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Scientific Societies Oppose Immediate Net Publishing

This story is so amazing. Science is about communication .. #1, #2m and #3. Arguing that the needs of professional societies come first is akin to the arguement that the Church had the right to censor Galileo in the interest of "society." The Church, the government, the professional societiers should never partake of inhibiting scioence form communication ... leave thaty to the for-profits.

By and large these societies are the residual of an era when science was more fragmented ... they are clubs like yacht clubs, golf clubs or more aptly athletic clubs. Why atheltic clubs? Well, these began as a place where the business elite could meet, steam and talk. Well maybe I am being severe, but at least the Seattle Athletic Club attracts the CEOs form our elite firms. The lack of particpation of major investigators in professional societies is telling.

Why do the societies still exist? a. to organize national meetings. b. to publish journals. The cost of publishing journals is now very little ... tx to the web. The meetings, they are still importnat but why should the journal subsidize the meetings? One answer maybe the numbe rof meetings in posh resorts .. Keystone ski resort is the rpime example.

OK, I admit to likng some monasticism in science. I prefer the Gordon Conferences use of small schools and cheap motels.

Scientific Courage as Pogo Sees It

The editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Andrew R. Marks, recently wrote a provocative editorial complaining about the effects of the Bush budget on biomedical funding. Instead of blaming the Bush debacle, radical Republicans, and cowardly Democrats, Dr. Marks focused his ire:

"The current state of the NIH prompts me to say to its director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, "Obviously you are not a scientist." "

Insulting Zerhouni, previously an accomplished admin at a very successful J Hopkins, serves no purpose. As for other comments he made disparaging "translational medicine" as a mumbo jumbo, of course I agree with Dr. Marks BUT I also do not know how this Mad Ave term has affected real funding. Congress may be more interested in mumbo jumbo than is Dr. Marks and Dr. Zerhouni just might understand the Congress better than we do.

The effects of the Bush budget on NIH are terrible, amounting to a cut of 5-10% each year in a field that is literally exploding the rate of discovery in the US and around the world. These changes are drastic in an area just emerging from a period of doubling the finding over 5 years under Clinton. Dr. Marks' scapegoat for all this, however, was not President Bush but Elias A. Zerhouni, the Bush appointed Director of NIH. I think Dr. Marks wasted an important opportunity.

The real enemy, to quote Pogo, is us.

When the funds were flowing at an impossible doubling rate, we allowed the NIH to fund grants for 1 yr at a time and an impossible to sustain funding rate,

When the MFD foundations (my favorite disease) distorted the NIH funding by great lobbying, we sat back and said little.

When the gene therapy fiasco went way beyond what made sense, the few critics of premature clinical trials were quickly silenced .... a phenom that afflicts the stem cell world now. Is the weekly stem cell hyp any more rational than the metered injections of funds to feed translational medicine?

Does ANYBODY outside of Bethesda think that the intramural program is still justified?

We accept the anti-intellectual copyright policies of the biggie journals rather than boycotting journals that deny public access to work the public paid for.

Oh yeah ... how many of us have been ACTIVE vs. the creationist foe?

I agree with Marks on one thing. Zerhouni's emphasis on translational medicine is a phony effort to curry favor with the congress. However, would Marks complain if Zerhouni's marketing resulted in increased NIH funding? Does Marks have real data on diversion of funds from basic science because of Zerhouni's effort?

The bottom line is that the Scientific Community in the US is complicit in its own problems. We need a few good, vocal leaders. We need a media that truly speaks for our community.

SeattleJew on the Bush Brain

Seattle Jew

All I understand about Mr. Bush's brain is in this post.

The Next Big Thing

First it was Ron Sims, our County Executive, now it is David Brewster, Founder of the Seattle Weekly and the Town Hall forum. "We need to fix Seattle Center.!"
Sighhh!!!!!!! This confuses me. Both Sims and Brewster are smart and liberal. Both value the Seattle style of life. Both have achieved a lot in their respective domains as public citizens. So there must be something to this new cause more than another effort to add more tasteless, ticky tacky high rise condos to the north end of the Seattle Peninsula while enriching Paul Alan.

Sims and Brewster are, of course correct, that the Center is not a great place. In a city built on in spectacular views, the Center sits in a sort of shallow pit under downtown's towers. Queen Anne Hill and even the Manhattan Westside redux of the Denny regrade all throw shadows on the remnants of the 64 World's Fair. I have wondered whether a good rainstorm might not overfill lake Union and turn the Center into a lovely lagoon? No wonder the seers of the sixties found this underused land as an ideal spot for a World's Fair.

