Slouching Toward Gallifrey

Goals for the Summer

2010-05-19T15:50:00.000-05:00

Because sometimes you need a list.

1) Maintain 4.0 GPA for summer semester.

2) Clean carburetor.

3) Learn Irish.

4) Learn to read music and play the tin whistle.

5) Keep dancing.

6) Clean your damn apartment more often.

7) See more friends.

8) Spend time out of town.

9) Organize photo library.

10) There is no number ten.

The song is called "Onion"

2010-04-02T15:01:00.001-05:00

I performed at the 13th Annual Swinger's Ball in Willow Springs. This was last Saturday, the 27th of March. You probably weren't there, so here's the video. In the beginning, I am in the front, third couple from the left. Then I'm in the back line. Shortly after, I'm right in the middle.

If a better video surfaces, I'll link it here.

Video!

Cemetery Blues

2010-03-04T15:17:00.000-06:00

I was walking home from class last night when I passed the cemetery. You know the one, it starts at Lawrence and Clark and goes north about a block. I don't usually walk home, but it was a nice night and so I found myself there.

I immediately thought of dead people, as one does. A cemetery is basically a big public housing project for dead people. In the dirty corner next to the McDonalds wrappers are the small unobtrusive headstones, cramped and cold. Looking towards the east the monuments rise high and gaudy, gentrification having pushed out those less prestigious corpses.

Then it all got personal. I am going to die. I am going to be in a box in the ground. I am not going to be able to do anything. Or think anything. Box. Ground. Dead. These are thoughts which often terrify me if I let them. They are the reason I engage in work like Fear, to confront and accept the eventuality of death. But last night, I chose not to let them. I was flying high after having aced a chemistry test, and having seen the sun in the sky for the first time in what seemed like years. In this particular mood I wasn't worried about trivial things like money, or mortality. I was optimistic. I will finish school, and become a nurse. I will help people. I will get the perfect motorcycle, and ride it into the west. I will spend part of my life in another country. I will have a house with a garden and a blue shed. I will make this experience as fulfilling as possible for myself and for those around me.

And then I started thinking about religion, as I often do. I was raised in a religious family, but now I'm finding my own way in a godless universe. I know I have a limited amount of time to make good on the promises listed above. What changes about your perspective if you think you'll live forever? Probably depends on which believer you ask. Regardless, I do think there are some similarities between worldviews that are worth considering.

Take broken-ness, for example. The state of being imperfect. A huge part of Christianity is acknowledging moral imperfection as a result of our sinful nature. Taken too far, this can turn into debilitating guilt of Catholic proportions. But a little guilt is a good thing, for believers and atheists alike. Mistakes are useful. Note them, make sure not to make them twice. Proceed onward. I agree that no one is perfect. There is no such thing as perfect. We are all doing our best in a universe that cares not a whit for us. Falling down is to be expected. The key is to get up, call a friend, and go laugh about something.

Every Schoolboy Knows

2010-02-03T15:37:00.000-06:00

So, it's odd being back in school. Odd but also familiar, because all the little school things you'd forgotten about come back in a rush. The desks are too small, there's too much light, and everyone looks vaguely dissatisfied. Which is not to say I don't like it. I enjoy learning new things, especially when those things are quantifiable, observable, and indepedently verifiable. I also enjoy the way you meet new people. The desperate scrambling because omigod-let-me-find-someone-not-dumb-or-we'll-never-get-these-equations-balanced. It's a glorious panic.

And then there are the teachers. The semester so far has renewed my belief that teachers are some of the strangest people on earth. (And I hang out with theater geeks!) My chemistry professor is my best example so far. She's an older woman, mid 40s. Russian. She likes to run her hand through her hair, and it gives the impression that the whites in her salt-and-peppery mix are in fact just coated with chalk, indelible after all these years spent at the blackboard. Her accent is stereotypically Russian, complete with "wegetables", but her Os are decidedly British. This makes listening to her read chemical reactions a real treat, because most of them contain oxygen. She has this cadence when she speaks; it's initially calm and collected, but when she arrives at the point she considers most important she will turn from the chalkboard and finish her thought in a manner that approaches violence. As if knowing where to put the coefficient is a matter of LIFE and DEATH. It's strangely effective.

