GumbyTheCat

Automotive Apostasy

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

What they tell you you're getting... and what you actually get.

Have you ever rid yourself of a car that turned out to be a total lemon? Have you ever experienced the odd mixture of feelings that roil within you as you watch the clunker being towed away for the final time? You know, the simultaneous feelings of relief and happiness that you are finally rid of that worthless wreck, coupled with feelings of sadness and anger because you know how miserable that car made you and how badly you were ripped off over the years?

Well, I know exactly how you feel. A few weeks ago, I went through that very experience.

Some years ago, I didn't even own a car. I went through life having a very difficult time getting through my journeys. When you don't have a car, you can be made to feel that reaching your destination is such a formidable task that at times you just give up all hope of reaching it. You end up looking down at the sidewalk, rather than gazing far down the road.

Most of my relatives and friends had cars. Whatever the make and model, they seemed pretty happy with whatever they drove. Somewhat childishly, I used to silently resent them. Because they had cars, they seemed so in control, so confident. Their journeys seemed so much easier than mine. Their worlds seemed larger, and their burdens seemed smaller. "One day", I thought to myself, "I'm going to be like them".

I finally decided to get my very own car, but really didn't even know where to start. At that point in my life, I knew very little about all the different makes and models of cars that are available, and had no idea what I even wanted or needed in a vehicle. I didn't even know how to start a car, much less drive one.

So, as sometimes happens in life, solutions materialize to address problems you haven't even vocalized. People started telling me about their cars. They told me why they liked their particular brand of car, and all the good it did for them in their daily journey. I learned about several different makes of cars, but most of the people I talked to told me about one specific car they had chosen - the Christler Salvation.

The Salvation, they told me, was a special car. It was, I was informed, different than any other automobile out there. It was such a spectacular vehicle, in fact, that all other cars were deemed unworthy and false, and fit only for the scrapyard.

Skeptical but intrigued, I inquired further. What I found out was, quite frankly, amazing. The Christler Salvation, I learned, was the only absolutely perfect car in the whole world. It was the only model of car ever made that had never broken down, or run out of gas. As a matter of fact, it didn't even run on gasoline - it ran on something called "faithanol". Faithanol, I learned, is an invisible substance that one fills the fuel tank with simply by having confidence in the perfection of the vehicle. In other words, as long as you believe the car is perfect, it never runs out of fuel and you are guaranteed to get to your final destination safely.

So perfect was this car, that you were actively discouraged from looking under the hood. Why bother? After all, the car is perfect and never needs to be repaired. "You don't need to know exactly how the car runs", I was assured. "Just believe and your journey will be a joyous one". Therefore, the hood of the Salvation was tightly sealed with what I later found out were called "apologetics bolts".

Still a bit skeptical, but trusting in the words of my friends and relatives, I went to Paul Tarsus's Salvation Showroom on Damascus Road. You know the place I mean - it's the dealership with the fancy multicolored glass windows and the cool disco-era smoke-and-mirror machine hanging from the showroom ceiling. I never did speak to this Paul fellow, because he had apparently died many years before. However, I did meet and speak with several of the showroom's salespeople. Though I knew next to nothing about cars, I had of course heard of the somewhat slimy reputation of car salesmen. To be honest, the salesmen there lived up to the stereotype, although they were all unfailingly polite, friendly and courteous. Of course, they were trying to sell me something, so I expected that. I did appreciate the fact that unlike the car-salesman stereotype of a sleazy-looking hustler wearing loud, mismatched clothes, complete with a plaid sports jacket and checkered tie, these salespeople were neatly attired in the showroom's standard black and white uniforms, complete with white collars. They looked a bit odd in that attire, but I liked that they were making an attempt to look professional.

Unfortunately, as the day wore on, the "inner used-car salesman" in my assigned salesman manifested itself. Like any car huckster worth his salt, he tended to avoid answering specifics about the car, like its history. I could not get the CarFax history on any of the vehicles on the lot, no matter how I asked. "No matter", he said. "The Christler Salvation is the perfect automobile, so there is of course absolutely no maintenance history on any of the vehicles on the lot." I also could not pin him down on a refund guarantee if I was not satisfied with the car, nor a warranty, nor could he even explain how a car can run on the intangible substance of faithanol. When I asked him "If this car is so perfect, why isn't everyone driving it? Why wouldn't the Christler be the only car on the road?" I was told that the Salvation wasn't for everyone, and that only the elect few were wise enough to seek it out. I was flattered by that, although in the back of my mind I knew that flattery of the customer is part of any salesman's schtick.

Eventually, my doubts and skepticism faded - the salesman had won me over. I told him I was ready to purchase one. Beaming, he congratulated me on "the best decision you have ever made or will ever make". I asked him how much the final cost would be, and to my utter astonishment he replied "Oh, this car is absolutely free. All you had to do was ask for it, which you did. And now that car is yours forever". I couldn't believe it. I said "How on earth do the automaker and dealerships make any money if this miraculous car is free?" He told me "Don't worry about it. We're not in it for the money, we're here to help people. Oh, and by the way, we hold weekly meetings for Christler owners, on Sunday mornings, and we pass the basket for small donations towards dealership expenses at that time." Blinded by the magic word "free", I said "Sure thing!", and drove off the lot a new man - full of joy and hope for the future for perhaps the first time in my life. Finally, I had what (I thought) so many other people had - the perfect vehicle that would take me to that most glorious of destinations.

For a short time, all was seemingly rosy. I truly believed in my car, and received many congratulations and slaps on the back from friends and family for making such a wise "purchase". I started hanging out with other Christler owners and attending the weekly dealership meetings, joined online Christler discussion groups when the Internet came to pass, and felt like one of the "elect" that the salesman had assured me I was.

I say "seemingly" rosy, though, because after a few months I realized the nagging doubts about the wild claims and stated superiority of this car were gradually creeping back into my mind. The salesman had told me that was normal for new customers - that when I experienced these worries and doubts, I should just read the car's owner's manual for guidance. As a matter of fact, he told me to read at least some of the manual every day. He also advised me to call the CEO of Christler anytime I wanted to, and he would be available to talk to me any time of the day or night. So I took his advice, and delved into the owner's manual. Of course, I had kinda sorta flipped through it when I first got the car, but this time I took my reading more seriously.

While I did receive some reassurance from reading the words of the automaker's CEO (mostly from the latter half of the manual), many things struck me as odd. First of all, the manual was huge, and divided into two main sections. There seemed to be a lot of things that didn't even relate to automobiles or the specific car in question - i.e. the Salvation. The first section of the manual, especially, was full of arcane history of the automobile industry and innumerable antiquated traffic laws. I also found out that the Christler CEO could be a downright cruel and nasty person at times, seemingly motivated to ruthlessly eliminate competition from other automakers as well as mercilessly punish those who violate seemingly trivial traffic laws (for example, driving with a pig in the passenger seat). I discovered in its pages a lot of history that did not jibe with the history outside the world of Christler, and many of the statements in the manual flat-out contradicted one another.

The second section of the manual did relate much information on the car I now owned. However, like Section One, it contained a lot of erroneous and contradictory statements. I also noticed that the astounding claims of the Salvation's miraculous abilities were mostly made by that Paul Tarsus guy, the man who had founded the dealership I got the car at. Interestingly, the CEO, who allegedly wrote or approved every word of the manual, wrote some of Section Two as if the car itself could "talk" (silly, I know - anthropomorphizing a car!). Reading the car's "words", which are in red ink for emphasis, I got the distinct impression that the car did not make such grandiose claims about itself, as dealership founder Paul Tarsus did. The car "spoke" much more humbly about itself than that. Indeed, it spoke much more about the importance of being a responsible car owner, respecting the safety and rights of others on the road, and honoring the CEO of Christler, than about itself or its magical qualities. It all seemed so contradictory and confusing to me. I was left with many more questions than before I had cracked open the owner's manual.

So, per the salesman's advice, I decided to call Christler's CEO. No luck. To date, I have called him thousands of times, and I have yet to get anything but his voice mail. I have never received a call back, not even from his secretary.

Now deeply concerned, I drove back to the dealership and confronted the salesman with all I had gleaned from the owner's manual. "No problem, son", he said. "Let me give you these." He reached upon a bookshelf and handed me a stack of books written by various people. "Take these books and read them. They will tell you how to read the manual, and understand what it is saying". I asked him "If the Christler is such a great car, and so easy to drive and maintain, why is the owner's manual so damned complicated that other people have to tell me how to read and understand it? Shouldn't the owner's manual be as simple and straightforward as the car itself? Why do I need user manuals for a user manual?" The salesman, now visibly flustered, just told me to read the automotive apologetics he had given me and to keep the tank full of faithanol by just believing.

So I started reading the books he had given me. Sure enough, they were basically step-by-step instructions on how to read and understand the owner's manual. However, I noticed that the authors' interpretations often differed not only from mine, but from each others'. This wasn't helping at all.

To make things worse, the more I found out about my fellow Christler owners, the less I liked most of them. Many of them showed up at meetings mainly to prattle on about things other than their cars. When they did bother to talk about their Christlers, they tended to expound arrogantly and proudly on how special the car made them, not how special the car was itself. And all too often they spoke badly of people who owned other, non-Christler cars. It was as if many of these people acquired Christlers for the sole purpose of running other drivers off the road. This un-Christler-like behavior was most obvious in online discussion rooms. Cloaked in the anonymity of the internet, Christler devotees could unleash their unbridled contempt (and often, outright hatred) of anyone who dared to drive a "false" brand of car. People who drove cars fueled with petroleum by-products were routinely condemned to the "gasoline section" of automotive hell, and many Christler owners gleefully and openly salivated at that prospect. This behavior originated mainly from the most militant "true owner" Christler owners, who are often referred to as "minivangelicals". These people believe that the CEO of Christler speaks to them from within, and allows them to unerringly divine his owner's manual.

