“Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.”
                                            -President Barack Obama

The address was also masterful political theater, clearly crafted to assert the President’s authority before the assembled chambers of Congress on the issue which may define his presidency.  Even reform opponents played their part in the spectacle: at a moment in his speech when Obama clearly asserted that his health care proposals would explicitly exclude coverage for undocumented immigrants, the traditionally quiet decorum of the event was punctuated by South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who loudly shouted “You lie!” at the president. President Obama could not have illustrated the vapid thoughtlessness of health care reform’s enemies any better than that.

Now, while I certainly found much to commend in the president’s speech, it wasn’t all rainbows and whiskey.  As a progressive who favors a single-payer health care system, I can’t say that I agree with all of President Obama’s proposals.  In particular, I feel that private, for-profit health insurance companies represent a fundamental conflict of interest between investors’ expectation of profit and patients’ need for medical care.  Obama is pushing for new laws that will limit insurance companies’ strategies to maximize their profit, which appears to be a nuanced, measured compromise — but in practice, it will be the federal government that bears the burden of enforcing these laws, and that means it will take time for insurance companies to comply with the new laws. We can nearly rest assured that their compliance will be grudging and constantly in search of loopholes. Put simply, the new laws Obama proposed would not fully resolve that fundamental conflict of interest.  I realize that Obama’s proposals are a political and practical solution rather than an ideal one, and I encourage everyone to support any legislation that accomplishes the goals he set.  My criticism is only meant to serve as a reminder that the fight for equity, fairness, compassion, and justice in the U.S. health system will not end with the passage of health care reform. I think that Bad Astronomer Phil Plait expressed a similar point regarding Obama’s education speech on Tuesday very well, and with all due tribute, I will repost the image here that he used to do so:

Swine flu: Having very recently mutated to allow human/human transmission, it has already spread around the globe, leading to fears of a global pandemic.  To be fair, I think the mainstream news media have been doing more to fan the flames of fear (while sanctimoniously denying any intent to do so) than the flu itself.  As of this evening early Tuesday morning, only 40 50 cases had been reported inside the United States, and not a single fatality. CDC laboratory tests thus far indicates that the infection responds well to antiviral drugs such as oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza), which are being stockpiled in a number of states.  Maryland has already opened a swine flu command center right in my home city of Baltimore, in anticipation of likely infections occurring in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.  CDC lab tests have also indicated that the other two FDA-approved antiviral drugs for flu, amantadine (Symmetrel) and rimantadine (Flumadine), are ineffective against the swine flu.  Both oseltamivir and zanamivir are neuraminidase inhibitors, which work by blocking the action of the viral neuraminidase protein.  This is the protein on the surface of influenza viruses that allows it to be released from the host cell in the process known as “budding.”  Amantadine and rimantadine are both M2 protein inhibitors, drugs whose mechanism of action involves blocking the ion channel that removes a virion’s coating and releases its genetic content into the cytoplasm of the host cell.  It is worth noting that poultry farmers in China used amantadine to guard againt the H5N1 avian flu in chickens, an ill-advised practice (H. sapiens as an agent of natural selection!) that has led to the abundance of influenza strains resistant to amantadine.

It’s too early yet to tell whether the swine-flu fatalities in Mexico will be seen here in the United States or elsewhere around the world, but we probably won’t have to wait very long to find out.  As the eccentric chaotician Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “life finds a way” – we had better work hard to ensure that it’s human life that finds a way this time.  If you’re wondering what you can do, look at this guide on the US Department of Health and Human Services’ PandemicFlu.gov website.  And, of course, you can follow the CDC’s swine flu updates on Twitter.

In that vein, I lastly want to commend President Barack Obama, who, speaking today before the National Academy of Sciences, made a remarkable (and badly needed) commitment to the advancement of American science. After describing how the current swine flu emergency should remind us of the necessity of science, and among many breaks for applause, Obama said:

I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow.  It’s our character to lead.  And it is time for us to lead once again.  So I’m here today to set this goal:  We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development.  We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science.

