All posts by Steve Stern

Evolution: the greatest show on earth

Evolution, Religion

In his review of  The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins,Nicholas Wade explains scientific Theory in a way that has really helped clear up my thinking about evolution. When I tell somebody that I have my doubts about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, I usually get looks that I would expect if I had said that I think the earth is flat.

Evolution is one of those things that I have thought about – alot. I picked up a book on human evolution about 25 or 30 years ago and, after reading it, realized that I really didn’t get how the whole thing worked. So I got another book, and another until I had gone through at least 20 books without getting any closer to really understanding the “why” of evolution. It seems to me that Natural Selection is a tautology: the fittest survive and pass on their genes and we know they are the fittest because they are the one who survive. That does not seem to explain why amoebas have evolved into cats and dogs.

It does not explain to me why everything evolves towards complexity. Atoms become molecules, molecules become cells, cells become animals, flatworms become monkeys, monkeys become sentient. The Universe seems to have a direction. Wade says, “science consists largely of facts, laws and theories. The facts are the facts, the laws summarize the regularities in the facts, and the theories explain the laws. Evolution can fall into only one of these categories, and it’s a theory.”

I have no problem with the facts – I believe what we see is real. I have no problems with the laws – the world is changing, it is not fixed. I am just not convinced that Natural Selection is all that is causing the change. I have no idea what is causing the change: not God which seems like an even less reasonable reason. But something more.

Wade goes on to say “If a theory by nature is liable to change, it cannot be considered
absolutely true. A theory, however strongly you believe in it, inherently holds a small question mark. The minute you erase the question mark, you’ve got yourself a dogma.” I am willing to leave it at that.


Pork and beans

Food and Drink

Pork and beans must be one of the most natural food combinations around. And one of the most iconic. For me, it brings back memories of movie cowboys sitting around movie campfires, or memories of actual long empty pork and bean cans around actual long deserted mines in the Mojave.

And for me, also, it has an connotation of poverty and low class. Certainly, my family was aware of that: we did not eat pork and beans; we ate hamhocks and Lima beans. It was one of my favorite dishes when I was growing up. Only within the last year did I figure out that hamhocks and Lima beans was, basically, the same thing as pork and beans.

Or that Chinese long beans with pork was the same thing. And Thai stir-fried pork with long beans. Or, with the addition of duck legs, Cassoulet. Or, for that matter, barbecue with beans. 

This was all brought up by our dinner last night of hamhocks and Italian butter beans. Real comfort food.

Spike the pet cat

Around home, Politics

Our cat, Spike, is a neverending source of amusement. He is an old cat with FIV* and was given a short time to live when Michele found him – almost blind – on our back deck over eight years ago. After an operation that cost way more than we should have spent on a stray animal, he seems to see pretty well and is healthier than we could have ever expected. Now he sleeps most of the time, often – during the day – with a front paw over his eyes to block out the light (we imagine).

Spike-1

* kitty AIDS

” The people of Afghanistan represent many things in this conflict – an audience, an actor, and a source of leverage – but above all, they are the objective.” Ctd.

War

I am increasingly wondering  why we are in Afghanistan. I want us to be in Afghanistan winning the good war: part of it is wanting us to kick somebody’s ass over 9-11, but then I wonder, why Afghanistan?

Last week, on the Bill Maher show, there was an amazing round of conversation about what makes a terrorist.Bill Maher started off by saying that a young man who was just arrested as a terrorist was living an American life. “He doesn’t hate America, he loves America and feels guilty.” By day the terrorists love all the taboo parts of America, getting a beer, going to a titty bar, and then out of guilt, they plot to blow something up.

Janeane Garofalo said that it was more than just about sex and guilt, it was about our foreign policy decisions.

Richard Dawkins said it is about religion. That Islam promotes going after non-believers. Then Thomas Friedman said that it was about the disparity between what they thought Islam was and the reality of their life. The terrorists thought of Islam as religion 3.0 – Christianity was religion 2.0, Judaism 1.0 and Hinduism 0.0 – but life under Islam didn’t measure up. Their religion was better but their life was worse and they hate their own governments for it.

Finally Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur, who represents a huge Muslim population, after saying that her constituents were good citizens and many were in the military protecting America, said that it was disenfranchised individuals who were alienated from society.

It seems to me that each of them is right and all of them are right. Terrorists are increasingly home grown and we are not going to solve the problem by being in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

” The people of Afghanistan represent many things in this conflit – an audience, an actor, and a source of leverage – but above all, they are the objective.”

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

What a great sentence. It is from the Commander's Initial Assessment  by Lieut. General Stan McChrystal, and it says almost everything about the war in Afghanistan – except why we are there and how long, whatever we are doing, will take. Obama ran on Afghanistan being the good war, the just war, the war we have to win to make the world safe. I think that the sub-text was that we abandoned Afghanistan once with disastrous results, and we can't – shouldn't – do it again.

And now Obama is president, and the war seems much harder and more complicated than it did a year ago from the campaign trail. The new commander, seems to actually understand the situation; unfortunately, he wants more troops. In his report, he writes about the five different players in the war, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, the insurgency, the external players, and the people of Afghanistan. And each of the players, it seems to me (and I think, McChrystal) is a problem.

The Government of the Islamic Republic Of Afghanistan (or GIRoA as it is referred to in the report) has legitimacy problems and has problems with the people supporting it. Without a legitimate government, who are we fighting for. 

The  report sez that the International Security  Assistance Force (that's us – good ol'  ISAF) has completely mishandled their role.  Until now, the ISAF has had almost no idea of Afghan culture, have tried fighting the war with drones rather than people on the ground, and we have alienated more people than we have converted. 

The insurgency, on the other hand, does seem to know what it is doing. 

The major two external players, Pakistan and Iran, are completely out of our control. And they each have an agenda which is different than ours.