However, that is a blatantly false (and narcissistic and egomaniacal) notion, as I soon learned. When two minivangelicals find out that they each have even minuscule differences of interpretation of the owner's manual, they will more often than not get into vicious fights and tell the other that their beliefs are straight from the pits of The Yugo Factory Of The Damned. It became obvious rather quickly that either a different Christler CEO speaks to each owner, or, much more likely, that each person reads and interprets the owner's manual through the filters and perceptions of his or her upbringing and past experiences.

So, more confused than ever, I went on with my life, not holding my car in nearly as high esteem as I did before. And then the damned thing started breaking down. The more I learned about the car, its owners, the manual and the CEO, the more trouble it would have starting in the morning. Of course, it started running out of fuel as well - I guess I didn't have enough faithanol to move a mustard seed, much less a car.

During this time, I encountered online a diverse group of people who were former Christler owners. They welcomed me warmly and treated me as a friend, even though I still referred to myself as an owner. This warm reception was in sharp contrast to many of my fellow Christler owners, who due to the fact I was having problems with my car were all too often contemptuously dismissive of me as "not a true Christler owner". These former owners had all gone through all the things I was currently going through, and knew how painful and nerve-wracking it is. They taught me the difference between apologetics and actual scholarly research, and encouraged me to read up on the true (historically accurate) origins of Christler and its CEO.

I did just that, and found out that the owner's manual was not written by the CEO, but instead was a hodgepodge of overly imaginative and historically inaccurate musings contributed by many different anonymous authors. I found out that what was included and what was left out of the manual was decided by committees who were more concerned about the bottom line of the various dealerships than they were the satisfaction of their customers. I found out that the CEO, at least as described in the manual, doesn't even exist - he is a fictitious amalgamation of several CEO's of car companies that existed before Christler Corporation was formed (in retrospect, it's little wonder he never called me back). I even found out that the Christler Salvation itself was built from designs "borrowed" from other, earlier cars - notably the Mazda Mithra.

I had taken the wrench of history and loosened the Christler's apologetics bolts mentioned at the beginning of this post. I had looked under the hood and beheld a jumbled mass of apologetics tubing and wiring of Rube Goldberg proportions, all of which were connected to a smaller version of the smoke-and-mirror machine that hung from the dealership ceiling. But there was no motor, no drivetrain, no transmission. These Christlers, I found out, never actually go anywhere. They are totally dependent on the imaginary fuel faithanol to give its owners some imagined sense of movement, as there is nothing factual or real to provide any substance to the vehicle.

I'm tempted to say the car never ran again after I opened the hood and peered into the engine compartment to see what was really in there. But in actuality, it never ran at all. Not once, since I first got it. The delusion that I had been driving down the road in the ultimate luxury car had been replaced by the realization that I had actually been bouncing around on one of those spring-borne coin operated toy car rides found outside many supermarkets. It's not just my particular Christler that was a lemon - it's every single one ever manufactured.

I found that I had done everything right, contrary to the minivangelicals' smug and judgmental proclamations that I hadn't. I was just as much of a "true owner" as any other Christler driver. The one difference? I committed the blasphemy of straying from the owner's manual and approved automotive apologetics reading list, thereby learning the actual history of the car. I had finally obtained the CarFax report the salesman wouldn't provide, and the report wasn't pretty.

The anonymous authors and conjurers of the fictitious CEO lied, the late dealership owner Paul Tarsus lied, the salesman lied, and too many Christler owners are so enslaved by the car's mythology that they are both too terrified and too proud to look under the hood and see for themselves the automotive fraud that has been perpetrated on them. The car itself may have cost nothing, but the contributions at the weekly dealership meetings over the course of a lifetime, combined with the fear-based enslavement to an empty lie, are a terrible price to pay for the delusion that you have something you actually don't.

What these dealerships are actually "giving away" - at such a terribly high emotional and intellectual cost to the customer - is the "Observer Effect" of quantum auto mechanics: a car that exists in a very vague and fuzzy state until the state of its existence is changed by the mere act of looking at it.

The people who believe that they, because they own a wacky magic car, are on the "one true path" to the "one true destination", are instead being driven down a dead-end street. And all the while, the car manufacturer, dealers and salesmen are laughing all the way to the bank, knowing that the customers don't actually own the cars... the cars, and by extension the dealerships, own the customers.

Many customers don't care. They are very happy with their Christlers, and deliberately drive hundreds of miles out of their way to avoid learning that they are driving a massively defective vehicle. If they feel the car makes them a better person than they were before they got it, and they do no harm to others as they merrily motor along, then more power to them, I say. However, that way is no longer for me. I just can't drive that thing anymore.

I recently, within the last few weeks, ditched that worthless car. I called Sheol's Towing Service and had it hauled to Gehenna's Scrap Yard, where it belongs. And I felt that relief, happiness, sadness and anger that I mentioned at the very beginning of this post. Still do, as a matter of fact.

Does that mean I have given up my journey? Not at all. I just won't be traveling by car. Liberated from the artificial construct of a false and manmade "journey fullfillment machine", and no longer forced to hurtle headlong down a one-way interstate to nowhere, I am now free to meander on the highways, byways, winding country roads and avenues of my choice. I have a feeling that the right destination will be waiting for me, no matter which path I take or which non-automotive mode of transportation I choose to employ.

Susan Boyle Teaches Us A Lesson

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:12:00 +0000

You go, girl.

I am no fan of "reality" television. Especially the talent competitions. These shows make millions of dollars by making fools out of everyday people, and specialize in selecting the most "marketable" singin' bimbo or himbo. American Idol specializes in making people out to be fools. They go out of their way to do that, by showing "audition episodes" to start out each season. In these episodes, the public is treated to wave after wave of people who are perfectly willing to be humiliated for the sake of ratings for Fox.

In Western culture, superficial things such as physical appearance are valued above all else. The entertainment industry is no exception, and is indeed one of the prime culprits in our transformation into a shallow culture. Plasticized bimbos with little vocal talent dominate the music charts. Most of the yodeling bimbos who are successful these days owe their success to careful attention to marketing and even more careful attention to electronic altering of the bimbo's voice so that it is passable on CD or onstage.

However, once in a while someone comes along who reminds us not to judge the proverbial book by its cover (I'm as guilty as anyone else, so don't think I'm preachin' to anyone here). In this case, the "someone" is Susan Boyle, a 47 year-old unmarried woman from Scotland. As many of you probably already know, she recently appeared on the British talent competition Britain's Got Talent. This show is another one of Simon Cowell's endeavors.

Those of you who count themselves among the over 25 million people who have seen the Youtube video of Susan's performance (in just one week!) will agree that she, while a lovely and sweet person, in no way fits the Western ideal of physical beauty. Her teeth are a mess, her hair is wild and unruly, she's overweight and all in all she could easily be the dictionary definition of the word "frumpy". She came off as a bit scatterbrained, and had trouble at one point putting her words together coherently. The show introduced her in the way these shows introduce all the abject failures presented for the audience's entertainment - with scenes of her wolfing down a sandwich, of her doing a goofy interview with that show's versions of Ryan Seacrest, all the while never taking her in the least seriously.

So, when she walked out on stage, the audience was already primed for amusement at her expense. The judges were no better, with smirks and eye-rolls galore. Simon, as he does on American Idol, asked her where she was from, how old she was (his eyes almost rolled out of his head when she said she was 47), and the real laugh came when he asked her who she wanted to be as famous as. "Elaine Paige", Susan replied. That got the audience going, with shots of the audience showing smirks and laughter. Simon asked her what song she was going to sing, and she replied "I Dreamed the Dream" from Les Miserables. So the music was cued, and she began to sing.

Oh, my.

She had barely finished the first ten words to the song and the audience went wild in shock, approval and utter disbelief. The standing ovation she received lasted through almost the entirety of her performance, with two of the three judges joining in at times (Simon did not stand up, although he did sit there with an amazed grin on his face much of the time).

After Boyle's transcendent performance, she walked off the stage, forgetting that she still had to speak to the judges. A delightfully humorous moment, actually - one that bespoke of her childlike naivete. When the judges did speak to her, two of them were pretty cruel while they were lavishing praise on her. Piers Morgan said "When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said, 'I want to be like Elaine Paige', everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now." Amanda Holden told her "I am so thrilled, because I know that everybody was against you." Talk about backhanded compliments. The implication of course, is that since Ms. Boyle is not physically a supermodel, that no one had any expectations of her doing a worthwhile singing job. Somehow, we have gotten it into our heads that being beautiful somehow lends to one's singing voice. We have put ourselves in a wretched place where we tell ourselves that physically unattractive people are beneath our serious consideration because they can't possibly be good at anything.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, I dislike reality TV. However, I got wind of this performance on a discussion forum, and mainly out of boredom I clicked on the Youtube link with absolutely zero expectations. I'm very cynical and not given to undue displays of emotion, but after seeing the whole sequence my eyes were welling up with tears. I rarely have seen a moment like this in all my life. I can only think of a couple of comparable triumphs of the human spirit that have gained notoriety in the last few years. One was when a high school basketball team let their severely autistic team member come off the bench and actually play - to which he responded by nailing a multitude of three-pointers that played a huge role in his team's victory. The other was a youth baseball team that, with the game on the line, put in a teammate severely disabled with Down syndrome. The opposing team voluntarily let them win by allowing the disabled child to get a hit - as I recall they basically let him have an inside the park home run.

So, I have to wonder... if moments like these are so special, why aren't we as a society doing more to encourage them? I am confident that while Susan Boyle's performance temporarily touched millions of people's hearts, in short order most of us will probably return to laughing at those who aren't considered pinnacles of beauty. We will continue to laugh at them and not expect anything from them, in order to allow us to overlook our own myriad imperfections and feel better about ourselves in the process.

We should be exalting the Susan Boyles of this world, not denigrating them. The fact that we don't says a hell of a lot more about us than it does Susan Boyle.