That’s why I campaigned for this guy. Let’s all make sure we hold him to this promise.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

The Evolution Of Compassion by Robert Axelrod*

Stiff by Mary Roach

The Lives To Come by Philip Kitcher*

The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

An Anthropologist On Mars by Oliver Sacks*

In The Shadow Of Man by Jane Goodall

The Double Helix: A Personal Account Of The Discovery Of The Structure Of DNA by James Watson*

Monster Nation by David Wellington*

The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark by Carl Sagan*

The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution Of Human Nature by Matt Ridley

Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait

I hope that Ms. Nash recovers remarkably, and that Travis’ death serves as a warning to those who own or may consider adopting pet chimpanzees.  They are best left to professionals running well-equipped sanctuaries.  Consider donating to a sanctuary if you want to help.  (Chimpanzees raised in captivity are almost never accepted by wild troops, and therefore cannot be released into the wild).

Edit: Apparently, the face-shredding is a common feature of chimp attacks.  I’d forgotten that I wrote about this in one of my very first posts on Survival Machine.

I don’t think that commentary on this story is necessary.  I just want to make sure that everyone knows about it, and sees what despicable, self-absorbed cretins this celebration of crass consumerism can turn us into.  This wasn’t a mob of rapists or murderers.  They weren’t drunk or frightened.  This was a crowd whose blind violence was motivated by low prices and marketing.

Here’s looking at you, America.

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.

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.

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.

Another important ethic at Burning Man is participation. It is not a spectator event – the subject/object dichotomy is constantly under attack, and this is generally agreed to be a good thing. However, in each of my past three attendances, I contributed relatively little to the overall interactive wacky-ness of Burning Man. This year I want to do something special to participate, and I have an idea of what it is. I want to perform (and invite onlookers to help me perform) science experiments. The point is to teach the value of skepticism and the scientific method, while having an entertaining time. I haven’t settled on any particular experiments, yet. So, dear readers, here’s where you come in. I need your input!

Please tell me your most memorable childhood experience involving a science experiment. Maybe it was something mom, dad, or a cool aunt or uncle showed you. Maybe it was a science teacher at school doing something wacky in the classroom. Maybe it was something you saw Mr. Wizard do on Nickelodeon. It doesn’t matter where you saw it. I’m looking for the most visual, most thought provoking, and most entertaining experiments you can recall. Once I get at least a short list together, I’ll start performing some of them to get a good idea of how practical they’d be to perform in the desert environment. If I can, I’ll record videos of them and post them here on Survival Machine. If you want to help me perform it (and even appear in the video) just let me know. I’d also gladly welcome video submissions of you performing the experiment yourself. If anyone actually does that, I’ll make a post just to feature your video!

So, brainstorm, and let me know what you remember from the exciting world of science experiments!

For the record, I am adamantly opposed to any combat occurring in space. If you can shoot at a satellite, it won’t be long before the satellites can shoot back.

What does this mean? Imagine the end of fossil fuels: a cessation of ecologically devastating drilling operations, deflation of the political and economic power of neoconservative oil barons, and affordable, low-emission transportation, heating, and electricity. The impact of this technology is profound, and it doesn’t stop there. By discovering the details of biochemical and metabolic pathways, we can more closely mimic their elegance and efficiency to solve problems that plague industrial civilization. Maybe we’ll engineer a primitive, self-sustaining bio-robot that feeds on CO2 and excretes O2. Perhaps we could remove mercury from our water supplies. The limitations are not known, but the possibilities are awe-inspiring.

There has been some criticism of this work, notably by the Canadian-based ETC Group, a biotechnology watchdog organization. I agree with most of ETC Group’s principles (conserving agricultural biodiversity, fighting against patents for bioengineered plants). It is therefore fair to accuse me of wanting to have it both ways on this issue. I do see both sides, and I think that governments should regulate this kind of biotechnology. I am not worried about the J. Craig Venter Institute, which has demonstrated a responsible concern with ethics in this and previous projects. Venter himself shared the human genome’s raw code with the public for free after decoding it; his business aimed to make money by selling analytical services and bioinformatics software used for studying the genome. Others, however, are not nearly as scrupulous. I can’t say I endorse a moratorium at this point, but I do think that the USDA and Centers for Disease Control should be closely monitoring this type of research.