The biology professor is less... emotionally volatile. Which is good, beacause there's a lot more to cover in that class. And we only meet once a week. I found out last Saturday that the one week of class I have to miss is a test week. I also found out that she drops the lowest of our five test scores. So I have my work cut out for me there. The classroom is nicer - it's very new media, with three projectors and computers at every table. The lighting is softer and warmer. It feels safe. The class is going to be a significant amount of work, but I'm a biology geek, so I can handle it. We started on Saturday by reviewing the scientific method and experimental design. Which stands in stark contrast to my psychology class. That's another post entirely.

Not As Random As You Might Think

2010-01-12T16:10:00.002-06:00

Let's call that month of no-blogging a holiday break. You cool with that? Good.

Now it's 2010 and we're done with the ohs, or the oughts, or whatever you want to call them. I'm fine with that. They were okay, the double-ohs, but there are better things on the horizon. I'm going to back school. I'm dancing more. I'm visiting Ireland. It's my birthday, and the sun is actually shining, having briefly broken though from whatever alternate dimension it visits during Chicago winter. So take that, universe. You have NOTHING on me today.

Now, back in September, I promised a follow-up post to the Origin of Species debacle. You'll recall the salient points - the creationist duo Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort were planning to release an anniversary edition of Darwin's famous manuscript, complete with a Comfort-penned introduction which attempts to refute the theory of evolution. I know, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. However, in the invening time, a number of people have done admirable jobs of pointing out the ignorance, intelluctual laziness, and plagiarism in the introduction, so I won't be refuting the whole thing here. Instead, I'll use the rest of this post to clear up a few misconceptions about evolution. It is a counter-intuitive theory, which helps to explain some of the widespread resistance to it in American culture.

Misconception #1: Evolution is a process of mindless chance which produces complexity.

This is an objection I see raised all the time by critics of evolution, and that's unfortunate, because it's one of the most easily understood concepts in the theory. It is beyond my understanding how Ray Comfort can fail to get this. The key to dissolving this misconception lies in a simple statement: Evolution contains both random and non-random elements, and those elements work together to produce complexity. Or as Richard Dawkins puts it, "Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators."

The 'replicators' Dawkins refers to are organisms, or more specifically their genes. Genes are the things that make us what we are. They tell certain cells to become an arm, certain cells to become a liver, etc. Genes can change randomly through mutation. When DNA (the code in which genes are written) replicates, errors can occur. Certain genes (or parts of genes) may be deleted, cloned, or rearranged. These random changes (mutations) provide the raw material of evolution. But now we come to the important part: non-random survival. Our genetic code is not allowed to mutate at random and go its merry little way. Instead, deleterious (bad) mutations are culled from the population because the organisms that harbor them are less successful at reproducing. Nature, having no conscious plan, is selecting for survival those organisms better able to operate and reproduce within their environment. Hence, natural selection.

Misconception #2: "There are no transitional species!" or "We still haven't found the missing link."

Many creationists harp on this phrase to such an extent that it takes on an air of "the creationist doth protest too much", but I think this particular objection raises certain important points about how we think about history and classification. Here are the important points to conceptualize:

First, fossilization is difficult. Only certain parts of animals fossilize, and only under certain conditions. We find many more fossils of sea-dwelling creatures than we do of land-dwelling creatures, for precisely that reason. Also, searching for fossils is expensive and time consuming, and rarely yields the whole-skeleton fossil that is so hoped for.

However, given the difficulty of fossilization, we do have many examples of transitional fossils. Tiktaalik was a lobe-finned fish, but had certain features in common with four-legged animals. Archaeopteryx was a feathered dinosaur extremely important in helping us understand the origin of birds. (Birds, as it happens, are all descended from the dinosaurs.)

When people talk about the 'missing link', they are really talking about wanting to find a transitional fossil that is a direct ancestor of modern humans. Despite the fact that we have found many of these, people have a tendency to see modern humans as somehow special, or different. This is a reflection of our anthropocentric nature and our failure to see our true place among a long line of transitional species.

I think that's enough for now. I'm taking a biology course this semster, so I'm sure I'll have more to share once that gets started. For now, good night and good luck.

Excuse Me, But I Think Your Bias Is Showing

2009-12-14T14:19:00.000-06:00

I ran across two things on the internet today that seemed to resonate, and sent my train of thought on a cross-country haul. So I'll re-trace the journey here.