Like most World Fairs, Seattle's fair was based on build it cheap fantasy pavilions. Little remains of that era except the USA pavilion by Yamasaki .. today's mediocre science museum. Otherwise the grounds are a pastiche of left over tiny rooms, an old armory, an aging sports arena and a retired armory now filled with the same food chains as the food court at the Bellevue Mall.

Sims complains that the assemblage of small rooms provide a too cheap venue for impecunious groups wanting a meeting place. "Too cheap?" from a liberal? Ron needs a lesson in his own origins and perhaps the Center's inexpensive venue need publicity of it is available for so little.

The reasons for the Center's underuse are, at least to me , obvious. In its early days the Center grounds house a while lot of small town functions appropriate for what was a lot more small town-ish city. As Seattle grew, the Center became ringed by venues for the performing arts, at least on the North side but all of these have their front entrances OUTSIDE the Center ,,, mainly on Mercer. The Center grounds are a sort of underused backyard to the begowned opera goers. The to the East we have the Arena, home to the basketball team. The main entrance, once again, is outside ... You can come and cheer the team and never see the International Fountain.


So ... you do need to walk on the grounds to get to the IMAX or the science museum or the diminutive Children's Museum but the main reason for walking on the grounds is the weekly ethnic festivals. If it is February, it must be time for the Macedonian Dance Festival! Actually, this is one of the most charming things in Seattle and the admin activity ever weekend at the Center ... Greeks, Jews, Manchu and people-named-Kelly. I think there may be more than a glimmer of hope for building these weekly folk festivals into something much more attractive and permanent .. see below.


The Center also houses two big festivals each year ... as summer begins and ends. But, other than these tiny ethic affairs, the Center lacks magnets ... what entrepreneurs call anchors or destination attractions. The center is pretty and green but it lacks the museums, shops, or activities that might entice the Seattle Rep theater member to venture for a pre-Ibsen walk, maybe with a beer and a sandwich.

Unfortunately, there is a history here. The Seattle Art Museum once had a great modern art gallery here .. since closed for the venue downtown with its JC Penney-esque design by Venturi. What a shame. The SAM is an ugly building, a tribute to bad taste but it is near the dollars of down town business types. Obviously their clout overcame any good sense one might hope a City would show. Next came the Conventions Center. Seattle's hoteliers insisted that NO city could have its Convention Center remote from the bedrooms ... even a short monorail ride away. Thus we now have all these cheap meeting rooms Mr. Sims' derides.

The pattern of not using the Center goes on and on. What else? Headquarters for the Seattle Public Schools ... in an industrial district to the south of Seattle, African American Museum ... in a wrecked and now remote unused school building. Is there a message here?

Why can't the City make the Center the default location for attractions .. esp small museums? Why not begin by moving the Burke museum from the UW Campus to the Center? The Burke is a messy museum .. confused between three roles .. dinosaurs, Pacific Peoples, and our indigenous culture ..the coastal people who gave us this City and its great artistic heritage. Move it, split it into three! The pacific peoples and indigenous collections could begin a new role for the Center as a home for Seattle's cultures. Perhaps the African American community would give up the Coleman School? Imagine museums to honor the descendents of Maimonides who led the Island of Rhodes Jews to Seattle almost a hundred years ago or the Japanese Americans with their WWII history. Or how about our "new" Seattlites ... the Thai and the Hmong? Seattle could have something quite unique, a center of gravity reflecting our wonderful diversity.



Or ... we could spiff the place up, make beer drinking in public legal, and offer free rent to the old clothes shops and petit bourgeois art shops being forced out of Fremont as that neighborhood moves upscale.

Or ... we could ask Mr. Disney what ideas he has.

Rioting over the Prophet Muhammad

Somehow, some when people will recognize that religions can be just as evil as any other undertakings of men. The only just reaction to the riotng and destruction in rsponse to the cartoons-is to criticize Islam itself for being intolernat and hate filled toward others. The intolerance towrd other criticism would be unacceptable in a government, a corporation or a Garden club. It is less acceptable in a religion that cliams to define the meaning of life for 1/3 of the world.

This is not a criticism of what Islam can be but of what it has become. My family benefited from the greatness of Islam. I am proud to call myself an Andalusian. We lived under Islamic rule in an era of Moslem/Christian/Jewish collaboration, under the flag of Islam. That era was one of the highest civilizations are species ever seen. But the Islam we see today is odious.