In reality, in all the ways that matter, Susan Boyle is extraordinarily beautiful. Not in the shallow physical sense, but in the human sense. An unassuming, friendly, loving person who stays at home to take care of her elderly, ailing mother. A person full of love who freely, if sadly, admits she's "never been kissed". A person who delighted in telling the world she has a cat named Pebbles. A person who, from what I can see, takes the taunts of a mean-spirited world in stride, and instead of going tit-for-tat, gives nothing back but sweetness and modesty (and a marvelous voice) in return.

In a world where "success" is personified by talentless human wreckage like Britney Spears, Susan Boyle is a reminder of what real success is all about. Success and beauty do not come from external sources, they come from the strength within us. Ms. Boyle taught the world an important lesson last week, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude for causing us to at least temporarily look in the mirror she presented us with.

For those of you who have not seen this remarkable video, go here (Youtube is not allowing embedding of this video for some reason). I also found a recording of her singing "Cry Me A River" from a 1999 charity CD, which you can listen to here.

Will she achieve her dream of being a renowned professional singer in the long run? I would imagine she has a very good shot, especially with Simon Cowell now firmly in her corner, reportedly putting together a recording deal for her. I have seen some critiques of her performance on the Internet that put aside the human drama aspect and call her singing mediocre by professional standards. That may be true; I'm certainly no expert on the subject. However, if that stunning performance is indicative of an untrained singing voice, I would imagine professional vocal training would greatly enhance the huge vocal advantage she already has over the vast majority of the world.

Internet cynics have been out in force, claiming that this entire drama has been a contrivance by the show's producers to make millions of dollars off of suckers like us, while Susan herself gets used up and cast out after she is no longer of any use. Well, there is probably some nugget of truth in what they say. After all, the producers did know her singing voice before she went out on stage that night, so they purposely cast her as the ultimate underdog in order to elicit the desired response. Shows like that exist to make money for their networks, and no one should be so naive as to think that show business is not a calculating enterprise that is based on the bottom line like any other business. However, I believe that in this case, the cynics are being petty, narrow-minded, and are missing the greater point.

Whatever Ms. Boyle's singing future has in store for her, she has, in the space of a few short minutes, already had a more profound impact on the world than many musical performers could ever hope to achieve simply by singing one song. God bless you, Susan Boyle. You uplifted us, and you gave us all a lot to reflect on by showing us what real beauty is all about.

Happy Birthday To Me...

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Today is the one-year anniversary of this blog, so I thought I'd post a quickie.

It's hard to believe it's been a year already!

My new painting business routine is incredibly busy, but has settled to the point where I can confidently state that I'll be back posting on a regular basis soon, although maybe not on a daily basis as I tried to do in the past. I'm thinking about changing the format slightly and making this blog more of a general outlet, as opposed to the religion and science themes that have been the main focus thus far. We'll see what happens.

In any case, I thank all my millions of adoring fans *cough cough* for being so patient, and hopefully I'll see y'all again real soon.

Blog Update

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:04:00 +0000

Sorry about the lack of posting lately, folks... I have been too busy to mess with the blog lately. This trend will continue indefinitely, unfortunately.

I recently acquired a new customer for my painting business - a 200-unit townhouse complex. I have more work than I can handle every single day now, which is a good thing seeing as I was basically just sitting around for the last few months waiting for programming or painting work to come my way. I was selected out of a group of over 40 subcontractor applicants for this gig, so I feel very blessed. Given that the economy is in such bad shape, this opportunity is something of a minor miracle.

Unfortunately, this means that I can no longer post on a near-daily basis as I have done these last seven months or so. I love my little corner of the blogoverse, have worked very hard on it, and hate to neglect it. But, neglect it I must. By the time I get home I'm usually too tired to do anything but check my email and go to bed. So, not much time for researching and composing blog entries anymore.

I'll try to post a few times a month, but it seems that overall, the blog is pretty much shelved.

It was fun while it lasted, and maybe I'll get that motivation back someday. In the meantime, thanks to all who regularly visit me and leave thoughtful comments. Hopefully, I'll be posting regularly again some day.

Gumby

Trading Spouses, Lunatic Edition

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:22:00 +0000

This is one of the most disturbing videos I have ever seen. I guess this is a couple years old but it's the first time I've seen it. This is what fundamentalism can do to people, and what it can do to a fundamentalist's family. It's from the Fox show Trading Spouses. Watch how happy the family is until Mama comes home. I feel so sorry for her husband and children, especially the youngest daughter. She looked terrified, as well she should.

It just boggles my mind.

My So-Called Life

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:08:00 +0000

It's alive... IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!

Abiogenesis, or the scientific study of the origin of life, is a field in its infancy. Much research has been conducted, but many of the results are inconclusive and at best hypothetical. That is understandable. The distinction between life and non-life is so drastic, yet the boundary is vague - not every scientist agrees when an assemblage of replicating molecules can be defined as "alive". The general consensus is that the first life forms were single-celled prokaryotes, which are (generally unicellular) organisms that lack a nucleus. Common bacteria are examples of prokaryotes. They are thought to have existed as long as 4 billion years ago, or only 500 million years after the initial formation of our planet.

It is generally agreed upon that life first arose when ordinary chemical reactions produced chains of amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. In all living things, these amino acids are organized into proteins, and the construction of these proteins is mediated by nucleic acids. The question of the origin of life is therefore a question of how the first nucleic acids came into existence.

Scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it shares some of the characteristics of life. The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete. Specifically, what they did was get RNA to replicate itself in a lab without the help of any proteins or other cellular machinery.

To clarify this a bit, let's take a very quick look at DNA and RNA. DNA is the "blueprint" of life, the molecules that pack all the genetic information of a cell. DNA and the genes within it are where mutations occur, enabling changes that create new species. RNA is the close cousin to DNA. More accurately, RNA is thought to be a primitive ancestor of DNA. RNA can't run a life form on its own, but 4 billion years ago it might have been on the verge of creating life, just needing some chemical fix to make the leap. In today's world, RNA is dependent on DNA for performing its roles, which include coding for proteins.

Back to the experiment.

The researchers synthesized RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely. "Immortalized" RNA, they call it, at least within the limited conditions of a laboratory.More significantly, the scientists then mixed different RNA enzymes that had replicated, along with some of the raw material they were working with, and let them compete.

What happened? They bred. And now and then, one of these survivors would screw up, binding with some other bit of raw material it hadn't been using - just as life forms do.

When these mutations occurred, "the resulting recombinant enzymes also were capable of sustained replication, with the most fit replicators growing in number to dominate the mixture," the scientists report.In other words, the RNA that was most able to adapt to its environment was the RNA that propagated most effectively... evolution by natural selection.

The scientists were careful to reiterate that while the self-replicating RNA enzyme systems share certain characteristics of life, they are not life as we know it. However, the day will come when science indeed creates life from scratch.

Source: LiveScience

Here, Kitty, Kitty!

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Awwww.... he's adowwwable!

More proof that PETA has lost its collective mind, courtesy of the Associated Press:

SPEARFISH, S.D. – The activist animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked school officials to change the name of Spearfish High School to "Sea Kitten High School." The new name would "reflect the gentle nature of its current marine namesake," the organization said in a letter to Steve Morford, Spearfish High School principal.

PETA said the letter is part of a new Sea Kitten campaign aimed at children.

If children were taught to refer to fish as "sea kittens," reflecting that fish, like cats and dogs, are "individuals" that "do have friendships," fewer fish might be killed for food or sport, said Pulin Modi, a PETA spokesman.
"We want people to realize that more fish are killed each year than all animals combined," he said. "They don't have the sympathy of more popular animals like cats and dogs."

Morford said he did not want to share his feelings about PETA. "Obviously, it's nothing we're taking seriously," he said.

Good Lord. Of course, I do not wish to see any creature come to unnecessary harm. But PETA is doing nothing but exacerbating their public image as a bunch of kooks with crap like this.

And who says kittens are cute and cuddly? This "innocent" little guy below terrifies me, quite frankly.

A Critique Of Christian "Persecution"

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Waka waka waka waka....

It's nice when someone writes a blog post that strikes so close to home, you feel like you're writing a post just by linking to it.

My buddy Eugene at A Life In Juxtaposition has brilliantly tackled one of my pet peeves - the constant crying by fundamentalist Christians who feel that they are being persecuted for their beliefs in one form or another. Intelligent Design blocked from being taught in the public school science classroom? Persecution. Someone disagrees with a Christian on a religious matter in a discussion forum? Persecution. Someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"? Persecution. Someone wants to put a non-Christian holiday display next to a Nativity scene? Persecution.

I see this all the time on Topix. Lately, I've been dealing with a fundamentalist who calls himself "pop quiz" (I call him "poop whizz" just for fun). Basically, the guy is just a Christian forum troll - he hangs around the forum for the sole purpose of condemning everyone who he sees as un-Christian as a hell-bound atheist. He's totally obsessed and delighted with the prospect of his fellow human beings burning in eternal torment. He's obviously quite uneducated, has no compassion whatsoever, and has never contributed anything of value to the discussion. When another hardcore fundie joins the discussion, he'll immediately scamper over like a puppy, warmly greet him, and "earnestly" warn him of the terrible persecution he is about to encounter.

Of course, he is not being persecuted because of his faith. He's being persecuted because he gleefully wishes eternal agony on people, contributes nothing to the topic, and generally runs around like an idiot. And, he lies. Every time he opens his mouth, a lie slithers out. We've caught him in a zillion lies, the most recent (and memorable) being his claim that he is a doctor who runs a practice with 15,000 patients. Um, OK... you can't spell, you can't even post a cogent argument, you sit around on Topix all day spewing hatred, and you want everyone to believe you are a doctor with an impossibly large number of patients... hee hee hee.