Thing the first: This blog entry by one James Chartrand. The funny thing about James is that he's a woman. "James" is a pen name, an identity the writer assumed when she found she wasn't getting the work she wanted as a freelance writer. In this entry, James outs herself and explains the reasoning behind her decisions.

Thing the second: This NPR broadcast which features a study by Emily Sands, in which "surprising" gender biases are revealed in the theater community. Surprising is in scare quotes there because I'm not sure how surprising it actually is.

If you live on the planet Earth, you have had to think about gender bias. If you are a woman, you have had to think about it frequently. If you are a woman trying to succeed in male-dominated industry, you would probably give your firstborn in exchange for not having to think about it. So in some ways, a story like James' is not surprising. People do have biases, and they are in some ways unavoidable. Does it suck that one has to hide their identity in order to get more money for the same work? Yes, yes it does. But I'm not really sure what to do about it.

The premise of the study by Emily Sands was to send out identical script samples to male and female artistic directors throughout the country, with some scripts having a male playwright listed as the author, and others having a female playwright. (The samples were in fact written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Lynn Nottage.) But here's the interesting part: while all artistic directors rated the script's quality equally well, the females gave it lower marks on the sections that asked about how well the script would be received by the theater community. One is made to wonder whether the female artistic directors have less faith in women playwrights, or whether they are simply being more realistic about the chances that the work has. They, having faced the monster of gender bias, know full well that the script with the female author has less of a chance to be produced. To what extent these artistic directors are creating a self-fulling feedback cycle was not addressed in the study. I'd also be curious to know what sort of theaters were asked to rate these scripts. Does the bias change when the sample set is just major regional theaters? Do small groups like the Neo-Futurists have a similar bias?

After reading both of these articles, I began thinking also about how they relate to ethnic bias. I recall vividly certain blog entries from a playwright friend of mine who has had trouble finding the elusive "stable day job." Having a foreign name, he must constantly wonder if his reusme is being sent straight to the circular file because of ethnic bias. Would he get more responses if his name were Bill, or Sam? Would he feel awful sending out resumes with a false "nickname"? Would interviewers feel tricked when he showed up with a decidedly brown face? Possibly.

I do feel that ethnic bias is perhaps a more complicated beast than gender bias. It taps into the kind of in-group/out-group thinking that was a survival necessity for our recently evolutionary ancestors. When we consider working with someone, we want to be sure we can communicate with them, joke with them, that they have a similar work ethic, cultural values, etc. These are the things that are hard to put on a resume. Perhaps in the future we'll all have video resumes so that employers can put a face to a name and get a sense of personality. But that's a minefield all its own.

In The Pines

2009-12-09T14:25:00.000-06:00

I walk off the bus from Detroit directly into the midst of Chicago winter. It's not what I'm expecting, to tell the truth. When I left town it was still coat-and-hat weather. This temperature, on the other hand, requires the full breadth of winter accouterments. But I haven't packed those. So I shoulder up my burdens, trusting the strain of walking to keep me warm, and stride headlong into the wind whipping down Canal Street.

As I move south tiny snowflakes begin to fall and I think of whiskey and fireplaces, and my current demonstrable lack of both those things. Whiskey and fireplaces feel like home. My apartment does not feel like home, it feels familiar. Which is not at all the same. Eventually I make it to the train and there is the picking-up and putting-down of bags that always accompanies travel through public transit systems. And there is the waiting, and the avoidance of grifters and homeless and con-men and guitar players. But parking tickets are too expensive, among the many other reasons.

My key turns in the lock, click. The bags go on the brown thing. The mail goes on the desk. The clock says it is too late to be awake when you have to go to work tomorrow. Here it is, me and the cats, same old life. I sometimes cannot believe I have been here three and a half years. Other times I very much can, and it makes me want to rip things apart. But. Keep calm and carry on.

Buckle up, we're about to turn the engines on

2009-12-02T13:56:00.000-06:00

This is going to be a mish-mash. A jumble, if you will. A list of loosely connected things. It has been a busy November and that trend looks like it will continue until mid-January at least. My thoughts are all a bit squibbly.