Islam suffers, along with Christianity, for an inability to be wrong. The cartoons accurately depict the teachings of the Prophet as read by millions today. The same Prophet who brought his followers and a very modern concept of equality also brought with him intolerance of those who were worship statues of deities. Others with partial truth, Jews and Christians, were to be tolerated as long as they lived modestly, and accepted Muslim rule. For in those whose ancestral homes were Arabia the Prophet had a worse message. In this way he was no better and no worse than his predecessors from more than a millennium before, the Jews described as conquering the odlaters of Cannan. So tdoes the Koran celebrate the Prophet's conquest of Medina, a Jewish city. For the crime of resisting the Prophet's claim to be a true prophet of the Jewish God, the citizens of Medina were killed or enslaved. Jews elsewhere were expelled from their homes in Arabia.

A tolerant person should see the story of Canaan as an artifact of the early days of Islam. One hopes that progress been made in the last 1400 years.

It is in this spirit and, with no disrespect to the Prophet, I'm including in this blog one of the supposedly hateful cartoons. This cartoon shows the Prophet dressed not in Arabic robes but in the rooms of Persia or Indian. Embedded in the Prophet's turban is a bomb. That's offensive if you believe that any image of the Prophet is forbidden. But why were images of the profit from mde taboo? As I understand, the intent was to prevent his followers from worshiping the man as if you were a god. The Prophet wished to avoid the mistake, made by Chrsitans when they deified the prohet Jesus.. The only intent of the Danish newspaper she is to criticize Mohammed, certainly not to deify the man.

Just to be sure that I balance this blog , I'm also including images of the covers of editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published recently by Syria and Egypt. This odious book is not being published by some extreme newspaper in those countries. It is published and supported by most Muslim government. It is presented as truth to people among the Moslem world. Which is worse, the cartoon suggesting that the profit may be being misused or a book claiming that Jews are not human?

As an American, as a grateful recipient of the freedoms created by Jefferson and Madison, I claim my right to side with the Danish newspaper and criticize Islam just as I would claim the right to criticize General Motors, Enron, or... even Israel.

McGavick will Win ...

Just a prediction. Our state is headed by 3 women, one of whom (the Guv) brags about her gender as if a vagina or a penis was of great interest to the voters. To use a Yiddishism ... Pfehh!

In the last election Dino Rossi tied with the guv, despite being conservative and Republican while the dems took the Presidency by a broad margin here. Rossi, like McG, is bright, competent, business like, and .. not likely to wave his genitalia in an election. She got in, but her popularity is lousy and, IMO, will remain so unless she emerges from the fanatsy that gender is a critical issue (I managed to avoid the obvious typo!).

The Senate race will be between Mike McGavick ... a moderate Republican, very successfull excecutive vs. Maria Cantwell, a nearly invisible freshman Senator. So far her early campaign has focused on McG's being (ready for this?) a Republican! As CEO of a failing isurance company he actuallyfired people, cut benefits and was (shock) paid for this!

Yes, she did oppose Ted Stevens on Anwar and .. sort of ... won. Two gold stars BUT I suspect that McG will just agree with her stance and point out how much more effective he will be because he will be in the majority AND has better business skills.

All the while, Cantwell is invisible on the issues that matter to us all ... NSA. New Orleans, national debt, health care, outsourcing, etc etc. McG just needs to paint a "forward looking" agenda with some teeth and he will win.

The other Senator, who ran as a Mom in Tennis Shoes, is Patty Murry. Well meaning lady who is widely credited with being unsuccessful as Senate campaign organizer last time around. Increasingly she is een as a knee jerk liveral and senator form Boeing. Not bad .. sort of like an old (Tennis) shoe. But, if I am correct, she will be running next time in a state that has elected a Repubican Guv and Senator. If nothing else she should throttle the Guv's talk about a vagina trilogy. Better yet .. TAKE SOME STANDS ...act like a leader.

Ms. Cantwell (D), Ms. Murry (D), and Ms. Gregoire (D), better wake up or they will be replace d by (R),(R), (R) ... and gender will NOT be the issue!.

Another blog?

I am also leading a photography blog/gallery over at Blogger. Take a look at the AA Gallery.

An American, a Christian, a Hero

What a wonderful story of heroism:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20051002

Ian Fishback a soldier, writes to McCain abut torture:

"If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'"

Holocaust

Feeling afraid.

