On Victory…

I spent Tuesday in Philadelphia, “getting out the vote”.  I place that term in quotes because almost every person I spoke with had already voted.  Among the hundreds of doors I knocked on, I did not encounter a single registered voter that was choosing not to vote.  This kind of widespread enthusiasm is the reason that American voters chose Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of over 7.7 million votes.  And it’s a testament to the inspirational power of President-Elect Obama.  There were college students and professors partying in the streets here in my Baltimore neighborhood—16 of them were even arrested for disorderly conduct!  Let’s see another president draw that kind of response after winning an election!  I am very happy to have played a part in a truly uplifting moment in American history.  Even with the economy in the toilet, this is the most hopeful I’ve ever felt about this country, and I dare even say it’s brightened my outlook for mankind in general.  President Barack Hussein Obama.  I like the sound of that.

Edit: It turns out that the one person stunned by a police taser gun at the Charles Village celebration was actually a McCain supporter who was just trying to get back to his apartment. Way to go, Baltimore City Police Department!

On Election Day eve

I’ve been busy lately with Obama/Biden campaign activities.  Somewhat.  To be honest, I’ve also been feeling disorangized and  not quite sure what I want to write about in this blog.  I am hoping that when the election is over, I’ll be able to make myself unplug a bit from the news cycle and get back to science reporting.  I’ll be voting tomorrow morning, and then carpooling to the Philadelphia metro area for the democratic Get Out The Vote operation.  In addition to Obama/Biden, I’m also watching the senate races in Minnesota and North Carolina closely.  Why? Regarding Minnesota, I read Al Franken’s book Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot when I was in high school, and the notion of him infurating conservatives in congress as he struts down the halls of the US Capitol brings glee to my heart.  And for North Carolina, I’m mainly hoping to see Sen. Elizabeth Dole lose her seat after running this despicable ad that implies atheists are bad people.  And I hope the door hits her in the ass on the way out.

Bill Ayers Is A Good Person

Since Barack Obama doesn’t know him well, and since I’ve clearly endorsed Barack Obama for president, I’d like to take a quick moment to make a distinction between my own view of Bill Ayers and Senator Obama’s. Senator Obama is of course running for the highest elected office in the United States, so political reality necessitates that he strongly condemn Ayers’ actions during the late 1960s and early 1970s (and he has). I, on the other hand, feel that Ayers is being demonized unfairly. If I were trying to win the presidency, I probably wouldn’t say that. But most of America is still stuck in the violence-numb state of slumber that Ayers and the Weathermen were protesting with their bombs. It’s crucially important to tell or remind people that the Weather Underground bombings never killed anyone except Weather Underground activists (by accident). Right-wing critics have tried to blame several contemporaneous fatal bombings, for which no responsibility was ever claimed, on the Weather Underground. But after the accident that killed several Weathermen in a Greenwich Village townhouse on March 6, 1970, no one was killed by any Weather Underground-claimed bombings. The acts of property destruction occurred mostly at night, or with warning given to evacuate the area, or both. The intended aim of the Weather Underground was to wake America up to the genocide it was inflicting in southeast Asia.

In the course of this election cycle, Obama’s critics have frequently e-mailed this article about Ayers’ memoir, which coincidentally was published in the New York Times on September 11, 2001. Read it, but be sure also to read Ayer’s letter to the New York Times of September 15, 2001, in which he corrects the record on his disposition toward explosives and terrorism—and repudiates the 9/11 attacks for the depraved acts of intolerance and hatred that they were. And if you’re not familiar with the Weather Underground, the Wikipedia entry about it is a good place to start.

Without belaboring the point, I’d just like to say that I believe the actions of the Weather Underground were called for by the urgency of their era, and that Bill Ayers should be recognized as a courageous activist who took extensive personal risks to make a stand against terror and genocide. He is neither a murderer nor a terrorist, but he is a great American.

As the world burns…

For the moment, I’m sitting next to Celeste on a dust-covered couch – one of many in this covered pavilion at the center of Black Rock City, Nevada. Lots of whimsy,  nonsense, dust storms, and the American Dream are alive and well here in this god-forsaken desert. Somehow I found wi-fi access and am taking this brief moment to let you know that our gang is healthy and having fun, and we’ll be back to Maryland faster than you can sing a commercial jingle.

A little while ago, on the walk here, we heard someone reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas over a P.A., for anyone within earshot to enjoy. Tonight, we’re going hippie fishing. If you’ve never heard of it, just know that it involves fishing line, a glowstick, and confused ravers in the dark.

The icons of economic recession… tattoos?

I know there are still, and probably always will be, fuddy-duddies out there.  But I couldn’t help wondering whether the Washington Post was joking when they recently posted the op-ed Ink-Stained Wretchedness by Colonel Sanders-impersonator¹ Richard Cohen.  This is just a quick ‘WTF?’ entry… thanks to Aaron for pointing it out.

