Month: January 2005

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Fighting Evolutionary Terrorism

Link: Salon.com News | The new Monkey Trial.

Salon (subscription, unfortunately, required) has a superb long review on the political advances that anti-evolution forces have made in public schools across the country. The piece focuses on the struggle in a Pennsylvania school district over the school board’s decision last year to order the teaching of “intelligent design” in high school biology classes. ID, as proponents call it, is calculated to undermine the teaching of evolutionary biology by pointing to cases that evolution (or physics) has a tough time explaining, thus suggesting that a higher creative intelligence was involved (guess whose?). ID is largely designed to get the Bible’s take on creation into science classes without overstepping the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.

The Salon story contains one breathtaking quote from a state legislator in Missouri that says volumes about how extreme and cockeyed anti-evolutionary thinking can become:

“Speaking to the [New York] Times, state Rep. Cynthia Davis seemed to compare opponents of intelligent design to al-Qaida. ‘It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.’ ”

Oh, yeah — it’s just like that.

The reason orthodoxy of any stripe — religious, political, scientific — is not a good thing is that by definition it promotes rigid thinking and suppresses inquiry. The brand of Christian fundamentalism active in U.S. politics today is a menace because it insists on imposing the beliefs of many on all. But it doesn’t do for those whose world view is based on the fruits of the scientific method to laugh off the beliefs of others, either.

This is more a question of attitude than knowledge. I’m not suggesting that Judeo-Christian creationism be put on the same footing as science (if that kind of thing’s going to get into the classroom, I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on equal science-class time for the Norse creation story, the Navajo story, and the Celtic explanations for the world). But I do think those teaching science would be well-served by a sense of humility in approaching their task. Scientific knowledge is evolving. What comes to be regarded as established truth in one era — for instance, the origins and form of the universe, the nature and structure of matter, or our understanding of the processes that cause earthquakes (and trigger tsunamis) — can and often is unraveled by further inquiry.

The story should always carry a tagline: “To be continued.”

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’24’

Now back to really important stuff: The season premiere of “24,” Fox’s suspense/thriller/action”extravaganza, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack “Just Do It! Do It Now!” Bauer. (In case you didn’t know, it’s “the most critically acclaimed show on television.” Fox’s announcers kept saying that during the Green Bay-Minnesota playoff game, so it must be true.)

I admit ’24’ used to be a sort of guilty pleasure. The series’ central conceit, that you’re watching the story unfold over the course of a day, and that each episode represents real time, was an attraction at first. Yeah, it was kind of trashy in some ways. The characters’ personal side- and subplots were kind of dumb and not all the acting was great, but hey, it’s network TV and the original story line was engaging enough: a group of mysterious and really nasty people are trying to assassinate a leading presidential candidate on the day of the California primary.

We watched that season. And the second, when the presidential candidate Bauer saved has become president and is confronted by terrorists who try to detonate a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles. And the third, when the same president — by now notorious to regular viewers for letting his loose-cannon wife and other relatives wreak all sorts of outlandish havoc on the Constitution and other innocent bystanders — is confronted by terrorists who threaten to wipe out Los Angeles and probably most of the country by releasing a super-bad germ that makes Ebola look like the sniffles.

Now, you’d never mistake “24” for “Smiley’s People” or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Then again, it’s not aspiring to be complex and challenging. It’s a romp. But even on that level, it’s had its problems. The terrorist plots are never intelligible. Bad people are doing bad things, but their motives, aside from wanting to settle scores with Bauer and his pal, the president, are never explored. Meantime, the scriptwriters spend most of their time concocting more and more elaborate woman trouble and political backstabbing for both Jack and the president.

This formula — just enough exotic terrorists vs. good guys action to make you sit still for the parallel soap opera — has been in place since season one. But last season, it went too far. Whenever any of the so-called good guys had a straightforward choice between a sane, common sense action that might keep them out of trouble and one that would bring them one more step toward utter destruction, they always — not sometimes or most of the time, but always — chose the latter. It got to be too much, so manipulative and dumb that we gave up on the show halfway through the season (though we did pick up again in the final couple of episodes just to see how it all came out).

So, where were we tonight when “24,” the most critically acclaimed show on television, began its new season? Not in front of the TV, at first. We got a TiVo digital video recorder, and we started watching about 40 minutes into the two-hour broadcast so we could just jump through the commercials. And what did we see?

It’s disheartening to report that the show didn’t even make it to the first commercial break without introducing its first sappy, predictable romantic subplot or disclosing that CTU, the counterterrorism unit where Jack does his stuff, is supervised by jealous, politically-driven moron who cares more about marking her territory than, gee, stopping a terrorist strike. Another predictable character was present, too: The field agent brought in to replace Jack had “dispensable” written all over him, and sure enough, he was dead by the time the show was off the air.

After saying all that, yeah, I’ll give it another couple hours tomorrow to see how bad it gets.