I support the occupation of Iraq, but the leadership of Forest Gump is scary at timer like this.

El Baradei: Iran only months away from a bomb
5 Dec. 2005 Jerusalem Post

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only "a few months" to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would "open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution."

Bayesian Reasoning

Currently, I am trying to understand a form of reasoning called "Bayesian logic." this is important to me because I'm trying to understand the work of a scientist named Eric Schadt. Eric has developed a very important new way of correlating mRNA expression data with the genes responsible for controlling patterns of mRNA expression.

Eric's work allows one to look for patterns of gene expression and compute the site in the genome that might control specific patterns. If a specific pattern appears in a population of people, the obvious question is whether a site in the genome can explain the variations in the pattern. If the variations in pattern correlate with some disease pattern associated with a specific subset of people, the implication is very strong that a mutation is present at the indicated site in the genome.

Eric's contribution is to use Bayesian logic to connect gene expression patterns to specific sites in the genome. The concept is very simple. (How many times have you heard that before?) Nowadays we have strains of inbred mice. We also have a map all the locations all of the genes in all these mice. So if we look at several strains of mice and find that these mice all have the same pattern of gene expression for some specific group of genes, and that these mice all have the same set of genes in a specific location, it is likely that genes in that location are controlling the expression pattern! This probability can be strengthened if we know something about the rules regulating the control of expression of mRNAs by specific genes. Those rules, of course, depend on the metabolic pathways leading from a gene to its products to the interactions of those products to the influences of the gene products on each other and finally back to the effects of the gene products on the genes responsible for expressing the mRNAs seen in the expression patterns.

Of course each of these interactions between gene products is probabilistic. The mathematical models developed by Eric and his colleagues allow them to create a network of such probabilities.

I am still trying to understand the most basic concept that is the concept of a Bayesian relationship itself. So here is my first attempt based on an explanation I found on the web. The idea is that I have green and red marbles. While blindfolded I dropped three of them into a bucket. I can't see inside the bucket. So I reach in three times and each time pull ot of on marble. Each time I pull out a red marble. The question is can I quantify the probability that all three marbles are red?

Bayes' Theorem, as shown here, allows me to do this. p(AB) is the probability that all three marbles or read given that I found a red marble three times. P(B), is simply the probability that all three marbles will be read by chance without any evidential data at all. p(A+B) is the probability that all balls are red and that all the selections will be red I must admit I find this last formula less than intuitive. I think it means the total of all conditions where the selected balls will be red and all the balls are red is only 1/2 of all the events where all the selections are RED.

p(AB)= (the probability that all of the balls are RED and our experiments come out RED/ the probability that all the balls are RED).

Put another way: the probability that something is true based on the available evidence= the probability that we would expect to see it as true assuming it is true /divided by the probability that it is true.

Natural Law

This post began as a response to a discussion on an orthodox Jewish web site, Hashkafah. I had suggested that the similarity between legal systems around the world implies that there is an underlying natural law.

One objection to the idea of natural law is that laws regulating human behavior are not really the same thing as physical laws. After all, we derive physical laws from observing the physical world and can not legislate physical laws to tell the planets how to move. I would point out however, the physical law itself comes in many different kinds and we do use a variation of these laws to regulate how we manipulate the natural world. Engineers, for example, determine how to build bridges by using laws derived from Newtonian physics. Similarly, the laws of evolution, for example, while explaining the origins of diversity in living beings, can be used to formulate civil laws as to how we should behave if we wish to preserve our species.

This argument requires understanding that laws can be very different from each other because the realities underlying different sorts of law are themsleves very different. For example, the laws we call quantum mechanics are based on statistics because at the level of fundamental particles there are no certainties only probabilities for such things as to where a particle is or how fast it is moving. Engineers building electronic devices have to use laws that make the desired result very probable, but never certain. In contrast, at a level of mechanical function, engineers can rely on the absolute prediction of Newton's laws.

Skinner posited laws of behavior from watching animals respond to their environment. These laws can and have been used to design educational systems. Skinner, however, went further and suggested that we could derive laws of human behavior, that is laws as to how we should behave, from scientific observations of how humans behave.

While Skinner, along with Marx and other utopians, may hae been overly arrogant, it seems to me that succssful efforts may have already been made. Anthropologists have been studying human societies now for a number of centuries. Wouldn't it be reasonable to argue that the similarity of laws governing human behavior around reflects a collective effort of engineers to optimize human behavior. Does the similarity of these laws imply that there is some kind of underlying reality to human behavior and that we can use that reality or derive better laws about how we should behave?