Naturally, when we refute his fairy tales with damning evidence from his very own posts, he plays the standard forum troll evasion games, adding a twist of Christian persecution as a garnish ("You just can't handle the fact you're an atheist who's going to burn, so you attack a Christian by lying and smearing him with false accusations!!!").

Eugene calls the common fundie tactic of feigning religious persecution "Persecution Envy". Read the article, because it's Eugene at his best. Here's a snippet:

It’s really not hard to tell those suffering from Persecution Envy from those who suffer from Actual Persecution – those suffering from Actual Persecution tend to be marked by a complete lack of whining over trivialities. Freedom of expression is something they long for, not something they wish didn’t exist. For some reason those who actually have their life and livelihood threatened due to their religious convictions hardly ever complain about people saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Imagine that!

Eugene correctly traces a large part of this faux persecution complex to Matthew 5:10 - Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I guess feeling persecuted for nothing at all is better than actually being persecuted. You can play the persecuted martyr without all the inconvenience of actually suffering. This utterly callous, selfish and whiny indifference to real religious persecution reminds me of the utterly callous, selfish and whiny indifference of the infamous (but non-existent, according to Snopes) statement wrongly attributed to Mariah Carey - "When I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."

Great post, Eugene. Oh, and Eugene, I stole your graphic as well. Try not to feel overly persecuted.

Unnatural Selection

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:54:00 +0000

Everyone knows that over-hunting can decimate animal populations. One of the best-known examples is that of the passenger pigeon. This bird was once the most common bird in North America. It was not unheard of to see flocks containing an estimated billion birds flying overhead for days at a time, in a band a mile wide and 300 miles long. The flocks were so massive that they blocked the sun. At the time Europeans arrived in North America, it is estimated that there were up to five billion passenger pigeons inhabiting the continent. Unbelievably, due to massive over-hunting and a loss of habitat, the last known passenger pigeon, a bird in captivity named "Martha", died in 1914.

However, extreme over-hunting is not the only hunting threat to the survival of many species. It has been observed that hunting actually effects the evolution of species. In the upcoming Jan. 12 edition of Newsweek magazine, an interesting look is taken at the evolutionary effects wrought by the practices of poaching and "trophy hunting". In short, in some animal species, humans may be forcing a smaller-is-better scenario, and the ultimate outcome may be the extinction of some species even without over-hunting.

Big-game hunting is a rare and expensive proposition. Typically, licenses for such hunting are either awarded on a lottery basis or auctioned for thousands of dollars. So when a big-game hunter gets a possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hunt for a trophy to mount on his wall, he makes the most of it. He will be very selective, passing up smaller males in search of those with the biggest antlers, the largest tusks or the most beautiful manes, so the creature can be stuffed and displayed on a wall. Poachers, because they don't play by the rules, make an even larger detrimental evolutionary impact on the populations of species such as elephants.

This is where the evolutionary ramifications come into play. Characteristics like large tusks and antlers are the result of evolution. A specific elephant, for example, might have slightly larger tusks as a result of a random mutation. That elephant has a better chance of reproducing and propagating the big-tusk genes. That's because long tusks enable elephants to forage more efficiently, and defend themselves better against other males. Therefore, females seek them out as superior "alpha" mates. Unfortunately, the very characteristics that help improve a species are many times the ones that attract poachers and big-game hunters.

Therefore, poaching and big-game hunting have changed the evolutionary rules for many species. By hunting the largest and most magnificent of a species, the long lineage of mutation and natural selection that produce superior individuals is cut off. The average size of many species has gone down as a result - not just because the bigger animals are being hunted, but also because the prized parts of the species' gene pools are simply no longer there.

For example, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec found a 25 percent decline in the size of horns on bighorn sheep over the past 30 years, and both male and female bodies are getting smaller. The logic is simple: male sheep with big horns tend to be larger and produce larger offspring. During the fall rut, or breeding season, these alpha rams mate more than any other males, by winning fights or thwarting other males' access to their ewes. Their success, however, is contingent upon their surviving the two-month hunting season just before the rut, and in a strange way, they're competing against their horns. Around the age of 4, their horn size makes them legal game—several years before their reproductive peak. That means smaller-horned males get far more opportunities to mate.

Bigger males with bigger attributes such as horns tend to father bigger offspring with similar attributes, causing the average size of a species to increase over time. With hunters targeting these trophies, smaller males are more successful at mating, so their genes are spread through the population more effectively and the average size shrinks. Females are forced to mate with males they would normally consider to be inferior.

Hunting (legal or illegal) of elephants for their ivory has also had a profound impact on tusks. Tuskless elephants, once a fluke that comprised about 2 percent of the population of African elephants, aren't sought as much by poachers (it's the ivory poachers usually want) so they breed more and are now 38 percent in one Zambian population, the Newsweek article states. Since one of the most important functions of elephant tusks is self-defense, this could have serious ramifications for the survival of African elephants as a species.

The same thing is happening in our oceans as well. Researchers have been aware for some time that the harvested fish of many species have been gradually decreasing in size. That's what happens when you take the genetically superior specimens out of a population.

Sources: Newsweek, LiveScience

Images From Science: Core Of The Milky Way

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:11:00 +0000

This image of the Milky Way's center, about 26,000 light years away, is a combination of observations performed by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. This view combines the imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust. The NICMOS mosaic required 144 Hubble orbits to make 2,304 science exposures. It was taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.

The image spans 300 * 115 light years, and the smallest detail Hubble can isolate near the galactic core is about 0.025 light years. There is a supermassive black hole in the center of the picture, but it's too small for Hubble to make out. That doesn't mean the black hole is small though - recent estimates peg it at about 4 million times the mass of our sun. It is thought that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of almost every large galaxy.

Below is an optical image of the Milky Way, much as you can see it if you were to look up on a crystal-clear night, far from city lights. Note the colossal dust lanes bisecting it, and that's why we need infrared-based telescopes to get a decent look at our own galaxy.

Because of the dust lanes, and the fact our solar system is very close to the galactic plane, we know less about the exact shape and size of our own galaxy than we do about the millions of distant galaxies that we can see with our space and ground-based telescopes. As a matter of fact, the latest observations suggest that the Milky Way, which has long been thought to be smaller than our closest major galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is actually about the same size and mass. Also, we now think there are four major arms in the Milky Way's spiral structure, not just two as was believed when we first found out that our galaxy is a barred spiral.

Andromeda and the Milky Way are moving toward each other due to gravitational attraction, and are scheduled to collide in two billion years or so. Does that mean both galaxies are doomed? Not at all. They will simply merge into each other, lose their spiral structures and become a single gigantic elliptical galaxy composed of up to a half trillion stars. Stellar collisions will be a statistically rare event, given the vast distances between stars. Below is an image of two spiral galaxies in the early stages of collision. Note the huge bridge of gas, dust and stars forming between them as mutual gravity starts the merging process.

Sources: Hubblesite, Bad Astronomy

I've Been Tagged!

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:28:00 +0000

Well, I've been tagged by the wonderful Newton's Ocean science blog. I had already decided a couple of months ago I wasn't doing any more memes (like awards and such), but that if I was ever tagged with a "Six Things You Didn't Know About Me" type meme, I would participate - once. So here goes.

1) I am a cleaned-up alcoholic and drug addict. Many years ago, I was not only a hardcore alky (how does 10 to 12 double shots of Jack Daniels straight up, each with a beer chaser or two, every single day sound?), but a crystal meth and cocaine addict as well. I also had more than a passing acquaintance with LSD, hash, and opium. I was very familiar with the interiors of paddywagons because of misdemeanor offenses - thankfully no felonies. I quit the powder and other hard stuff eight years ago, and quit the alcohol almost five years ago. Why? Not because of a judge, or because of family pressure (although there was some family pressure). But simply because I had had enough. And I had seen several friends my age die because they wouldn't or couldn't quit. I was sick of feeling sick. I was sick of spending my entire disposable income on bottles of booze and folded-up little packets of powder. And mainly, I was sick of myself. I found out by going clean that we have strengths within ourselves that we don't realize. Yeah, I went to AA meetings for a while, but if you're not ready to quit in the first place, all the meetings in the world aren't going to help.

2) Many of you know I do things like interior painting as a way to generate extra income. So what else do I do? I'm a computer programmer. You may not realize this, but you all hate me - every single one of you. You see, back in my sophomore year of college I was offered my first computer programming job. It was in the then brand-new field of call center automation, specifically automated mass dialing systems. This field now employs tens of thousands of technical people, but at first, there were only about a hundred or so programmers. I was one of them. I was a pioneer in the art of pissing people off with automated sales pitches and collection calls at dinnertime. I was also a trail-blazer in IVR - Interactive Voice Response - a tech term for "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that". So, the next time a computer calls you up and immediately puts you on hold, and you think to yourself "I'd like to kill the person who makes these things", well... I ain't telling you where I live. Deal with it. In any case, I am largely out of the industry now, and what work I do in that field I now do from home.

3) When I was in high school, I had an opportunity to do something most people don't - stand on the peak of a 14,000 foot mountain in the Colorado Rockies (Mount Princeton, at left) and see the continental divide stretch away, seemingly into infinity. To this day, it is one of the two most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The other being the night sky in the high Colorado desert, something I experienced on that same trip. It's the only time I've ever seen the Milky Way Galaxy in all its glory, because everywhere else I've ever been has scads of light pollution.

4) I have been to way too many rock concerts. Metallica, Yes, AC/DC, Journey, Genesis, King Diamond, Jethro Tull, The Who, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, J. Geils Band, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Foreigner, Rush, Santana, Judas Priest, Styx, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Phil Collins, Steve Miller Band, Blue Oyster Cult, Def Leppard, David Bowie, Guns'N'Roses... just some I can remember off the top of my head. Hell, I even went to see Pat Benatar because I was bored and back in the 80's she was a total hottie. I had my Led Zeppelin tickets in hand - great seats - and was all excited about seeing my (at the time) all-time favorite band. Then a friend called and told me John Bonham, Zeppelin's drummer, had died. I was devastated.