Firstly: My brother got married! Weird, yes. I know. He is 22 and has a house and a wife. This is unfamiliar to me. But the wedding was great and I'm sure there are embarrassing pictures of me in a nice tux floating around somewhere. And get this: they had a photo booth. An honest-to-God portable instant photo booth. Two sets of four tiny pictures! Color or B&W! Your choice! The world does not cease to amaze me.

More travel coming up. Detroit this weekend, and then Louisville again for Christmas. I don't mind it, though it is sometimes frustrating finding someone to watch the cats. I have too many cats.

I'm starting a writing group with Clift. We are getting together people from various Neo-Futurist classes and instituting a bi-weekly writing assignment which will be followed by in-person feedback and criticism. I'm hoping it goes well. I haven't done this sort of thing before, but I feel good when I'm writing, so I want to keep doing it.

In other Neo-Futurist news, the next prime-time season was picked. I don't know if I'm allowed to divulge the choices here, so I won't. Let me just say - very exciting things are coming. In order to prepare yourself, please watch this sad video about a dog. Because excitement should always be balanced by melancholy.

I ordered glasses online. Where are they, Zenni Optical? Where? And did I measure my pupilary distance correctly? Please let me know.

Lastly, a public service announcement. As we approach the seriously cold and nasty part of winter, consider your health and the health of your friends, family, and complete strangers you sit next to on the bus. Get your seasonal flu vaccine. Get the H1N1 if you can, although it's being rationed due to demand. And if you find yourself at all swayed by the McCarthy/Carrey squad, take a look here and here.

Lastly, for reals: I think I'm going to have a birthday party next month. I usually don't, but for some reason I feel compelled. I'm shooting for January 16th, which is also the 224th anniversary of the Virginia Assembly's adoption of Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, which forms the basis of our modern concept of separation of church and state. How's that for a party theme? Yes, "pretty awesome" is the correct answer. Mark your calendars.

Usher Roundup

2009-11-16T15:26:00.002-06:00

The Neo-Futurists' production of Fear closed on Halloween, and with it ended The Fool Machine Collective's adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher. It's strange that this was just two weeks ago. It feel more like two months. Although perhaps that feeling can be explained by the insane amount of things that have been happening lately. Too Much Light gigs, benefit performances, rehearsals, classes, blogs to read, blogs to write, financial calculations, travel plans, the new Doctor Who special. (Although I haven't watched that yet. Feels wrong to watch it alone.) Activity makes life feel longer. And that's nice.

I'm not sure how many times we performed our Usher piece - assuming an average of five tours per night, the number comes out to ninety. Sometimes we did six tours, other times four. The actual number is probably a little under ninety. I don't think I have to tell you that is a lot of performances. The task of performing a piece - even a 12-minute piece - that many times was alleiviated by opportunites for spontaneity and exploration, things I consider to be essential to any worthwhile theatrical endeavor. Interacting with the audience is always a big help as well.

I felt, based on comments from friends, that it went well. Reviews were generally positive. Some were little more than summaries of the different pieces, which was disappointing and in my opinion lazy. But then, I suppose it's difficult to 'review' a haunted house in the same way you would review Tennessee Williams. Here are some choice quotes. First, the good!

"A room based on “The Fall of the House of Usher” features space-age dead people on the floor who ascend and take us by the hand to an impromptu haunted hootenanny." - Dennis Polkow

"Ingenious visual work (including a gallery of Joseph Cornell-esque illuminated boxes) and evocative performances add up to a mournful, creepy, fervently imaginative exploration of Poe's nightmares--and our own." - Kerry Reid

"And the centerpiece, Pierson’s adaptation of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a wonder. Scary, bizarre and sweet all at once, it enmeshes the audience in Roderick Usher’s gloomy world, somehow reimagined through the prism of MJ’s “Thriller” video." - John Beer

I've heard from friends that they felt Usher was the most fleshed-out piece. Their feelings seem to be echoed by these reviews, and that's good to hear, given that we spent so much time on it. These quotes pour a little bit a fuel into a gas tank that has been nearly emptied by the last seven months.
And now, the problematic:

"The puppet rendering of The Conqueror Worm is by far the most fully realized retelling. The actors are completely invested in all of the stories’ stylized renditions. But sadly, if we are expected to take the production more seriously then it has to seriously have more content. The chaos overshadows the audience’s connection to the stories and the intended impact is diminished." - Venus Zarris

It seems like Zarris was looking for Fear to be a cleaner adaptation of Poe, which is not unfair given the way we marketed the show. I personally don't mind when things are vague and chaotic, at least to a certain extent. I can see how some of the pieces in the show fall outside Zarris' expectation. I would argue that Usher was a fully-realized retelling, but it's not my job to argue with critics.