Dayenu

Dayenu ... on Passover we sing a sing about all the things jews are grateful for. So, I have modified it. After each stanza, there is a word Dayenu .. it would suffice.

1. The French. The French Enlightenment inspired our founding fathers to create the world's first democratic state. The French navy and confrontations with France in Europe provided the necessary military balance for an American victory in the war for independence.

without French ideas it is hard to imagine that the new country of America would have accepted us as ordinary citizens.

Dayenu

2. The English for giving rise to religious sects that found a state church intolerable. also the English for the development of a middle-class and the creation of the industrial revolution.

the absence of the state church and the availability of industrial war were critical factors in the success of Jewish immigration into the United States.

Dayenu


3. The English for losing the American war then teaching us a lesson (poorly learned) in 1812. The same English for standing up to Hitler until we finally came to her senses.

Dayenu

4. the American natives for their generosity and tolerance of all of the newcomers.

Dayenu

5. Chinese workers and Irish workers for a building the TransAmerican Railway. the presence of large numbers of workers of other ethnic groups, was very important for Jewish immigrants ability to enter the burgeoning American middle class.

Dayenu

6. Northern liberals for opposing southern slavery. Southern intellectuals for supporting freedom from religion and freedom from monarchy.

although large-scale immigration of Jews did not begin until after the Civil War, changes wrought by that warcreated great opportunities for American Jews.

Dayenu

7. Canada for resisting American invasions and, in the part of Québec, trading at Montréal smoked beef.

Dayenu

8. Africans for giving us jazz.

Dayenu

9. Lakota, Pueblo, Seminole, and others all of the native resistance movement for giving us all a lesson in bravery. as American Jews support the bravery of the Israelis and resisting the "greater" Arab population, we should be inspired by the bravery... I'll pay it failed effort to do that of the Native American resistance.

Dayenu

10. Jews and Roman Catholics for levening the American church with something other than flat bread. somehow Jews and Catholics occupied the same ecological niche in American society. The KKK hates us both. Real estate covenants restrict us both. we both have too many seats on the Supreme Court.

Dayenu

11. Muslims for holding together the world of the intellect until Europeans progressed beyond barbarism.

Dayenu

12. The Dutch for being the first to support the American Revolution and for creating the model for quarterly government. and the Dutch for providing refuge from the Spanish Inquisition. Sephardim arriving via Holland were this nation's first Jews.

Dayenu
see more at:

www.seattlejew.blogspot.com

Gandhi's thoughts on Israel

http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/mideast.htm

Sad comments from before the Holocaust.

Origin of the Dalmatians by Intelligent Design

Moshe Dayan is a bit of an outcast, not show quality because he has a very large ring around his left eye. Otherwise Moshe is a typical Dalmatian with a lot of spots and a great smile.

Aside from the spots and the smile, Moshe is about 99.9% just a dog. Taken to a dog park, he chooses his friends without regard to race, religion, sexual preference, or breed. In fact, I have seen no evidence that Moshe is even interested in another dog's spots.

This lack of interest in one's breed seems to me to be very different from human behavior. Despite the best efforts of our most liberal citizens, integration only goes so far. For example, most students aggregate with others of their own ethnic or raciaol group. How comes it that Dalmatian's are so much more enlightened than we are? I have a theory.

Modern, rational, loquacious hominids, are 60 to 100 thousand years old. Skeletons indistinguishable from modern human, however, are considerably older than a hundred thousand years. Around 60,000 BCE something happened amongst our ancestors. They got a lot better at making tools, their religions became much more complex, and they discovered art. Paleontologists believe that some thing was the discovery of speech. This discovery probably involved a genetic event because the genetic data tell us that we modern, speaking humans are descended from a very small number of people who existed at that time
.
The paleontologists, however, tell us that dogs already existed alongside our hominid ancestors for many hundreds of thousands of years before the "masters" began talking. Early hominids and dogs were both scavengers, living off the table scraps left by more effective carnivores such as lions. I wonder if the modern image of a lion as a brave animal reaches back to some dim memory of our subservient role, cleaning the bones left after the lions' feat. The famous paleontologist Richard Leakey, says that after the canines and the hominids retired from a full day of the scavenging, canine and hominid retired to case where they slept together. It is even imaginable that protohumans and dogs somehow helped each other in the hunt. Leakey went so far as to suggest that hominids and canines are "co-species."