5) I was nearly kicked out of college in my freshman year for hacking into the university's mainframe. I wrote a CLIST "worm" program that squirmed its way through the system, picking up student engineering programming projects along the way. My program also nabbed a bunch of my instructors' "answer key" programs. In all truthfulness, in no way was I going to use that stuff. It was simply a thrill-seeking thing for me. I got narced-out by a tattletale kiss-ass ROTC cadet who was looking over my shoulder at the computer center one day. When asked by university administrators why I shouldn't be kicked out on the spot, I told them that since a college freshman could so easily get into a supposedly secure mainframe, then it was natural for me to assume the programs were all public domain, and therefore what I did could not be considered "hacking". The administration let me sweat bullets for a few days, and people in my computer classes were afraid to talk to me because of the whole "guilt by association" thing. Finally, I was informed they weren't going to pursue the matter if I agreed not to do it again and not tell anyone how I managed to do it. Ha, ha... they just didn't want to have the embarrassing truth of their inept security measures leaked to the student population. That was damned scary, though, I admit. The ironic part? The suck-up ROTC teacher's pet who ratted me out was himself kicked out of college for doing the exact same thing about a year later. I'm a pretty sympathetic person, so when I found out about it I laughed my ass off.

6) My sister, who is two and a half years older than me, used to terrorize me during my early childhood. Not only do girls grow faster than boys, but she was (and still is) whacked. Older, emotionally troubled sisters tend to beat their little brothers up. Any South Park fans out there? Think of Stan Marsh's big sister Shelly and you'll have a good idea how my sister treated me. Well, in the first grade, I broke my foot in a playground mishap. At first I was bummed, but found out that when you are in the first grade and have a big heavy plaster cast on, for some reason it makes you the most popular kid in school. In my seven-year-old way, I grasped that a cast is not necessarily just something that keeps a broken bone held together - it had some kind of power. So, I went upstairs to my sister's bedroom to inform her of that fact. I kicked the livin' shit out of that bullying bitch with that heavy cast, and didn't stop until she lay screaming on the floor, begging me to stop (I was getting tired anyway). The metal heel-plate protruding from the toe of the cast was a nice extra touch - I gashed her up but good. Knowing the cast would not be a part of me forever, I informed her that cast or no cast, I was going to whale on her just as bad, using anything at hand, if she got the idea to pick on me ever again. Through terrified shrieks, blood and tears, she accepted my terms. And she never beat me up again. Now them's family values.

I am not passing this meme along, but it was fun. Thanks Newton.

Top Ten

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:28:00 +0000

Sigh... found this in a discussion thread.

Top Ten Reasons That Beer Is Better Than Christianity:

1) No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
2) Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
3) They don't force beer on minors who cannot think for themselves.
4) Beer has never caused a major war.
5) When you have a beer you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
6) Nobody has ever been burned at the stake, hanged or tortured over a beer.
7) You don't have to wait 2000 years for a second beer.
8) There are laws saying beer labels cannot lie to you.
9) You can prove you have a beer.
10) If you are devoted to beer then there are groups who can help you stop.

It's funny, but it's kind of sad that many Christians behave in a way that inspires people to create this kind of list.

Sagan And Pink Floyd: On The Turning Away

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:03:00 +0000

Given that I'm a Carl Sagan fan, a Pink Floyd fan and am given to pondering about our place in an inconceivably vast universe, I was extremely happy to find this video. Enjoy.

Images From Science: Stellar Nurseries

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:34:00 +0000

I thought I'd start out 2009 with some cool pics. That way I don't strain my brain right off the bat.

Many of my favorite images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been those of stellar nurseries and the nebulae the new stars draw their raw material from. One of the most iconic Hubble images ever, dubbed "The Pillars Of Creation", is of part of the Eagle Nebula, a vast cloud of material about 7,000 light-years from Earth that is probably the remnant matter from the death of a previous star. That image is shown above. Below is a 9.5 light-year high column of dust and gas known as "The Spire", also part of the Eagle Nebula.

Although there are massive amounts of matter in these awe-inspiring columns, astronomers say that X-ray analysis shows that X-ray sources do not emit directly from the columns, but are instead at other random locations around the nebula. This tells the scientists that whatever proto-stars are forming within the columns, they are not yet hot enough to start emitting X-rays. However, the columns themselves are carved out by energy emissions from newborn stars that have formed in the nebula.

The above image is of a larger part of the nebula, imaged by Spitzer in various wavelengths of infrared radiation. The different colors represent the different wavelengths. The Pillars of Creation are just right of center in the image.

Interestingly, according to the Wikipedia article about the nebula, in 2007 the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered evidence that the Pillars were likely destroyed by a supernova explosion about 6,000 years ago, but the light showing the new shape of the nebula will not reach Earth for another millennium. Unfortunately the article does not say what that evidence is. If I ever find out what it is I'll let you know.

Lastly, just in case you think the Pillars of Creation are massive, below is a Spitzer image of the star-forming region dubbed W5, in the vicinity of the constellation Cassiopeia. These ain't no measly pillars of creation... these are the "Mountains of Creation". Included with the image is an inset of the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, shown to scale.

Sources: SpaceTelescope, Caltech

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:44:00 +0000

Try not to drink too much tonight...

Yep, They Say The Darndest Things

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:27:00 +0000

From a Topix discussion thread debating the existence of God (a silly exercise in itself, but it's fun), the following quote from a fundamentalist named "Armo" (italics mine):

I cannot prove it, I only believe it. and for me that's proof enough.
It is YOU that cannot understand this because you try to use reason instead of faith.
Let go of your intellegence and reason and God will open up a whole new world to you that you have never seen before, or is this just too much for your big brain to handle?

Good Lord.

Is it any wonder fundamentalists drive me up the proverbial wall?

The Pale Blue Dot Vs. Fundamentalism

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:06:00 +0000

Above is a famous photograph taken of the Earth (I added the arrow, of course) by Voyager 1 in 1990 from 4 billion miles away (about 6 light-hours). The late astronomer Carl Sagan called this view of Earth the "Pale Blue Dot", and had this to say about the image:

That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

When we look at this image, and realize how utterly small and insignificant Earth looks, also keep in mind that this picture was taken by a spacecraft that was still comfortably within the confines of our solar system. Our solar system is an inconceivably small object compared to the Milky Way galaxy in which it resides. And the Milky Way galaxy is an inconceivably small object in proportion to the Local Group cluster of galaxies in which it resides. And the Local Group galaxy cluster is an inconceivably small object in proportion to the overall Universe.

A common way of thinking about the size of the Earth in relation to the overall Universe is to think of Earth as but a grain of sand amongst all the grains sand on all the beaches and deserts of the world. That's a decent start, but in reality, that's assigning the Earth way too much significance in the scheme of things. Our home planet can more accurately be thought of as a molecule of silica in a grain of sand that contains tens of thousands of silica molecules. Then consider all those other grains of sand in the world, and you can start to get a better approximation of how small Earth really is, and how staggeringly huge the Universe really is.

I feel that there is a God, and due mainly to geographical happenstance, subscribe to the belief system known as Christianity. I believe there is a God who started this grand cosmological experiment 13.7 billion years ago and stepped back to watch it all unfold.

However, given our spectacularly insignificant place in the universe, it seems utterly ridiculous to proclaim that any one religion has all the answers. It seems obvious to me that not only do we have hardly any answers, but we don't even yet know what the questions are. Whether you believe God exists or not, one thing is clear - mankind originally developed religion to try to understand the world around us. That's why creation myths are the oldest stories in any religion. Creation myths are an attempt to answer questions like What is this place? What is the big yellow hot ball in the sky? What are the twinkling little lights in the night sky? For a long time, religion was science - there was no distinction; they were one and the same. Science as a separate construct did not exist until many, many centuries after the first religions were concocted - and that is strictly the fault of organized religion's superstitious rigidity. There is a chance that religion and scientific inquiry could have grown as one, to the benefit of all mankind, but the movers and shakers of organized religion saw things differently. So we shall never know.

Science split from religion when observers of nature found out that reality is infinitely much more vast and complicated than any religion could have imagined. Religion could have continued its oneness with science and grown along with the sum of human knowledge, but due to its insistence that its writings were divinely inspired, and therefore inerrant, it could not accept discoveries like the one that found out the Earth is not at the center of all Creation. So organized religion decided to confine itself to the primitive myths that are recorded in its Scriptures. Science said "See ya later", and hasn't looked back.

In order to remain relevant in an increasingly educated world, organized religion has had to reluctantly accept many of the discoveries of the scientific community. However, the more conservative elements of the Christian, Islamic, and many other churches still make the mistake of trying to convince their followers that their view of Creation is the correct one. They have gone as far as developing their own alternative "science" - pseudoscientific endeavors that try to rewrite reality so that biology, geology, paleontology, genetics, physics, astronomy, etc. can fit neatly within the confines of their sacred texts. In other words, they are trying to reclaim their long-lost ownership of science. They deride real science as a satanic abomination in their relentless propaganda campaign, forgetting that in a very real way, science is the offspring of religion. When ultra-conservative practitioners of any religion deny science, they are denying a part of themselves. This is one of the dishonesties of organized religion.

I do have my fun snarking with fundamentalist Christians and Muslims, but in reality it is sad to see how small-minded such a large percentage of the human race can be. People who have limited their entire personal universes to the microscopically narrow scope of a religious text - people who say that their text, and only their text, perfectly describes the sum total of reality - have consigned themselves to living their lives imprisoned in a tiny medieval cell with no windows and a tightly locked door. These are the people who tell me I will be in Hell, burning in eternal agony, because I have no fear of science, try to understand the vastness and complexity of Creation, and therefore reject the notion that the reality-deficient Bible is the inerrant word of God. These people are enslaved by fear - the fear that if they believe anything not found in their sacred text, they will be the ones to suffer eternal torment. In doing so, they miss out on mankind's great adventure - the grand quest to understand exactly what it is that God created in the first place. It's sadly ironic isn't it? Religion, the very thing mankind created to help us understand Creation, is the very thing that prevents many of its adherents from doing just that. All because of an enslavement to the fallacious idea of the infallibility of one Scripture or another.