…the tattoos of today are not minor affairs or miniatures placed on the body where only an intimate or an internist would see them. Today’s are gargantuan, inevitably tacky, gauche and ugly. They bear little relationship to the skin that they’re on. They don’t represent an indelible experience or membership in some sort of group but an assertion that today’s whim will be tomorrow’s joy. After all, a tattoo cannot be easily removed. It takes a laser — and some cash.

Are we supposed to believe that Colonel—ahem—Mister Cohen gets to know the people wearing the art well enough to determine what their relationship to it truly is?  Is he an adept translator of Hebrew, Chinese, or Sanskrit (what Cohen calls “Hindi”) characters?  I suspect not.  And I sorely doubt that he gets to see the “minor affair” tattoos on the bodies of many “intimates” in person these days—so how does he know whether they are still popular? And let’s get this out of the way: watching porn does not provide our intrepid cultural anthropologist with a representative cross-section of today’s youth.

Is the Washington Post required to keep publishing this guy’s column?  Do newspapers have some kind of secret tenure system I’m not privy to?  For disclosure’s sake, I do have three tattoos, all of which are visual (at least in warm climate) to the general public.  And this fuddy-duddy did just call me a loser:

The tattoo is the battle flag of today in its war with tomorrow. It is carried by sure losers.

But, in his very next sentence, he continues:

About 40 percent of younger Americans (26 to 40) have tattoos.

What a grim vision of the future Mr. Cohen has.  I hope he can take some comfort in the likelihood that he probably won’t be around to witness much more of it.

¹ I think Brooks Wackerman does a better job.

The Great Catholic Cracker Crack-Up

Please read PZ Myers’ entry on what I like to call The Great Catholic Cracker Crack-Up at Pharyngula.  It’s comedy gold.

Atheist Soldier Sues The DoD, and The Evolution of Compassion

This April, The New York Times reported the case of U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, a soldier who started a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and subsequently had to be removed from Iraq due to numerous threats from his fellow soldiers.  Now, I’m not exactly surprised by this.  I’d expect the military to be drooling with evangelicals, of course.  And I could probably cynically overlook verbal harassment of an atheist in the armed forces, just because I expect that sort of bullshit from indoctrinated meat-heads.  But physical threats?  That really is beyond the pale.  Now, Spc. Hall is suing the Department of Defense and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for failing to protect his freedom from religious persecution as protected by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution.  You go boy.

Seriously, this is not the sort of reputation the military should want, given that non-religious Americans are the largest (non) religious group after Christians.  They have enough trouble recruiting as it is!  This is just another example, sadly, of Christians thinking the world revolves around them.  It’s bad enough that brave men and women who are devoted to the service of their country were blithely thrown into harm’s way in Iraq by a callous and evangelically-motivated administration… but non-religious soldiers’ lives are threatened by their loving, Christian comrades-in-arms as well?  What a disgusting blemish on our armed forces.  I hope Spc. Hall wins his lawsuit and the DoD cracks down on prosyletizing by officers.

I haven’t posted anything in a while, have I?  Still, life marches on.  I got some paperwork done that’s been taking forever (to put it mildly).  I also was inspired by the news I wrote about in my previous post, and decided to read Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Compassion.  This book tells the story of his experiment: a computer tournament in the early 1980s that pitted programs submitted by game theorists from various academic disciplines (as well as an 11 year old computer prodigy) in the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game (a classic thought experiment).  It’s quite interesting, and you can expect me to write a more in-depth review when I’ve finished it.

P.S. – I would love to get some comments on my posts.  If you’re reading this, any feedback will be appreciated.  It’s hard to talk myself into posting when it feels like no one is reading! I’d really like to get this blog fired up.

What would a Barack Obama administration do for science?

So I was (again) reading over Barack Obama’s campaign press release about his plans to promote scientific research and education, and there’s a lot to like in there. Obama is aggressively in support of expanding federally funded embryonic stem cell research. So much has been said about that topic that I am not going to go into it right now, but to be clear: that’s a 180 degree reversal from the Bush administration policy on stem cell research. I also had not been aware already that Obama helped write and was an original cosponsor of the Minority Health Improvement and Health Disparity Elimination Act, which hopefully will become law after the current criminal administration is sent packing. The whole text of the bill is in the last link, but the Obama press release describes it thus:

The bill puts new emphasis on disparity research by reporting health care data by race and ethnicity, as well as socioeconomic status and health literacy. The legislation outlines mechanisms to conduct educational outreach to minorities, increase diversity among health care professionals, and improve the delivery of health care to minorities.

If we’re going to have national health care, this sort of thing is critical and taxpayers should actually be demanding it! Preventative medicine is always cheaper than treating ailments and disease, and the potential benefits of a healthy population go far beyond the lower cost of health care (increased economic productivity, decreased poverty, decreased crime, decreased drug abuse, the list is endless).

What really turns me on the most about Obama’s priorities, though, was this part of the document:

Improve and Prioritize Science Assessments: Assessments should reflect the range of knowledge and skills students should acquire. Science assessments need to do more than test facts and concepts. They need to use a range of measures to test inquiry and higher order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis and interpretation, forming questions, and communication. High-performing states like Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, use an assessment that calls for students to design and conduct investigations, analyze and present data, write up and defend results. Barack Obama will work with governors and educators to ensure that state assessments measure these skills.