If Leakey is right, man and dog were shaped together by evolution. Natuarl selection may have created our affection for each other. But something happened to canine evolution about 10,000 years ago .. dogs developed into hundreds of different breeds. Despite thos diversity, Moshe simply doesn't care about breed. How did this happen?

Perhaps the answer comes from intelligent design. My theory depends on understanding the meaning of "species." Proponents of intelligent design make a great deal of the concept of "species". The claim is the "species" have not been observed to develop spontaneously or in laboratory studies of evolution. This argument may reflect a lack of understanding of the basic terminology of biology. Biologists define "species" as being sexually incompatible. Speciation, that is sexual incompatibility between otherwise similar animals, can occur on the basis of very small changes in an animals physical or even behavioral traits. For example, distinct species of crabs are found on the east versus the west coast of Australia. The only difference between the two species is in a mating dance done with the front claws. Remove the claws and love unfolds. So, a subtle change occurring because of random mutations WITH NO EFFECT ON SURVIVAL has created two species. It is easy to see how dog breeder might create two species of dogs. I suspect that Chihuahua and Great Dane are already sexually incompatible, at least without resource to artificial insemination and even then it is hard to imagine a Chihuahua dam giving birth to a Great Dane pup.

So it appears that humans, for our own amusement were able to intelligently design dog "breeds", while our own "races" arose by random changes as our Chinese, French, Aussie, and Bantu ancestors migrated away from the ancestral caves? As we migrates, our dogs went with us and we decided to create different breeds. We became the force for intelligent design. Unfortunately, human intelligence is limited and Dalmatians, in addition to spots, have inherited gout. Amazingly, the American Kennel Club Dalmatian Club will not permit breeders to eliminate the gout gene, even though the gene is now identified. The dog breeders want to keep the breed, their intelligent creation, "pure." Since breed is a human creation, dogs have no reason to recognize it.

There's a lesson in all this for contemporary concepts of race. Extremists on the liberal side argue that there is no such thing as race because all humans share a very similar genome. That assertion, while appealing to egalitarians, sidesteps the obvious issue that a very large portion of our species can be a separated even on the basis of visual inspection into the races. Thus race and breed are very similar except that one is a result of Darwin's choices one the other as a result of intelligent design. I also suggest that in humans, because we speak different languages, breeding is at least weakly coupled to a desire to identify with people who "sound and look like us." Thus, the rather limited physical differences between the races arose partly because some ancestral spin-off from the original tribe, decided that a family group would emigrate to a new home. Once that happened, the desire to breed with similar folks combined with the geographic barriers led to racial distinctions. In contrast physical differences between dogs, resulting from intelligent design, are far more stringent but dogs are all culturally alike.

Every dog pound is evidence that dogs, unlike humans, do not have any genetic tendency to racism. Does that prove the canine designer is more intelligent than the human designer?

State of the Union, 2006

Excerpts from the State of the Union Address by President George W. Bush; United States Congress, 2006

All Americans must comply with the law of the land. That is why we worked so hard to be sure that the new Justices of the Supreme Court are all fair and balanced. As you know, in the matter of freedom of religion, the Court has now decided that alternatives to evolutionary theory must be taught as long as they are based in science. This fair-minded decision challenges those who support intelligent design to provide scientific grounds supporting belief.

I am therefore proposing a budget for the coming year of $300 million to be made available for original research proposals in the area of intelligent design. I want to point out the tremendous potential benefits to our society if such research bears fruit. Research, ALL research has benefits , not just conventional research that explores old points of view. Therefore, I call on the enginuity of American scientists to rise to this challenge. I ask the research and development arms of American industry to imagine the great benefits to your country and to all Americans if the search for intelligent design leads to a source of alternative energy ... our cars may one day run on the same principles that created the Grand Canyon!

Three departments will split this modest sum:

Department of Energy:
What could be more intellignet than an inexhaustible source of energy? My experts tell me that research at a Mormon Univeristy on fuaion power has been suppressed. Others claim that research did not work. Perhaps, but the conventional thinkers we can not make a fusion reactor work because they do not understand how to keep a ball of energy together for more than gnat's blink. Couldn't the answer be a need of science to see God in the heart of the tomahawk errh Tokamik nooclear reactor?

National Science Foundation:
Since that time of the Greeks, the basis for logic itself has never been addressed. We're proposing a collaborative effort between politicians and geologists to determine the original cause of logic.