"The Neo-Futurists are storytellers at heart. Thematic and visual abstractions require a different sort of skill set, and even when the company brings in outside artists for these shows (as they have here), their efforts aren’t quite potent or focused enough to work." - Nina Metz

Metz's review was a bit frustrating. She seems to have set up sandboxes for all of Chicago theater and placed the Neo-Futurists into the 'storyteller' box. I'm not sure what goes in the 'thematic and visual abstractions' box. Redmoon, maybe? My point being that storytelling and abstraction are not mutually exclusive, and they don't necessarily require vastly different skill sets. No, we don't have a lot of money. No, we don't exclusively rely on spectacle on a regular basis. But if you watched Usher and didn't see a story being told, you weren't paying attention.

Finally, the yay-you-got-what-we-were-going-for:

"Through each visit with Poe’s work, visiting the stories of others’ darkness, one cannot help but reflect on their own disappointments, even questioning the true nature of our world today. It gets inside your head like a psychological thriller, as opposed to a shocking horror." - Joseph Erbentraut

"maybe the point isn't really to give you something specific to be afraid of, but a new reference point for all the already scary things. the possibility that you can't stop your mind from snapping one day. the possibility that someone familiar will turn on you. the unpredictability of violence. the chance that we will go to our graves never speaking again, with you thinking i wronged you, or didn't care, and that there is no making amends later, just regret and guilt." - a friend

These quotes get at the heart of what I hoped people would take away from this show. It's not about jump-scares or gore. The truly frightening things in life are the inevitable and unpredictable ones that will most likely happen to all of us at some time or another. I'm glad that came across. Now, on to the next project.

Chicago/Darwin 2009

2009-11-04T16:35:00.003-06:00

Last weekend I attended the University of Chicago's Darwin Conference. It is an apt year for such a thing - 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. The price was right and it didn't conflict with my shows, so I thought, "Here is an advantage to living in a big city. I can decide to take a day off and attend a major biology conference." So I did.

I had to miss the Thursday night plenary session. (Side note: "plenary" is academic-talk for "fully attended". So, some irony there.) I did drag myself out of bed Saturday morning and take two Metra trains and a cab down to UC, and made it in time to get my nametag (I got my own nametag!) and sit down in the main lecture hall for the first talk of the morning. (The main lecture hall was for the biology-based talks, the upstairs hall was for history/philosophy. I stuck mainly to biology, but did wander upstairs for a few talks there as well.) My condensed notes are below the jump, so please continue on if you have no fear of science-talk.

All in all it was a good time. I got to meet PZ and Marc Hauser, and even ran into a few friends.

I'll also note that PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne also have posts up covering the conference.

Douglas Futuyma (Stony Brook):
"Evolutionary Ecology and the Question of Constraints"

Futuyma talked on the role that ecological and genetic constraints play in our understanding of evolution. He noted that many species display "phylogenetic niche conservatism", which means that they specialize to a certain lifestyle and don't venture far from it. For example, some species of insects have been feeding from the same species of plant for millions of years. We also observe a lack of genetic variation in places where we would expect it, and often see ecological niches go unexploited.

So, what accounts for this stasis? We must consider that evolution can be contrained by many factors. There may be, for example, no genetic pathway for humans to grow scapular wings. So no wonder we haven't evolved the ability to fly. Adaptation can also be constrained by dependence on multiple unrelated genetic factors, i.e. certain characters may depend on multiple genes which are unlikely to mutate simultaneously. In addition, recombination in a population with high gene flow opposes character spread.

One interesting conclusion of all this is that environmental inconstancy can lead to morphological stasis, which is counter-intuitive to what we'd except. The prevailing wisdom is that when environment changes, organisms which are more fit for the new conditions are better able to survive, and thus natural selection acts to preserve them. Futuyma suggests instead that divergent local adaptations can lost as a result of collapse of population structure due to habitat tracking. (Organisms travel with their preferred environment as climate changes.) He then concludes that in such circumstances extinction is likely due to failure to adapt, and rapid evolutionary change is rare.