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Semi-Wild Things

Deer

We had a dry day today, so I walked up to the top of the hills. Early in the afternoon, when I was headed back down, I heard some rustling up a driveway I was passing. I looked up and saw these guys (well, I think, from the way it behaved, that only the one in the center is a guy; the other two are does). Broad daylight. Not fazed in the slightest to see an unarmed barbarian strolling past. In fact, when I stopped, the deer in the center here actually advanced toward me a few feet (that’s why I think he’s a guy). A couple minutes after I took the pictures, a man came walking up the road with two small-ish dogs on leashes. The deer picked up on the dogs right away and took off.

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‘Sideways’

Kate and I finally got around to seeing “Sideways,” a movie of which several friends (including Pete) have spoken very highly. I loved it and would readily see it again. It’s got a consistently skewed and funny take on people — well, men and women — and how they do and don’t fit together. And exploring a larger vein, it focuses on the struggle to realize some small part of your deepest dream, whatever it is.

The highlight of the script is a rather short scene in which Miles, a disappointed novelist and emotionally damaged middle-school English teacher, and Maya, a waitress he’s met on his winery expeditions up to Santa Barbara from Los Angeles, talk about what it is that they love about wine. He loves pinot noir because of the very challenges it presents to even grow, let alone turn into fine wine. She sees wine — good wine — as a living thing, following a life cycle that’s strikingly similar to that of a human being. It’s poetic wine talk — people really talking about the beauty they see in the vintner’s art — but the characters are really talking about themselves.

The one really unsatisfying note in the picture is the character of Miles, whom the story turns around. The guy is in real trouble with alcohol and with life. By the end you almost forget a heart-rending scene in which he steals several hundred dollars from his mother, who’s quite the drinker herself. The script hints at some extraordinary darkness and pain in his past, but it really never takes on why he’s headed over the edge or the role drinking plays in his plight.

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More on Tsunami Aid

A brief reflection on tsunami aid statistics: It’s clear, two weeks after the calamity struck, that most of the world’s wealthier nations have — either through shame or competitiveness or just plain good feeling (why did I list the best alternative last?) — come forward with a significant pile of cash to address the disaster. An updated list from Reuters shows a total of more than $5 billion in government aid pledged. At the top of the list in total contributions: Australia (detailed in this updated earlier post). At the top in per capita (an updated list) is Norway. The list includes some countries you figure don’t have a lot of spare cash lying around, too: Bulgaria, Niger, and Mali, for instance.

The Reuters tally also includes statistics on private giving. The total: about $1.3 billion, and that does not include contributions from the United States.

The scale of the disaster is so vast, and the amount of money committed so far to relief seems to have mounted so quickly, it’s hard to get a handle on how well the need is being met. (And of course, even the total of $6 billion plus is small compared to the amount of money the world’s only superpower — oh, hey, that’s us — is dropping in Iraq. Our rough expenditure on that little mission of mercy tops $7 billion — every month.

Maybe a more pertinent piece of context is this: the Oakland Hills fire in 1991, which destroyed about 3,000 dwellings and killed 25 people, reportedly caused between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in damage (insurers are said to have paid out $1.7 billion). Insured losses for the 2004 hurricane season in Florida (something like 120 people killed) have been put at $17.5 billion. Even making allowances for the way property is valued in the United States, the $6 billion-plus promised to South and Southeast Asia so far is just the beginning of dealing with the disaster.

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Chocolate Hall of Fame Guy

A reader in Chicago who attended his first game at Wrigley Field in the early 1930s asks: Now that Ryne Sandberg is headed to the Hall of Fame, what do you think my commemorative Ryne Sandberg chocolate bar is worth? In a bygone era, before there were lights at Wrigley Field or a World Wide Web, that would have been an idle question. But now they play in the dark at Addison and Clark, and you can go online to find out the going price for any old keepsake, even a chocolate bar from a lapsed century.

I looked for the Ryne Sandberg bar on eBay, and I found three listings. One’s up for auction with an opening price of $7.99 (or $14.99 if you just want to skip the bidding and buy it right now) and has collected zero bids. Another, described as “melted a little,” asks an opening bid of $3.99 (no interest so far). The last one’s going for a buck and has failed to draw a bid even from immortal Cubs fan Steve Bartman. Maybe because the picture of the merchandise (above) is a little blurry.

My advice to the Chicago reader; Contact Christie’s.

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Hall of Fame Guy

A Cubs fan (me) belatedly notes: The baseball writers, discharging their sacred annual duty, have elected Ryne Sandberg, former Cubs second baseman (actually, the first game I saw him play, one of the more memorable games I ever attended because it was called because of darkness after 17 innings, he was at third) to the Hall of Fame. Somehow, the news didn’t stir the wild elation in me that I might at one time have expected (actually, I find former A’s and Twins’ catcher Terry Steinbach getting one vote for the Hall almost as interesting as Sandberg getting elected. I’d love to hear the Steinbach partisan explain the passion that led to that vote).

My subdued reaction is due partly to my ambivalence toward baseball tipping over to estrangement. On one hand there’s the game, which still displays beautiful and subtle moments. On the other hand, there’s the relentless insistence on nonstop entertainment at the ballpark, the wacky player salaries, the prevalence of free agency and constant player movement that makes it hard to figure out just who’s on which team, and the owners and league establishment who treat fans as saps to be milked for as many bucks as possible before they’re hustled out of the park.