National Institutes of Health:
In collaboration with the theology departments of the Vatican, Oral Roberts university, Notre Dame university, and the Detroit Wahabi Mosque, the NIH plans to attempt to mutate HIV to a benign virus. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Photography from Iraq

Why do we see so little of this? Because all the western photographers are imbedded? Can't el Qaida afford a digital camera? Anyhow ...try this link from Slate magazine. I found the images a bit disappointing. They lack content other than the simple gore of war. Is there no feeling in this war?

On the Bushie side, surely there must be some good news? Students going back to school? Hospitals operating? Kurds running their own lives????
The lack of good news photographs frightens me even more.

Try this blog for some good photography: FiftyCrows - Social Change Photography

A Phrase

Is there some reason to be Jewish if all that being Jewish means is living for oneself? I am not worthy of such an honor.

Visiting Morehouse

I just came back from a visit to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of my visit was to interest students at this prestigious Black college in applying to the University of Washington for graduate or medical school.

In some ways my feelings for the African-American culture approach envy. African-Americans at their best have the kind of immigrant vigor I can remember from my own parents and grandparents. This kind of thing is disappearing from the contemporary Jewish community.

Despite these feelings, something bothers me not just about Morehouse. This school and other black schools I have visited seem insular, like the walled commutes I saw in Brazil. In Sao Paulo, I stayed with a middle class family in a modest home ... part of a development surrounded by a high wall, guards and guard dogs. Designed to protect these ordinary people from the realities of the Brazilian majority.

The Black campuses don't have guard dogs and the folks inside the walls certainly don't feel a need to protect their TVs and furniture from the milling masses. Still a wall seems to exist, or at least I felt I was living in a walled community. Like the walls in Brazil, this is a wall of choice, marking Morehouse off from the larger society. Choosing to attend Morehouse is an ethnic choice. The students and faculty have chosen to declare themselves different from the surrounding society.

I think this wall is present in all Black culture .. just as it is an any ethnic culture. Its existence alone proclaims a pride in African-American identity. There are, of course the expected tokens of ethnic and Morehouse pride. African themed pictures are present in some classrooms and bulletin boards reflect distinctive African-American cultural activities. I suspect this is great for kids who may have never before felt their world was controlled by people like them.

There is another side of living behind a wall. The Brazilians I met were Jewish and had much the same Israeli art in their homes one sees in US Jewish homes. Jews in the US, however do not need walls. Similarly, the feeling of being inside a wall at Morehouse makes me worry about the need for isolation to protect something important to the Morehouse community. Is Morehouse an expression of pride and confidence of an expression of the need to be protected?

The sense of isolation if heightened because this is an all male school. Indeed, the first night I stayed on campus I witnessed the emigration of female guests at curfew time. This was truly a strange scene, hundreds of coeds milling their way through the narrow gated exit from the Morehouse campus. Most of the girls did not have far to go. Spellman College, an all-black all girls school is immediately next-door. The Spellman girls go out one gate and in the other. I did not notice in the emigration of black guys from Spellman toward Morehouse. Are there walls within walls?

I don't understand the concept of an all-male college. Somehow all-female schools makes more sense to me. Women, after all, have their own culture that is threatened by the dominant male society. Girls being girls is probably a lot easier at Wellesley that it is at Harvard. Boys being boys somehow seems less important. Or is it that I think of boy schools only n terms of military academies? Morehouse is anything but a military academy Without the marching and hazing, "boys being boys" makes me think of athletics. Morehouse, however, has at best limited athletic pretensions. The only other model I can think of might be a Catholic seminary. Are there still Catholic colleges for boys other than seminaries?

I asked some of the guys about their choice of all-male school. Their answers added to my thoughts about insularity. The answers had something to do with the special needs of the "black male." I am not entirely sure what these special needs might be, or what the students think they might be. For some students it may be simply the freedom from sexual distractions, just as students at a military academy or a seminary "need" to be free of female distractions. No one told me they went to Morehouse out on a sense of male pride.

Walls aside, I suspect it would be of great value for more Americans to learn about Morehouse. That raises a thought. Is Morehouse a tourist destination in Atlanta? I did not see any sort of commercial activity around the campus. Come to think of it there is no tourist access at Brandeis either.

Back at my purpose, the UW does poorly in recruiting American students to our grad. programs despite the pre-eminence of the University of Washington in NIH funding for research in molecular pathology or vascular biology. My hunch was that few Morehouse students know much about the Udub. I hoped was to find American students with the kind of drive needed to succeed in graduate school. The kids I met certainly qualify. Their choice of Morehouse, clearly reflects a commitment to academic success. If some of the students choose to come to the University of Washington, I will look forward to learning more about student life at all male, all-black school.

