to mutate?

Wow.

Comment Elsewhere: Quis Custodiet Psychiatrists?

In a discussion of the Fort Hood tragedy over at archy, I noted that:

What's actually interesting to me about this, as it develops, is how normal this case is looking: harassed but intelligent loner, desperate circumstances, civilian handguns (and lots of ammo), lashing out at the institution which he blames for his plight. This is a thoroughly American slaughter.

I also said that, because the Major was a psychiatrist, that "There are going to be a lot of awkward quis custodiet discussions in counseling offices over the next few months."

History Quotations

It's been a while since I posted some new quotations.

Here's a great collection of quotes about history that I found via Winter Rabbit (whose discussion of rights, religion and law is quite provocative). Some good ones:

E. L. Doctorow:
History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Edward Gibbon:
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Etienne Gilson:
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

Friedrich Von Schiller:
The history of the world is the world's court of justice.

George Bernard Shaw:
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

George Bernard Shaw:
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

P.S. it's not exactly a history quote, but I just ran across Terry's posting of the full "We are the music makers / we are the dreamers of the dream" poem cited in Willy Wonka. The last line is one I might use in my history collection: "For each age is a dream that is dying, / Or one that is coming to birth."

Epicurus would not be an Epicurean, but I would

It's been a while since I did a life-defining online quiz. Thanks, Brandon:

Your recommended philosophy-guru is EPICURUS.

Key fact: Epicurus, founder of Epicureanism, is probably the most misunderstood philosopher of antiquity.

Must have: A delight in the countryside and gardens.

Key promise: Peace and tranquillity.

Key peril: Boredom.

Most likely to say: "The true hedonist can find as much pleasure in a glass of chilled water as in a feast for a king."

Least likely to say: "He who tires of the city, tires of life."

The quiz itself is short and, like so many of its ilk, contains either-or questions that really produce "depends on circumstances" answers. Of the six options, though, I'm reasonably satisfied with this.

Krugman's Rules

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman's four rules for research [via]:

1. Listen to the Gentiles

2. Question the question

3. Dare to be silly

4. Simplify, simplify

Comment Elsewhere: Obama: Officially Not Bush

Over at Progressive Historians discussion of this morning's Nobel Peace Prize announcement I wrote

What's to be baffled? This is one case where my first reaction is almost certainly identical to the reaction from the right side of the US political spectrum: it's not about Obama, but about Bush. He's not Bush, and they are very, very happy about that.

Don't get me wrong: he's saying some great things, and has made some moves in the right direction. Some. But, as the NYtimes pointed out, the nominations for this year's prize closed just a few weeks after his inauguration.

Granted, pickings were slim this year -- though there's all kinds of humanitarian and civil rights organizations they could still pick from -- but I'm unpleasantly surprised by the shallowness of this choice. Not that Obama couldn't become that kind of President, but he hasn't yet.

On the flip side, the Little Anachronism has been reporting some anti-Obama comments from school -- "likely to be one of our ten worst presidents" -- and this was dramatic balance.

Underreported? 2009 Head to Head

As is tradition here, I give you the Project Censored "Top 25 Censored Stories" and the WorldNetDaily "Most Ignored Stories" lists. Unfortunately, they're on somewhat different cycles, with WND working from calendar years and PC working on more of an academic year. As usual, I will bold the ones I've heard of. I make no claims about the truth of any of these stories, only that they are considered underreported; I have edited them slightly for length and clarity.

Project Censored, 2008-2009 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street 2. US Schools are More Segregated than in the 1950s 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team 23. World Water Forum a Corporate-Driven Fraud 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

WorldNetDaily, 2008 1. Charges that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. 2. hundreds of top scientists tell Senate they believe claims of man-caused global warming are fraudulent 3. The true causes of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, which point directly to the Democratic Party 4. Obama's ties to terrorists and extremists 5. The campaigns of third-party presidential candidates, especially Ron Paul's 6. The stunning success of the Iraq war 7. The sources of Obama's campaign contributions 8. Obama's far-left voting record 9. Bush's refusal to pardon imprisoned border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean 10. Suppression of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders' film, "Fitna," which posits worldwide threat from Islam

This is the first year, I think, that I've actually heard all ten of the WND stories, probably because it was election year stuff which actually got a lot of play. This is typical for WND, though: their list is made up of stories which should have, they think, changed things; the fact that they were widely reported, usually debunked, and people moved on is evidence, as far as they're concerned, that the story was under-reported. It's not the same thing.

I'd heard of six of the top ten PC stories, 11 out of 25: I think that's a bit low for me (hmm, checking the past years, it's actually on the high side), but some of these, if true (and not overstated), clearly are under-reported. The ones I've heard of, mostly come from my leftist sources, but almost never make it into the wider, so-called "mainstream" media in any detail or depth.

Comment Elsewhere: Zero-Risk Culture

Over at Terry's place I wrote:

I’m not the first to make this point, but our nation’s “zero-risk” approach to life is going to paralyze us if we don’t start pushing back on it pretty hard.

Terry turned that into a very interesting and personal discussion of the nature of risk and fear. Some key points

Taking a chance means being willing to fail in order to succeed, and we should be able to evaluate those odd objectively. Going for a morning run in the park is a reasonable risk, as is taking a solo vacation, or submitting a novel. Yes, there’s a chance of failure, but the potential reward makes it a good payoff.

That doesn’t mean being stupid, however. We need to recognize when danger is real and respond accordingly, by locking our house doors, checking references of daycare providers, making sure the brakes on our cars are in good working condition. And that also means stopping to question whether what we’re hearing on the tv is told to scale or if it’s inflated to sensationalist proportions in order to win ratings. Quite often, there’s more at work than just the facts.

I couldn't agree more.