The really ironic thing is, in an increasingly science-savvy world, I tend to believe fundamentalists have doomed themselves to eventual total irrelevance, and subsequent extinction. Sure, it will take a while. Fundamentalism still enjoys periodic upswings in popularity - it is going through one right now. However, in biology, the inability to evolve practically guarantees the extinction of a species. It is my best guess that the same thing will, in the long run, happen to fundamentalism. Maybe not in my lifetime, and maybe not for hundreds of years. But I do think it will happen someday. To me, it's inevitable. If fundamentalists cannot evolve, they will die. If fundamentalists do change and become less spiritually and intellectually inflexible, they will, by definition, cease to be fundamentalists.

When fundamentalism finally fades away, it will be the dawn of a bright new day for humanity. People of all faiths will be free from religious tyranny, and we'll all go forward, secure in the faith that there is something greater than themselves out there, and we'll all eagerly try to find out exactly what it is.

The Fundamentalist Internet Debate Handbook

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:22:00 +0000

In my meanderings through the online wasteland known as Topix, I have had seemingly endless debates with Christian fundamentalists in the religion and science forums. Although many fundamentalists are very nice people, many are not. I have noticed that the bad ones tend to gravitate toward a certain set of deceptive debating tactics, and that after a while you've pretty much seen it all. Here is my guide to some of these fundamentalist tactics. For fun, I've written it as sort of a debating instruction guide, for fundamentalists by fundamentalists. Of course, I've added my own snark as well. For those of you who have never had the, erm, pleasure of debating the more extreme fundamentalists, I assure you the following list is not a joke, although I have made an effort to cast some of their sleazy tactics in a humorous light.

1) Put forth a Lie For Jesus™ on a discussion forum. A "Lie For Jesus" is any lie that you think will negate a given scientific theory, or prove Christianity's superiority over all those fraudulent, Satan-inspired, unspeakably violent and bloody religions out there, like Buddhism. As an example, sign into an evolution discussion forum and post "Darwin recanted on his deathbed!" and loudly proclaim it to be an unassailable Truth. Do not worry about the fact that your lie will undoubtedly be exposed - after all, Jesus is on your side, no matter how much you lie. That's because you're a True Christian™, and therefore lying for Jesus is not really lying - or a sin. The commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness" only applies to others, not you.

2) When the Lie For Jesus™ is inevitably proven to be a lie, repeat the lie, adding insults if desired. Note: proper True Christian™ insults are an advanced topic (requiring actual knowledge of Scripture), and will therefore be discussed in later chapters. In the meantime, however, you can insult your fellow debater by casting aspersions on their intelligence, their religious faith or lack thereof, or by criticizing their spelling or grammar (especially if your own grammar and spelling skills are sorely lacking. Trust us, it's not hypocritical).

3) When you feel you have performed Step #2 enough times, start the process of evasion. Post responses that have nothing to do with the rebuttal of your Lie For Jesus™. Respond to every part of a rebuttal post except those parts that actually rebut your lie. Sometimes this evasion technique requires that you step away from the discussion thread for a while, so the factual rebuttals to your lies get buried a few pages back. Then, reappear and continue posting your original lie as if nothing happened. Since, as a True Christian™, God is on your side, the people who have exposed your lie maybe possibly won't remember. We promise.

4) In the event that repeated evasions don't work (those atheists and "cafeteria Christians" are evil and crafty, and are very persistent when trying to destroy True Christianity™), switch to denial mode. Accuse the person who has exposed your Lie For Jesus™ of taking your words out of context, even when they supply the entirety of the post in which you posited your lie. If that does not get the pesky hell-bound atheist/non real Christian off your righteous back, simply deny you made the claim at all, and accuse him or her of "taking a simple post and making a big deal out of something I wasn't even trying to say in the first place, you ignorant idiot".

5) In debates over a scientific subject (such as evolution vs. the real Truth, creationism), a useful tactic is to denigrate science as evil. Tell people that science is an atheistic lie, designed to tear people away from God and Real Truth™. When you type your posts on your computer that was made by science, and submit those posts to an Internet that was created by CERN physicists as a byproduct of their physics research, let these no-good atheist monkeys know that ALL science is evil. But don't dally on the internet if you have more pressing concerns. After all, if you have a doctor's appointment, you don't want to be late for your latest-strain flu vaccine shot or CAT scan.

If calling science evil doesn't mesh with the lie you are defending, it is helpful to call science a "religion". Tell your opponents that in order to accept scientific research, they have to "have faith", so that makes science a religion. That way, when someone points out that quoting biblical chapter and verse has no merit in a science debate, you can say something like "Well, you just quoted from On The Origin Of Species, so why can't I quote from my Holy Scriptures?"

Whether you refer to science as just evil or as an evil religion, though, be sure to give the impression that you know more about science than any godless physicist or molecular biologist. For example, throw the word "thermodynamics" around a lot - that will leave your atheist opponents in awe of your intellectual prowess.

6) If you notice more and more people joining in the discussion and they're all exposing your Lie For Jesus™, accuse the original refuter of your lie of sock puppetry. Since not many people in their right mind would dare to question a True Christian™, the other people are obviously fake online identities that the original person created to make it seem like everyone sees through your lie. That's just common sense, even if the other posters are in fact not sock puppets.

7) Since the other guy is so hell-bent on creating obvious sock-puppets, then by all means create your own! If there are no other True Christians™ on the forum, feel free to create as many identities as needed to punish the godless heathen. It's OK to do so, because the other guy obviously did it and you're just fighting fire with fire, right?

Be careful though - this is an advanced debating technique and not for beginners. You must make sure that forum profiles do not show ISP locations and/or sign-up dates, and you must take care to make your various sock puppets have different grammatical and spelling styles. You'll really fool those nasty heathens if you actually use spell-check with some of your sock puppets' posts. (Note: Spell-check is neither required nor recommended in posts you make under your own name. Since public education is all about God-hating liberals pushing their demonic atheism and homosexual agenda on everybody, the less educated you sound, the more of a True Christian™ you are.)

8) People who disagree with you or call you a liar are to be automatically labeled as tools of Satan, or at the very least denounced as "not really a Christian" (more on that later).

9) Demand that your opponent provide links to back up his or her exposing of your Lie For Jesus™. Then, no matter how reputable the source, or how correct the provided information turns out to be, reject it out of hand as unreliable second-hand speculation (actually, reading the provided material is not recommended). Do not worry that the Bible itself is 100% second-hand hearsay and therefore you'll seem like a hypocrite; remember that Jesus is on your side and hates everybody that disagrees with your lie. That's all that counts. Also, if the information that refutes your lie comes from a Christian website, accuse the obviously fake Christian of taking that information out of context. No further explanations are necessary (actually, further explanations should be avoided at all cost). It is also helpful to point out that non-Christian websites are inherently not trustworthy sources, as they are all part of the vast anti-Jesus conspiracy.

A particularly effective method is denying the veracity of any non-True Christian™ online source. This is a brilliant debating tactic, because when you get your information off the Web but insist your opponent get his information from a hard-to-find and often outdated library book, he often just gives up, leaves the forum angry or gets bogged down trying to chase down source material to back up his obviously satanic claims. Yay, Jesus wins again! And don't worry about being hypocritical when you get your information from the Web. As long as your information comes from a True Christian™ website, everything's cool. See how proper debate works?

10) Under no circumstance are you to state that Christianity is a religion. That would give the godless atheists the (of course mistaken) impression that Christianity is just one of many belief systems, and they can use that against you in a debate. Even though you worship a god, base all your beliefs on a religious text, attend church, and are part of a faith-based ritualistic organization that has different branches, at the very most state that "Christianity is a relationship, not a religion". This tactic works especially well when debating Muslims, because as we all know, Islam is a religion. How do we know? Because those deluded Muslims worship a god, base all their beliefs on a religious text, attend mosque, and are part of a faith-based ritualistic organization that has different branches. See the difference? Yep, the word "mosque". That proves it! We knew you would get it, because as a True Christian™, you understand the nuances of critical thinking.

11) Threaten those who repeatedly call you on your lie with eternal torment. When you mention the lake of fire, make sure you do it with a smidgen of sadistic pleasure. That'll show those godless heathen bastards. (Note: This technique is not to be used right out of the gate. It's important to show your loving and compassionate nature before you start giggling about the prospect of your fellow human beings screaming in eternal agony).

12) Tell people that interpreting the Bible is a mortal sin. Tell them that the Bible is meant to be read literally; i.e. as a perfect and inerrant transcription of God's thoughts. Tell them the entire book must be taken as rock-solid fact, even the story about the 500-year-old wino who built a wooden boat that not only withstood a titanic global catastrophe, but also held two of every species of life that ever lived, including dinosaurs. Note: don't say "dinosaurs", say "leviathan", and instead of "species", say "kind". You'll win the atheists' respect that way, and surely deny them any chance of winning any debate about the Flood.

However, you yourself should by all means interpret biblical passages any way you see fit. If you are called on this seeming hypocrisy (it only seems like hypocrisy to those evil gay-loving liberal atheist Democrats), tell the other person that you're not "interpreting" the Bible, you simply have "discernment". Do not, under any circumstance, explain just what "discernment" is actually supposed to mean (we at the Fundamentalist Internet Debate Handbook Publishing Company aren't really sure, either). When pressed on the "discernment" issue, just say "You wouldn't understand this advanced concept, because you're not a Christian". Then, pretend you have to go do something else. Don't post for a while, and hopefully the whole "discernment" issue will just go away.