One thought, just occurred to me. There are a small number of American Jews who are also African-American. I wonder if Morehouse has any Jewish students? a Jewish chaplain?

The Chinese Aren't Jewish (anymore)

In 1954 the Chinese government ruled than no ethnic Chinese person could be Jewish. At the time only 50 Jews remained of the few thousand that had survived for the previous two millennia, so China simply saw it as inconvenient to allow so few people the privilege of having a distinct nationality. China's problem is understandable. There is no widely accepted definition of Jewishness despite the best and worst efforts by the Southern Baptists, the Nazis, the American government, the Catholic Church, the Chinese government, and the state of Israel.

The simplest definition I can imagine is: "a Jew and is someone who chooses to be a member of the Jewish people and who has fulfill the criteria of one or more bodies of claiming the authority to confer membership in the Jewish people."

This definition intentionally excludes those whose Judaism is defined by others. Many people who died as Jews in Hitler's campus would not qualify under this definition. Madeline Albright, although a Jew by Jewish law is not a Jew simply because she chooses, instead, her white-christian heritage. Similarly, Lani Guanier, the Harvard civil-rights law professor, chooses to celebrate her father;s skin color rather than her mothers Judaism. In this sense American Jews are part of an increasing community identifying themselves as multiethnic or claiming to be able to pick and choose from assorted ancestral connections. Such people, exemplified by Tiger Woods with his African-American and Thai background, may choose to emphasize one culture over another often based on their physical appearance. At the other extreme, Native American tribes in Connecticut have obvious African American physical features, but any attraction to the heritage of Dr. King and Magic Johnson was overbalanced by the financial benefits coming from their Foxwood Tribal Casino.

At this point it is obvious that we are not discussing Judaism as a religion. Presumably the census taker looks badly upon those Americans who might choose to select "African-American" despite having blond hair and pinkish flesh. There is no official body that confers blackness. Judaism is like a religion in allowing, even celebrating the convert. Akiva, the great rabbi of the bar Kochba revolt was a convert as were David's mother and Moses' wife. Jewish conversion, however, is different from conversion to a religious faith. The convert to Judaism accepts the responsibility for the genetic inheritance of Judaism. As strange as this idea may be to a Christian, the children of Jewish converts need no baptism or special ceremony to be Jewish. If your mom is a yid you is too. Thus, the great grand daughter of a convert, assuming consistency of the maternal line a Jewish, would be as eligible to enter Israel as a Jew as the child of the head Lubavitcher Rabbi who claims descent from David himself.

On most religious matters, Judaism does not have an opinion. Jesus was not the son of God. You want heaven? OK, You like angels and the devil? OK, too. Messiahs, sure .. and many different kinds of messiahs too. Lots of choices, but one matter is clear ... there is one and exactly one God. The God tolerates no other gods nor does he make incarnate, personal manifestations. It is not conceivable that this God would personify himself to impregnate a virgin or give birth to a demigod. Thus Jesus worship is inamicable to conversion to Judaism. In contrast, while Judaism rejects the triune godhead, the Jews for Jesus Christian cult includes members who claimed to be former Jews. Not surprisingly, this discovery exempts such people from acceptance by the Jewish community. Still, under Jewish law a Jesus believer or a convert to Islam remains a Jew by birth.

In contrast to acceptance of the Christian deity, rejection of all gods is generally more acceptable to the modern Jewish community. I think the ability to tolerate atheists is a result of monotheism itself. Judaism is surprisingly vague on the nature of God. A simple way for Judaism to escape the blame directed at God as the permissive force behind the Holocaust is to put God's actions on a plane that is inexplicable to man. Jews, for example, are generally proud of Einstein as a Jew and definitely do not consider the hirsute mathematician to be an atheist. Fortunately most of us will never understand Einstein's math so it is OK for his deity to be inexplicable too. It would be difficult to assign blame or seek relief from Einstein's sense of wonder in the orderliness of the universe.

All this leads up to a question:

Why don;t more people convert to Judaism?. After all isn't monotheism really common in today's world? Many Christian sects have assigned the son of God to the lesser role of wise man in a troubled time. Their Christianity seems like Judaism .. stripped only of the membership in the Jewish people. I guess for most folks there is not much to gain by such a membership.

One wonders whether Palestinians, in particular, might not undertake mass conversion?