Peter and Rosemary Grant (Princeton):
"Natural Selection, Speciation, and Darwin's Finches"

The Grants have been studying speciation among Darwin's finches for 37 years. (!) Their work is a beautiful example of evolution in action among the finch species G. fortis and G. scandens. Their presentation starts off illustrating the ways in which natural selection selects for beak size among finches. In years of high rainfall, vegetation on the island flourishes, making life easy for small-beaked finches. In years of drought, however, the plants that survive have large, hard-shelled seeds which only the larger-beaked birds can crack. In both cases selection acts as expected, and the Grants are able to predict the beak size of the next generation of finches. Beak size is clearly based in (at least) two genes: bmp4 and calmodulin. These genes can be placed in other species to produce finch beaks.

Rosemary Grant then goes on to describe the barriers to interbreeding between fortis and scandens. In this particular instance the barriers are pre-mating, i.e. based in morphology and behavior. The finches can distinguish between the songs and morphologies of the two species, and will not approach females that are not of their kind. Hybridization can sometimes occur when the nest is disrupted or the father dies, and young finches are imprinted with the song of the other species. In many cases, however, the hybrids then backcross - leading towards convergence of populations and away from speciation.

Douglas Schemske (Michigan State):
"Ecological Factors in the Origin of Species"

Schemske was a joy to listen to. His talk was clear and to the point while making room for amusing asides and anecdotes. He focused on a case study he performed among monkeyflowers, or Mimulus. The study's purpose was to answer the question: What are the reproductive barriers between these two species of Mimulus? The options are:

- ecogeographic differences
- premating isloation
- post-masting pre-fertilization factors
- hybrid inviability

In addition to identifying which barriers are present, Schemske was interested in which were the most important. That is, which barriers contributed the most to reproductive isolation. Using the work of Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr, Schemske was able to calculate the relative contribution of each reproductive barrier. He concluded that the pre-zygotic barriers were the major contributors. (Both species are highly adapted to their altitudes, and both are pollinated by separate species of insects.) Post-zygotic barriers such as hybrid inviability are present as well, as was discovered when the species were artifically crossed, but the ecogeographic factors remained the most substantial agents of speciation.

Paul Sereno (University of Chicago):
"Evolution of Phylogenetic Reconstruction"

Sereno's talk was right after lunch and a bit over my head, so I must do him a disservice by not reporting on it in great detail. Here are his main points as I understood them:

- Phylogeny is difficult because humans are more suited to ladder-thinking than tree-thinking. We prefer to see things as progress in a single direction, not a complicated branching tree of interrelatedness.
- In a similar vein, "static" is easier than "transformative". It's much simpler to say "this is a dog" than "this is a type of dog among a long line of previous dogs and a future line of dog descendents".
- In the philosophy of history there is a separation between chronicle and narrative. The chronicle being a simple recording of facts, and the narrative being the facts along with the causal relations between them.
- We need a similar philosophy of phylogeny. We must quantify and atomize character so that phylogenetic analysis can become more standardized and more useful in the study of evolutionary biology.

John Hedley Brooke (Oxford):
"'God knows what the public will think': Darwin and the Religious Response to the Origin of Species"

Brooke spoke on the conflict between evolution and religious belief, and presented a reasoned and nuanced approach. He pointed out that evolution by natural selection has been difficult to square with a beneficent deity, but that the modern young-earth creationism which makes our lives so difficult did not appear until the 1960s. (This was part of a larger historical overview of the creationist response to the Origin.)

Brooke also argued that religious belief is a complicated beast. It is a reference system for interpreting the world and how it works, but it is also a community, a social group, a sense of purpose, etcetera. We should be careful not to distill religious traditions down to one or two characteristics that can be easily written off. Conservative religions may in fact be reinforced by such simple attacks.

It is true that evolution has been largely accepted by the governing bodies of most major religions. Archbishops and Popes, the 'enlightened, intellectual thinkers' have no issue reconciling their faith with the fact of evolution. It is popular religion, the churches of the people, which often show the staunchest resistance. To paraphrase Huxley, a deconstructed God need have no conflict with evolution.