13) Throw around a whole bunch of seemingly pertinent Bible quotes to support your Lie For Jesus™. However, be careful to use only those biblical passages that can be used out of context so that they appear to support your lie. Be careful that you don't use passages that contradict your lie. This tactic always works, because it is a well-known fact that atheists know nothing about the Bible. We also recommend that as a general rule in life, and not just in online debates, feel free to discard any part of the Bible that does not say what you feel it should say. After all, you have discernment. That means you have the right to ignore any inconvenient biblical passages that you, in your righteousness, feel God should have written better (or omitted altogether).

14) If the person who has refuted your Lie For Jesus™ is a professed Christian, challenge them on their obviously baseless assertion. Ask them to prove it. Ask them to witness - to state the circumstances in which they supposedly became a "Christian". Then scoff at their conversion story and tell him "You're not really a Christian", even if said conversion tale comes from a person who once was a homeless drug addict and criminal, accepted Christ into his heart, rejected his sinful ways and ended up as the pastor of a Christian church that ministers to and feeds the elderly, poor and infirm. After all, they can't be a True Christian™ if they disagreed with you. As we True Christians™ know, John 3:16 is only kinda sorta true.

15) Live up to your stated position as a fundamentalist True Christian™. Tell the sinner who exposed your Lie For Jesus™, "I'll pray for you anyway, because as a Christian I love you, you retarded atheist douchebag". Then do it. Pray for those who have exposed your lies, and ask that God lower the Holy Thermostat in their predestined section of Hell by a few degrees when they die. That is truly the loving fundamentalist True Christian™ thing to do. God will be very pleased with you, and you can sleep better at night without the inconvenience of that nagging little voice in your head telling you that you're a very, very bad person. Don't worry, that voice is that of Satan, he's just trying to shake your faith. It's what the godless atheistic liberal gay-agenda pushing Democrats so naively call a "conscience".

16) If you notice a fellow True Christian™ getting unfairly ganged up on by evil atheist gay-loving liberal Democrats in a discussion forum, it is your duty to immediately come to their aid! Jump right in and help your fellow saved soul by automatically agreeing with everything your friend says, even if he or she says "Jesus came to me in a vision right after I took my meds and told me that two plus two equals five, and said that anyone that says the answer is four is going to burn for all eternity". Remember, it's all about Jesus. If He says two plus two equals five, then by golly, five it is.

17) Become practiced in the art of projection. Learn to recognize your own failings, insecurities, doubts and fears. Instead of contemplating them and dealing with them in an honest and open way (our souls are saved and therefore we have no need of "soul-searching" or humble introspection), simply project them ceaselessly onto the godless atheists or non-True Christians™ you are debating:

Tell them that they are fearful and have no idea what the afterlife truly holds. Tell them they speak without any logic or reason. Tell them they lie. Tell them they rant and rave because they are so afraid that their beliefs aren't really true. Tell them that they will have wasted their lives by being so rigid and unbending with regards to matters of faith. Tell them they are judgmental. Tell them they only argue because deep down, they know the other guy is right. Tell them their information comes from biased, dubious sources.

Do all those statements strike a disturbing chord and hit uncomfortably close to home, True Christian™ brothers and sisters? Never fear! Projection will not only help you vanquish your godless foes in a debate, but it will also maybe somehow magically cleanse your soul of spiritually unhealthy doubts and uncertainties, we're pretty sure.

18) If all else fails, and you fail to make the wicked unbelievers see the Truth of your Lie For Jesus™, don't despair. After all, not everyone wants to hear Truth. So, after you feel you have done all you can, by all means leave the discussion. It's best to inform your godless opponents that you know exactly what kind of people you're dealing with - people who deserve neither your righteous presence nor your unassailable Truth. So, conclude your insult-filled farewell post with Matthew 7:6: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." That way, the hell-bound will surely know that they have messed with the wrong person. After that, your mission for Jesus is complete - a 100% success, we assure you. Get a good night's sleep - you've earned it for a job well done!

19) If you wake up the next morning and find out, to your dismay, that the End Times™ haven't come; that the world is not burning in the hellfires of Armageddon™ and Tribulation™; that there is as yet no Rapture™ to take you away from the desperately-needed torturing of all non-True Christians™... we feel for you, and share in your grief. We, too, eagerly await the imminent advent of the glorious and joyful days of apocalyptic hell on Earth. However, look at it this way - you now have one more day to do God's work here on Earth! So, onward, True Christian™ soldier! What are you waiting for? Get on that internet and lie for the greater glory of God! There are unsaved souls at stake!

The Articles Of Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 05:01:00 +0000

From Exploring Our Matrix:

This post provides official notification of my intention, on or immediately prior to the 25th of December 2008, to wish readers of my blog a Merry Christmas. If you are likely to find such expression of Christmas greetings/wishes offensive, you are hereby asked to refrain from reading any and all posts on this blog which may have Christmas, Noel, or other synonymous terminology in the title which may be posted between midnight of December 24th and midnight of December 26th Eastern Standard Time. No responsibility is taken for computers whose clock settings may cause them to view a post in this category outside the specified time frame.

The Christmas wishes to be offered will be in accordance with the official articles of Christmas stipulated below:

The Articles of Christmas

Article I: The use of the expression "Merry Christmas" and its synonyms on this blog (henceforth referred to in this document simply as "Merry Christmas") is not to be construed as a declaration of war, whether real or metaphorical.

Article II: "Merry Christmas" is not to be construed as a form of persecution.

Article III: "Merry Christmas" is not understood to void, invalidate, denigrate, supplant or replace wishes for a happy Kwaanza, festivus for the rest of us, Hanukkah, scary solstice, Newtonmas, or any other celebration currently existing or invented in the future which readers of this blog may celebrate.

Article IV: The Christmas wishes offered on this blog are void where prohibited by law.

Article V: Readers in the UK and multiple various former colonial territories of the British Empire are offered as an alternative "Happy Christmas". This alternative greeting is not to be construed as implying the superiority or inferiority of any specific version of the English language, whether spoken as a living language or extinct.

Article VI: The use of "Merry Christmas" on or around December 25th is not to be understood to imply that the birth of Jesus occurred on or around that date.

Article VII: The use of "Merry Christmas" on or around December 25th is not to be understood as excluding a desire on my part that the Christmases of Eastern Orthodox Christians be merry when celebrated on other dates.

Article VIII: "Merry Christmas" is not to be construed as an attempt to place an obligation upon readers to be merry on December 25th or any alternative date which they may understand as Christmas.

Article IX: "Merry Christmas" is not to be construed as a contractual guarantee (or otherwise creating a binding legal agreement between the author of this blog and its readers) that Christmas (on whatever date it is celebrated) will in fact be merry.

Article X: All wishes of "Merry Christmas" offered upon this blog in comments by individuals other than the blog's author, whether addressed to its author or to other readers, are understood to subscribe to these articles unless otherwise specified.

Christmas Break... Sort Of

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:51:00 +0000

Hi gang... posting will be a little sporadic until the New Year... you know, holiday B.S. and all that. So, as much as I don't want to cause my readers to suffer delirium tremens from lack of Gumby, my on-and-off absence will be kind of unavoidable for the next week or so.

I will say that I have already received my Christmas gift this year, and it's true what they say - the best gifts are not necessarily the ones that are wrapped in colorful paper and topped with shiny bows.

Remember Ozzy, the abandoned cat that kept me company when I painted the farmhouse a couple months back? Well, I have been going crazy ever since, trying to figure out what to do with him. I took him to my veterinarian (well, Gumby's vet, not mine...) to have him looked over and receive his shots. Well, he was in really good health, so that was cool. So, I thought I would keep him at my place until I could find a home for him, because all the shelters were full (and still are).

Unfortunately, that was not to be. Let's just say that Ozzy doesn't play well with other cats. Basically, he's terrified of them - even my peaceful little girl Gumby. I thought he was going to either stroke out or tear Gumby to shreds. He couldn't even deal with Gumby being around when they were kept apart - apparently Gumby's odor alone just made him freak out. My best guess is that he's had bad experiences with feral cats out in the countryside where the farmhouse is, and he is just too scared of other cats. After a day or two of unsuccessfully trying to deal with the situation, I made the decision to take Ozzy back to the cornfields. I hated to do it, but I could not find anyone or anywhere that would take him. So, with a very heavy (and guilty-feeling) heart, I did just that.

For the last two months or so, I have been going back every three to five days (a 60 mile round trip) to check on him. I bring plenty of food and water, and we hang out in the car where it's warm for a couple of hours. That went well until about two weeks ago, when I got to the farmhouse and he wasn't there. I had kept the door to the enclosed porch propped open with a rock so he'd have a place to stay out of the elements. I went in and what I found wasn't pretty. There was fur, blood and shit everywhere. Apparently, Ozzy had been in a fight with a feral cat or other animal that had decided to investigate. My worst fears were realized, and I felt terrible. I cleaned the porch up, waited around for about an hour, left some food and left.

For the next week I drove out every other day; no sign of Ozzy. The food was eaten, but whether by Ozzy or by other animals I had no idea. Eventually, I decided I had to let Ozzy go and get on with my life. A tough decision, but I really had done the best I could for the cat, and I could do no more. I felt terrible; I felt I had let my buddy down... my buddy who had depended on me. But there was nothing else I could do except include him in my nightly prayers.

So, skip to today, about a week later. The people who own the farmhouse called to wish me a merry Christmas, and told me that not only did they finally manage to rent the farmhouse, but the new tenant agreed to take in the cat. I thanked them for letting me know, but told them the cat had disappeared. I related what I saw in the porch. "Well", the husband said, "that's news to us. We were there just yesterday and Ozzy was there, and he looked fine. We left him some food, and he'll have a new home when the new tenant moves in January 1."

