Since Last I wrote…

Those of you who are irregular readers will no doubt have completely missed the significance or indeed the very presence of my prolonged silence. What, you may say, was going on in those 15 days? Well… let me just tell you…

We Trained a Baby…

… by ignoring it. It’s little known among those without children that sometimes the best thing you can do for a baby is nothing at all. Apparently, if you pay too much attention to a baby, you only train it to need more attention. The camel’s back finally broke when the child got up 5 times in one night demanding food each time. No person can maintain sanity after being roused 5 times during their usual sleep period so it was decided in no small hurry that baby training was to begin. In what amounted to one REALLY late night with lots of crying and a one baby’s mother sleeping out of earshot, we converted our ‘up 5 times a night’ baby into an ‘up once a night baby.’ Ahhh, the bliss…

I Finished a Few Books…

… since I had literally HOURS and HOURS of reading time on my hands away from a computer what with the wife bunked out in the den.

On the force of several recommendations, I took in some C. S. Lewis. His Mere Christianity was recommended by a couple of Christians looking to ‘save my soul’ so who was I to disagree. It’s a short read and basically just outlines Lewis’s view on Christianity. At several points, it argues vehemently for the ‘truth’ of Christianity. Its primary thrust is that people innately know right from wrong. Even ancient cultures, it argues, knew it was wrong to murder, rob, pillage and steal and therefore it must be a sign of some higher guiding power that differentiates right from wrong. If we all know it, then it’s definitive proof of God. Specifically, it’s proof of the Christian God and no other.

I find his arguments generally self-consistent but the problem lies in the fact that like so many similar arguments, they’re based on faulty assumptions. Different cultures do NOT in fact share our morality. Human sacrifice is commonplace; cultures regularly (and even today) rob from their neighbors. There is no single underlying morality in the universe unless it’s the one that says, “Protect yourself and your genes at all costs.” All that said, the text was an exceptional explanation of exactly what it is Christians are trying to do. They all want to be exactly like Christ but as Lewis explains, nothing about the human is at all Christ-like. To become like Christ, the person must first die in a figurative sense and give up everything they are now. Humans are dirty little pieces of paper. To be a true Christian, you must cut down the tree within you and replace it entirely; start utterly from scratch. So yeah, good explanation, but it reinforces my feeling that Christianity is NOT something I’ll ever associate myself with. No matter how they may act at times, humans are not bits of shit waiting for the guidance of a church to make them better.

After Mere Christianity I unwisely continued the tour of Lewis with the amusing but less popular Screwtape Letters. Screwtape is the name of a high-ranking demon who writes letters to his nephew Wormwood, a junior ‘tempter.’ Wormwood’s job is to corrupt a human soul and make sure that it’s never saved so that it will go to hell for the demons to feast upon. The book is made up of Screwtape’s letters to Wormwood giving him advice on completing his job. A lot of the themes from Mere Christianity appear here as well. Screwtape goes over several of the common human temptations and tries to help the unlucky Wormwood keep his skin. Alas, to no avail though, Wormwood’s patient avoids all the pitfalls including the most heinous one of Pride. [Note to self: Write a self-assessment entry on Pride].

After those very heavy subjects, it was time for something a bit lighter. Whenever I need a break I like to read a little ‘Pop’ science. This time, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex filled the bill. This little treat is written loosely in the format of an advice column. Various animals write in about their sexual issues and the good Doctor does her best to help, annoying format but great content.

For example, when a male honeybee has sex with a female honey bee, his penis breaks off and then he explodes. Why, might you ask, does this happen? Well, it all harks back to evolution. If the male can in any way increase the chances that all the offspring a female bears are his, his genes gain an advantage. So, by breaking off his penis in the female, he obstructs the woman’s sexual organs and discourages other males. The female, however, will gain an advantage if she can mate with as many males as possible. So she’s evolved a hook to allow her to reach behind her and remove the disembodied penis. The two genders exist in a sort of evolutionary battle. This a prolonged theme in the text going on to variations of semen that actually cement the woman’s sexual organs shut, those that cause her to smell unpleasant to other males and even some that have a psychoactive effect on the female to reduce her sex drive. Simply thrilling!

Some species of lizards masturbate regularly and profusely. Again, why? Sex for a lizard is a very competitive process. Once the lizard gets ‘on board’ chances are good that another lizard will come along in no time flat and knock him off before he can deliver his sperm. By masturbating, they reduce the amount of time it takes to complete the process. It’s apparently normal to see several iguanas masturbating together in a tree.

Female preying mantises regularly rip their mate’s heads off. Apparently, when a male mantis has his head, he’s so preoccupied by trying to stay in one piece that he’s a very ineffective lover. Once the female rips his head off, his nether regions go completely nuts and he mates like a wild man (while he still can). More oddly, most men, including mammals, achieve an erection after they die. Apparently it’s just one last attempt to spread their genes before walking into the light.

In one species of spider, the male mates by intentionally feeding himself to the female. That’s right, no typos there. Spiders have their penises (yes, plural) on either side of their mouths. Female spiders aren’t a lot of fun to be with (and are usually bigger) so mating is a tricky process. In one species, the male approaches the female and offers her his rear. While she’s eating him from behind, his penises are busily injecting sperm into her.

More mudanely, I took a peek at The Cosmic Landscape : String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. The book offers a good overview of quantum mechanics and related physics but really tends to speak at a lower level than I would like. I did, however, spend a large portion of the text being irritated. Early on, the author began referring to his ideas as part of The Anthropic Principle. Those not familiar with the term, should know that very broadly speaking, the Anthropic Principle merely indicates that the universe is the way it is because of the presence of or for the sake of intelligent life. Most commonly, this is used as a front by the Religious for their non-scientific ideas about the origins of the universe.

So well you can see, that when a respected physicists starts going on about the Anthropic Principle I was more than a little perturbed. As it turns out though, Susskind’s ideas don’t really turn out to be all that Anthropic. He merely says that there are a ludicrous number of separate universes, like bubbles and they all have their own separate local conditions. Some of these universes are of such a type that they easily spawn off other universes with dissimilar properties to the parent. There’s no intelligence behind any of this spawning, it just happens. So basically, there are an unthinkable number of different universes with widely differing conditions and so chances are really good that some of them are going to be hospitable to the evolution of life. Simple as that. These bubbles are beyond the observable universe and the theory generally falls within the realm of the reasonable in my opinion. I’m not placing any wagers, but one unproveable theory is as good as another in my book.

I decided again that…

… blogging too much was just as bad as blogging too little. In the past couple months, I’ve been going through a phase of just blogging about too much crap. Every book I read turned into 20 blog entries and after a while I started feeling trapped. Once you do the first 6 chapters of some really awful book, one tends to feel a bit obligated to talk about the next 6. Frankly, that sucked. Some books you just want to finish and put back on the shelf. As a consequence, I’ve determined to eliminate the whole book thing unless the text is just so interesting or important that I want to share it in detail or feel the need to remember it more than a week after finishing it. So, with that in mind, The Bible entries stay on the argument that they’re important. The Sex Advise book is still pending on the basis that it’s just damn entertaining. I mean come on, break away penises? What could be better? Everything else gets a passing mention and that’s it. That includes you, Mr. Lewis, Lions, Witches, Wardrobes, Devils and all.