I cannot overemphasize how crucial that is! American science education is fast becoming a joke on the international level. With rare exceptions, I was not taught how to use inference, logic, or data analysis in the public high school system, and I went to a half-decent public high school—ten years ago! Most inner-city and some rural schools are far worse. Prioritizing how to think over what to think is the key to producing bright, engaged, and enthusiastic students who actually get what science is all about and are well prepared to hit the ground running when they find the field of science that really inspires them. After I finish graduate school, to the extent possible, I’d like to be involved in changing American science education. One dream I have is to work for Eugenie Scott and the National Center For Science Education, which does great work defending public school curricula against religious zealots who try to force intelligent design into the science classroom. I donated $10 to them to offset the damage done when I bought a ticket to Ben Stein’s disgusting crock-umentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. If you ever doubt the sniveling academic dishonesty of I.D. proponents, watch that film (download a pirated copy off the internet, please) and read how well the good people who made ExpelledExposed.com eviscerate just about every claim the film makes.

So, having veered just a bit off topic for a moment there, I’ll try to bring this back to the Obama science plan and wrap it up. From what I’ve read, I am cautiously optimistic that a Barack Obama administration would be a very science-friendly one. I think he doesn’t go quite far enough in emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary physical, chemical, and biological systems research. He also needs to use that generic science document better to tie into other large issues that are addressed elsewhere on the campaign website, and which I haven’t yet had time to peruse. I hope to post in the near future my thoughts on Obama’s proposed energy and environmental policies, and his position on NASA (as well as contrasting these with those of John McCain). For the rest of tonight, though, I would be glad just to get enough sleep so as not to be a total zombie at work tomorrow. I haven’t quit my day job yet; the blogging doesn’t have me rolling in benjamins yet like I hoped it would

For now, I’ll leave you with this video from a few weeks ago when my favorite artist and role model Dr. Greg Graffin was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism by the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. It’s got him playing a few acoustic Bad Religion songs as well as talking about the award and why he prefers the label “naturalist” versus “atheist.” Wish I could have been there for this!

An adventure to the great outdoors.

If the trend of the last few weeks continues, this weekend will be here before I know it. I’m looking forward to it especially, because for the first time this year I’ll be going camping! My brother, some of his friends, my friend Don, and I (and others are welcome to tag along!) will be at Green Ridge State Forest. In my opinion, it’s Maryland’s best public camping area, with Assateague State Park in second place (because they don’t allow pets). There are great semi-primitive campsites with relative privacy (you typically can’t see your nearest neighbors) and backpackers are allowed to do real primitive camping.

I hope the weather cooperates so I can do a bit of stargazing. I want to camp as much as possible this spring/summer/fall. Who’s with me? Other places I’d like to camp soon include Buchanan State Forest (Pennsylvania) and Sky Meadows State Park (Virginia).

A life well spent: Aubrey Williams

I checked the website of my former college’s anthropology department today, and I was saddened to learn that one of my favorite professors, Aubrey Williams, died a couple months ago. The story was in the Washington Post, and I feel like shit for having taken so long to find out about it. Aubrey (he insisted on being called by his first name, including by his undergraduate students) was one of those rare teachers who you inevitably remember fondly years down the road. He was also a humble guy; I didn’t know during his courses, for example, that he had been a B-17 gunner in the European theater of WWII. I did know, on the other hand, that he’d been actively involved in organizing protests against every war since, up to and including the present war in Iraq. I remember him telling my Cultures of Native North America class, for instance, of the time he was invited to partake in a peyote ritual with members of the Navajo church. He said that he’d gotten up and began running at right angles (in sort of a giant square pattern), and that it took four adult Navajo men to capture and restrain him until he calmed down. He also told of the time he was served psilocybin mushroom tea by an indigenous medicine woman in rural Mexico. He’d hallucinated that he was inside a soap bubble, and could see the world curved around him. Needless to say, that drew a lot of snickers from the wide-eyed classroom full of undergraduates. But I got the biggest kick out of it, having recently had my first experiences with that same entheogen.

At the end of my last class with Aubrey (I’d taken two), he invited all of us to a barbecue at his home in Tacoma Park. That was definitely one of the most unique experiences I had in college: hobnobbing with my professor and my classmates over cocktails, while our final papers sat on his living room table, waiting to be graded. When we spoke that night he said he was leaving soon to consider a job offer as the curator of ethnography at the national museum of Bhutan, one of the most isolated countries in the world and one where few westerners have ever traveled. As I later learned, that position was not funded as planned and it didn’t work out, but Aubrey still got to enjoy a rare vacation in the Kingdom of Bhutan. A selected autobiography of Aubrey Williams’ work can be found here.

I’ll always remember him for his intelligence, his humility, his passion, and his dedication to his students and his treatment of them as peers. His was truly a life well spent. Rest in peace, Aubrey, and thank you for making a difference in my life.