Brooke closed with Dobzhansky's quote, "There is a tragic discord in the soul of man." He was referring to the fact that amongst all the animals, man is the only one that must contend with self-awareness. This has implications for how we deal with conflicting and contradictory ideas.

Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago):
"Speciation: Problems and Prospects"

Jerry Coyne talked on speciation, which is his specialty. He started by defining the three commonly accepted types:

- allopatric (no gene exchange)
- parapatric (some gene excchange)
- sympatric (free gene exchange)

It's easy to theorize and find evidence for allopatric speciation. This is when a population is divided by geographic barriers, making it impossible for them to continue sharing genes. Given enough time, this will inevitably lead to reproductive isloation, which is Coyne'e preferred definition for a species.

It's more difficult to find evidence for parapatric speciation. The conditions are fairly easy to come by, but in order to have true parapatric speciation, you have to show that there was never an allopatric speciation event in the popluation's history, which can be understandably difficult.

There is theory and lab evidence that supports sympatric speciation, but it's diffcult to observe in nature. As Coyne says, "You really have to be there." He does give examples of sympatric speciation which he doesn't count as 'truly' sympatric due to 'trickery' which created a reproductive barrier:

- polyploidy
- non-genetic speciation via parasitic birds
- allochronic speciation
- phenological speciation (e.g. Lord Howe palms)

Coyne goes on to cite a few examples of true sympatric speciation:

- crater lake cichlids
- Littorina saxatilis
- Rhagoletis

Bottom line, sympatric speciation is very difficult due to the free exchange of genes. Future biologists should looks to figs and flukes for the best chance of securing natural evidence.

Philip Kitcher (Columbia University):
"The Importance of Darwin for Philosophy"

Kitcher starts with some problematic examples of Darwinism being applied to different fields, e.g. sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. He does think that Darwin's ideas can be useful to philosophy, specifically in the field of ethics. Ethics have a history and have evolved over time.

He defines "The Ethical Project" which has been going on for ~50,000 years. It builds on our altruistic dispositions and responds to the limitations of those dispositions. In societies, problems arise due to failures of altruism. We can correct for those failures: the earliest way was to use normative guidance. By way of fear, respect, social approval, and dedication to community, we can guide community members towards correct behavior.

'Experiments in living' (different cultures in different places at different times) lead naturally to the evolution of ethical codes. These codes work to different degrees of effectiveness. It's important to note that natural selection does not promote any sort of 'truth' or 'progress' in the universal sense. So how do we make progress ethically? Kitcher suggests that ethics are a kind of social technology, and like all other technology, we should define progress as fulfilling and refining functions.

With that in mind, how do we reconcile the relative equality of early humanity with the high differentiation we find in modern society? Kitcher suggests that we need to move away from governing authorities and towards a community conversation. Community members are those whose lives are causally interwoven - in some cases, this includes our entire species. He advocates a move towards secularism and egalitarianism.

Daniel Dennett (Tufts University):
"Darwin's 'Strange Inversion of Reasoning': Confronting the Counterintuitive"

Dennett's talk was focused on the counterintuitive nature of the Darwin's theory. (Well, he talked about a lot, but this is the throughline I picked out.) He starts out referring to the 'tricke-down' theory of creation, that is, great things make smaller things. Darwin proposed the opposite, that small things can and have made great things over a long period of time.

He compares this to Alan Turing's brilliant work with computers, wherein Turing realized that computers do not need to understand arithmetic. They have competence without comprehension. In fact, nature works the same way. Nature is exteremly competent without any comprehension of what it's doing. Only recently has a culmination of competence given rise to a mind which can comprehend it.

Evolution is a reason-finder. It goes about creating and modifying things until they work within their environment with what seems like reasoned purpose. The organism gets on just fine without knowing the reason, which is just thrift. It doesn't need to know.

Major transitions in evolutionary history (cranes) have gotten us to the point where we can understand the world around us and truly appreciate the 'strange inversion of reasoning' which Darwin proposed 150 years ago.

Eleventh-hour Creativity

2009-10-26T14:23:00.000-05:00

It's a good feeling to make art, and have that art be received well. It is a feeling I've not experienced often in my three and a half years living in Chicago. Which is not to say I've been making bad art. Far from it. I've been committing the more grievous sin of making very little art at all.