And then there’s simple Cubs fatigue. As Steve Goodman asked, “What do you expect when you raise up a young boy’s hopes and then just crush ’em like so many paper beer cups year after year after year after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, ’til those hopes are just so much popcorn for pigeons beneath the El track to eat?”

So, Sandberg was elected to the Hall. My first question was whether he deserved it, because my impression of his career was that he was a very good player, but not one who had the lasting dominance both in the field and at the plate to make him a Hall of Famer. I’m sure that impression is influenced by how the Cubs had a couple of moments of real brilliance during Sandberg’s career (especially winning the National League East in 1984, Sandberg’s MVP year) that ended in disappointment (losing the ’84 playoffs after going up on the Padres two games to none). They reached the playoffs just once more during his career, in 1989, when they lost four out of five to the Giants, who went on to get swept by the A’s and an earthquake.

Beside those two playoff years, the Cubs never had another winning season during his career (they were 73-71 in ’95, the year of his first retirement). That’s a little different from the last few Cubs to make it into the Hall — Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins — who were all part of a team that put together a decent string of winning seasons and served as the semi-tragic victims of the ’69 Mets.

But I’m not a Hall of Fame voter or a sportswriter, or even that up-close a fan of the game anymore, so maybe I’m just not remembering how good Sandberg was in the midst of all those bad, so-so, and occasionally good teams. Of course, my wet-blanket attitude does not affect Sandberg’s standing, in the opinion of Kate and many other fans of the distaff persuasion, as one of the cutest players ever.

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How to Pay for Libraries

David Kipen, one of the book review editors at the San Francisco Chronicle, has a column today on how to resolve funding problems for public libraries in towns that can’t or won’t pay for them. The prompt for his commentary is the situation in Salinas, where voters in November rejected a series of local tax measures to pay for city services, including the public library. The city says it will close the libraries sometime between now and June. Meantime, some book-loving citizens in town are hustling to get a new tax measure on the ballot this spring so that the libraries cans stay open.

Kipen, noting that Salinas isn’t the only community with a library-funding crisis, suggests a radical solution: redistributing available library funding from cities that have well-funded systems (like Berkeley, whose citizens have taxed themselves repeatedly to keep all the system’s branches open, well-maintained and well-staffed) to those that don’t. He says, “There’s no excuse for a system in which San Francisco embarks on an ambitious brand library renovation and construction program while, just down the 101, the next John Steinbeck can’t check out a book by the last one.”

Give him points for trying to come up with a new idea. He’s right about the importance of libraries to communities and their citizens and helping foster the intellectual growth of kids. But he’s vague on how such a redistribution of resources would work — suggesting, for instance, that “friends of the library” groups from better-off, book-loving communities be paired with groups from less-well-off, more book-challenged ones; whatever money was raised for the richer community would also have to be raised for the poorer one (through sharing, I guess).

Kipen’s underlying argument is that all library systems ought to have access to a basic level of funding to guarantee a basic level of service; that, similar to public schools, that level of funding and service shouldn’t be impaired simply because a community can’t pay at the same rate as its richer neighbors. Kipen’s smart enough to see that voters in places that have made a strong commitment to support libraries by passing special taxes won’t want their tax money to leave town. In the case of a place like Salinas, that’s doubly so: Why in the world should San Francisco or Berkeley or anywhere else share their dough with a town that’s declared, at the polling place, that it doesn’t want to pay for its libraries. What Kipen’s suggesting isn’t a hard sell. It’s impossible.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do something along the lines of what Kipen is suggesting. Maybe a state library endowment, funded through charitable contributions, tax-return checkoffs, and perhaps partly with a special bond issue. The endowment could provide matching funds for library districts across the state for any library-related purpose — branch expansion, capital improvements, buying books, or keeping branches open. The matching-fund amount would be capped so that rich districts didn’t take a disproportionate share of funds. At the same time, the matching funds would give lower-income districts an incentive to maintain basic library spending.

I’m sure there are practical reasons my idea would be tough to carry out. I’ve got no idea, for instance, how much money you’d have to devote to the endowment to make it self-sustaining. But since it promises some benefit to communities that are already committed to spending on their libraries, it would get past the predictable and justified local resistance to sharing tax money outside the community where it’s raised.

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Tippecanoe and Fallujah, Too

To do my part for The New Iraq, I’ve started to think about a national slogan. This would be in addition to the current one inscribed on the familiar red, white, black, and green flag, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” That one’s sturdy and sober and sacred as all get out, but it doesn’t quite convey the pizzazz and pyrotechnics of the Iraq that’s in the making.

Here are a few ideas:

“Iraq: Not as Bad as It Looks”

“First Saddam, Now This”

“The Land Between Attacks”

“Watch Out — It’s About to Go Off”

“Hey, Help Us Out — We’re Dying Here”

“Where Ideas Meet IEDs”

“Land of Many Martyrs”

“Mission Accomplished”

“Land of Martyrs and Mortars”

“We Don’t Take Kindly to Meddlers”

“What Happens Here, Stays Here”