Needless to say, that was very welcome news. I don't know what the hell happened in that porch, but I'd recognize Ozzy's fur anywhere. I guess he just needed to nurse his wounds for a while, and that's why I didn't see him for a while. In any case, I'm real happy about this, and will be meeting the new tenant after New Year's day to give him the veterinary papers.

Usually, Christmas is a pretty dismal time of the year for me. This year, however, I got a great present.

Good Luck, Barack Obama

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:25:00 +0000

I have always loved a good political cartoon. With a few simple drawn lines an effective political cartoonist can totally capture and communicate the essence of a very complicated story.

Can Obama help? We can only hope. Because we're in a steaming pile of economic doo-doo right now.

Images From Science: LHC CMS

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:52:00 +0000

Click image to enlarge.

The Large Hadron Collider hasn't done anything useful yet, and due to technical problems and the cost of electricity in Europe during the winter months it won't be productive until the spring of 2009 at the earliest, but one thing I have noticed is that it is extremely photogenic.

Courtesy of the Boston Globe's incredible Big Picture series, here is a view of the Large Hadron Collider's CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) in the cleaning room. The CMS is one of two general-purpose LHC experiments designed to explore the physics of the Terascale, the energy region where physicists believe they will find answers to the central questions at the heart of 21st-century particle physics - such as confirming the existence of the so-far-elusive Higgs boson. It has sort of an ancient Mayan Sun-god calendar look to it, doesn't it?

Lighting The Way To A Cleaner Planet

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 22:17:00 +0000

While I've always felt that the so-called "anti-global warming" doomsday babblers (like the terminally self-important, sanctimonious, narcissistic and boring Al Gore and his oft-hysterical followers) exaggerate the impact that humans have on the planet, and that the AGW movement is largely a political wolf dressed in environmentalist sheep's clothing, I am not so naive as to think that the human race does not affect the Earth's climate. Of course we do. Anyone who believes otherwise is deluding themselves.

I do think that, despite the seemingly hyperbolic foolishness the AGW crowd so often displays that undermines their own credibility, they do serve a useful purpose, in a gadfly sort of way. They help keep people who would be otherwise ignorant reminded of the fact that there are indeed living on a small planet with limited resources, a planet that we cannot perpetually treat as something so forgiving that it will forever tolerate our messy and dirty ways. We have to face facts and realize that the fate of the planet, in the long run, is in our hands. Whether you believe that God created humans and gave them dominion over the world, or you believe that God had nothing to do with anything and we simply evolved out of slime molds, the simple fact of the matter is that we, Homo sapiens, are the dominant animal species here on the old pale blue dot. We, and we alone, are the rulers and caretakers of this only world we have (the only world we have at this point, anyway).

My point? My point is that you do not have to be a global warming ranter to want to be a responsible steward for the planet we rule. Keeping your own house tidy and safe is not an "environmentalist" idea - it's the attitude all mature humans should possess, whether they be Palinites, Gorebots, or something in between.

Luckily for us, the same technological prowess that helps pollute the skies, oceans and ground is also available for us to keep our planet healthy. Logic and responsibility, not political or ideological persuasion, dictate that we use that prowess for such a purpose - and indeed, we do better at that every day. The Industrial Revolution started less than 250 years ago, and the technologically advanced civilization we enjoy today is the direct descendant of those early days. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and while we have definitely made an impact on it, I believe we are easily still in early enough stages of our industrial development to drastically slow, or even reverse, what damage to the ecosystem and climate we have done in the past (despite what the doomsday gang would have us believe).

Historically, the problem with environmentalist extremists has been that they are never satisfied with the pace of the progress we have made in creating cleaner manufacturing processes, better waste disposal, etc. For decades, they have always wanted us to believe that catastrophe is imminent, and have used everything from crying Indian chiefs to politically and financially motivated ex-vice presidents to hilariously ridiculous AGW propaganda flicks like The Day After Tomorrow to peddle their scare tactics.

Despite what some of the holier-than-thou leaders of the environmental movement would have you believe, though, mankind has been making remarkable and steady progress in living cleaner all along - and though the environmentalists will of course take all the credit, they actually deserve only partial credit. Case in point: the lowly light bulb - the ubiquitous reminder of power consumption, and in many ways the ultimate symbol of the Industrial Revolution.

According to scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, we are on the verge of a revolution in the way humanity lights up its civilization - one that will save us trillions of dollars, and more importantly, be kinder to the environment.

From Rensselaer's website:

Innovations in photonics and solid state lighting will lead to trillions of dollars in cost savings, along with a massive reduction in the amount of energy required to light homes and businesses around the globe, the researchers forecast.

A new generation of lighting devices based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will supplant the common light bulb in coming years, the paper suggests. In addition to the environmental and cost benefits of LEDs, the technology is expected to enable a wide range of advances in areas as diverse as healthcare, transportation systems, digital displays, and computer networking.

“What the transistor meant to the development of electronics, the LED means to the field of photonics. This core device has the potential to revolutionize how we use light,” wrote co-authors E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim.

Schubert is the Wellfleet Senior Constellation Professor of Future Chips at Rensselaer, and heads the university’s National Science Foundation-funded Smart Lighting Center. Kim is a research assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering.

Researchers are able to control every aspect of light generated by LEDs, allowing the light sources to be tweaked and optimized for nearly any situation, Schubert and Kim said. In general LEDs will require 20 times less power than today’s conventional light bulbs, and five times less power than “green” compact fluorescent bulbs.

If all of the world’s light bulbs were replaced with LEDs for a period of 10 years, Schubert and Kim estimate the following benefits would be realized:

Total energy consumption would be reduced by 1,929.84 joules
Electrical energy consumption would be reduced by terawatt hours
Financial savings of $1.83 trillion
Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10.68 gigatons
Crude oil consumption would be reduced by 962 million barrels
The number of required global power plants would be reduced by 280

That's an impressive bunch of statistics, one that should make any environmental activist happy (although, given their track record, the more radical ones won't be satisfied, or will find something else to complain about). Unfortunately, in the real world, we can't perform an "I Dream Of Jeannie" magic trick and instantly replace all the world's light bulbs with LED technology. New technologies are expensive, and manufacturing costs are high at first. Decent LED bulbs are still way too expensive for the average home or business owner to deploy on a wide scale - last I checked, a 60-watt-equivalent LED replacement bulb costs about US $25. (I would appreciate updated pricing information if anyone has it). No matter what the more radical-leaning environmentalists want, they'll just have to deal with the realities of global economics. The lighting revolution, and other "clean" revolutions, are coming - we'll just have to be patient.

I know I come across as harsh on the more extremist environmentalists. However, people that traffic in fear and hyperbole should expect criticism, so I don't really care what they think - for the most part, they bring it on themselves. That said, I freely admit that many regulations and innovations have come about as a result of honest and more moderate environmentalist movements. Sometimes, though, it's not the message, it's the messenger - and the way the message is delivered. People who use dubious tactics, and play fast and loose with facts because they believe their cause transcends reality and truth, hinder their cause more than they help it (PETA is another prime example of well-meaning activism transforming into radical "anything goes" activism). Moderate, honest activism can be a wonderful thing. If some of these people would just understand this "inconvenient truth", I have a feeling that they would be taken more seriously, still-existing political inertia and industrial stubbornness would fade to a large extent, and progress toward a cleaner Earth would be made even more quickly.

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Images From Science: Jupiter And Ganymede

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:00:00 +0000

This is a pretty cool pic. Imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in April 2007, it depicts the Jovian moon Ganymede as it prepares to orbit behind the gas giant. Scientists can learn something from images like this as well. Sunlight reflecting off of Ganymede when it borders Jupiter passes through the upper layers of Jupiter's atmosphere. The altered light can be spectroscopically analyzed so that we can learn about the composition of the upper Jovian atmosphere.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. It's 3,270 miles (5,262 km) in diameter, which makes it larger than the planet Mercury and (formerly planet, now plutoid) Pluto. It has a trace atmosphere of oxygen, and was named after a prince in Greek mythology who was taken to Mount Olympus by Zeus. It is also the only moon in the solar system known to possess a magnetosphere, likely caused by a rotating molten iron core. Galileo discovered it in 1610. He also discovered the Jovian moons Io, Europa and Callisto, and together these are referred to as the Galilean moons.

More On The K-T Mass Extinction

noreply@blogger.com (GumbyTheCat) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:03:00 +0000

I mentioned briefly in yesterday's post about the K-T mass extinction that "there is even some evidence that this asteroid was a small part of a larger asteroid that broke up in a collision with another asteroid - with at least one chunk hitting the moon to form the crater Tycho."

After Will Baird left a very helpful and thought-provoking comment on that post (if you already read that post, go back for an update), I decided to dig a bit deeper. After lengthy, exhaustive and painstaking research (translation: I clicked a link on his blog and got lucky), I found an article from GeoTimes that helps unravel the the mystery of this asteroid collision that spelled doom for the dinos, 95 million years before the Chicxulub impactor event. In other words, this asteroid/asteroid collision occured before dinosaurs even evolved.

It's definitely worth the read, not only because of the subject matter but because it's a nifty example of scientists figuring something out that they weren't really seeking answers to in the first place. The article describes a nice bit of scientific detective work including computer simulations, asteroid spectroscopy and geochemical studies of the Chicxulub crater, and can be found here. Now, the research described in the article does not prove that this exact asteroid-collision scenario is actually what happened, but the evidence is fairly compelling.

Oh, and that layer of iridium in the Earth's geological record that could seemingly only be explained by the Chicxulub asteroid impact? Commenter Kate Porter from the blog Galley Proofs helpfully supplied an alternative explanation:

In any case, whether the dinosaur extinction was mainly caused by the Chicxulub asteroid impact (the generally agreed-upon scenario) or the Deccan Traps volcanism, one thing's for sure: it beats the hell out of Jack Chick's explanation.

Ah, other people writing my posts for me... gotta love it.