Still, this is exciting. You can expect me to post more on this topic in the future.

¹ Science Volume 315, No. 5813, 9 February 2007, pp. 801-804. Challenges in Engineering Microbes for Biofuels Production, by Gregory Stephanopoulos.

The death penalty is an abomination, an obtuse expression of state power, hypocritical, institutionally racist, anachronistic, and utterly wrong. We live in an age where DNA evidence has exonerated prisoners who were mistakenly convicted and sentenced to die at the hands of the state. Even that, however, I feel is tangential to the more salient point: murdering people to punish them for the crime of murder makes no sense at all, and sends no reasonable message to society. The sanctimoniousness with which judges impose the death penalty and executioners carry it out belies its real nature. It is a monument to state authority and power, a relic of times when monarchs and emperors ruled by fear and intimidation.

The crime committed by the prisoner should not be a part of the ethical calculus here. Further, this debate over a method of execution is just a technical squabble. The fundamental question: is it ever acceptable to kill a human being against their will? I say no, with the only exception being an immediate act of self-defense (or defense of others under direct threat of serious harm). Because this exception could never apply to the state, and because the death penalty is carried out with malice aforethought, there seems to me little room for argument over whether it is “cruel or unusual punishment.” At least most murder victims are fortunate enough not to anticipate their untimely end for very long. State murder victims suffer the added torture of anticipating their death.

I hope that this Supreme Court case raises an outcry against capital punishment in the United States. As a society, we need to break the grasp that our prison-industrial complex has developed on our justice system. We also need to get off our fucking high horses, stop imprisoning drug users, and start concentrating on fixing our crumbling public education system. That’s a policy that would pay off in the long run. Instead of jailing and murdering the dregs of society, let’s stop raising so damn many of them.

As an aside, it also gets my goat that so many Christians support the death penalty. These wackos worship a mythological person who was allegedly crucified by the powers that be, and they can sleep at night knowing that their beloved republic carries on that barbaric tradition dozens of times a year. Suffer unto me…

The main point is: fuck Michael Vick.  His letter reeks of hyopcrisy; he even has the audacity to portray himself as an animal lover who never learned that dogfighting was a serious crime.  Perhaps he loves women too—so much so that he’d start raping them and taking their money if they ever knocked that statute down to a misdemeanor?  I also bristled at the part where he emphasizes that his dogs were in “good health” and he always “made sure of the continuous upkeep of the dogs.”  I suppose if you counted running the fighting dogs on treadmills as keeping them in “good health,” he might have had a point – if only his other method hadn’t been drowning, hanging, and electrocuting the dogs who weren’t in such “good health.”  It’s also morbidly amusing that he says he’ll work with PETA to fight animal cruelty — PETA is responsible for far more unnecessary animal deaths than he is, especially in North Carolina, not far from Vick’s hometown of Newport News!  I hope the judge has enough ethical sense to give Vick the maximum sentence.  Maybe in prison, when Vick gets his ass kicked by other inmates, he’ll realize that Cajun Rules aren’t really fair.

And shame on Hank Aaron, Warrick Dunn, George Foreman, and Mayor Franklin.  They’ve exemplified the worst kind of anthropocentrism and do not deserve the respect and recognition they’ve traditionally enjoyed.

Lastly, to those of you who are still clinging to some fantasy of Vick’s righteousness, get real.  He led a double life, and he was a brute who hurt living, feeling beings for his own perverse enjoyment and profit.  No matter how remorseful he claims to be (while pleading for leniency), he wouldn’t have ruthlessly engaged in this blood sport for six years unless he were, face it, a bad man.