There were many reasons why I decided to come to Chicago. A city I was passingly familiar with, a support network, a girl. And the sheer volume of theater that happens on a daily basis. I wanted a place to explore, to figure out what theater actually means to me. I was fairly certain after graduation that I didn't want to be 'an actor'. I had no interest in headshots, memorizing monologues, or pretending to be the King of Bohemia. But did that rule out performance all together? I wasn't sure.

For most of my time here, I've been pursuing work in technical theater. Stage management and lighting design are my mainstays. These are jobs I know well. I get a certain particular satisfaction from doing them. I enjoy the charts, the lists, the mathematical precision. The power and responsibility. But the technical disciplines do lack that immediate feedback. The laughter, the silence, the gasp which escapes from the mouth of someone taken by surprise.

By coincidence I had seen the Neo-Futurists perform at Actor's Theater in Louisville the winter before I moved. This was different. This was a kind of performance I had not thought possible. I have forgotten many details about many plays I've seen, but I remember that show. I remember Jay's literal music videos, I remember Kristie's interview play about being edgy, I remember Noelle's costume/makeup change and her monologue about how difficult it is to just be yourself in front of over a hundred people. So when I moved here, I started volunteering with the Neos. This lead into a stage management gig, and then another, and now I've been on staff as a technician for two years. To paraphrase Mary, "I like it here, I love it here, I finally found a home. A home. A home away from home."

I'm currently taking the "Intro to Neo-Futurism" class. This is my second time through. And it's strange how quickly it all comes back to me; the songs which send images running through my mind, the way the words come in just the right order, the Saturday morning rewrite which puts all things in their places.

It's a good feeling to hear that your play accomplished what you wanted it to, and more. It's a good feeling to be drinking at the theater past three and have someone say, "Hey, I really liked your piece in class today." It's a good feeling to create. I need it. It calms me. I think it's here to stay.

Cannabis and Autism

2009-10-13T16:49:00.002-05:00

While meandering about the internet today, I found this interesting pair of articles written by a woman who is mother to a young autistic child. The articles tell the story of J - the child - and his experiences with cannabis as medication for his disorder. Now, there are many places this story could have gone wrong. Mother reads internet forum, decides to grow pot in her closet. Bad. Mother spits in the face of Western medicine, buys street drugs for her child. Bad. Thankfully Mrs. Lee has gone about things in a reasonable fashion.

She was turned on the the possibilities of medical marijuana by a homeopath - proof that useful information can sometimes come from highly dubious sources. She first explored a prescription medication called Marinol, which is an FDA-approved drug containing synthetic THC. This proved effective, but J began to build resistances, which can apparently be common when dealing with synthetics. So Mrs. Lee pursued and obtained a medical marijuana license. (Rhode Island is one of thirteen states where marijuana is legal for medicinal use.) For more details, see the links at the top of this post.

I felt a bit of internal conflict when I first came across this story. If you have talked to me at all about medicine, you know I harbor intense skepticism towards what has become known as "complementary and alternative medicine," or CAM. Most practicioners of CAM are huckters, frauds, or quacks, particularly in regard to treatments for autism. Autism is a complex spectrum disorder, treatment effectiveness varies between patients, and nothing works across the board for everyone. Unfortunately this opens the door for the CAMmies to hawk their supplements, vitamins, diet regimens, chelation therapies, acupuncture, etc. without having to prove efficacy. So I walk very carefully around anyone promoting "natural" medicine.

However, I don't believe I have to be so skittish around marijuana. In the places where it's legal, it's being regulated. The main thing we're lacking with marijuana is large-scale efficacy studies. Because, you know, it's mostly illegal. Which is ridiculous, because it's not dangerous. It's illegalization is mostly the result of racism and is not based on sound fact.

I'm all for health care reform. So while we are re-regulating the insurance giants, creating a public option, un-yolking insurance from employment, and making the whole system more efficient, let's go ahead and do some serious research on the medical benefits of demonzied substances. We might be missing out on some seriously helpful stuff.

No One In This World Ever Gets What They Want

2009-10-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, it was the first day of Chicago autumn. Or as I prefer to call it, "fall". I like fall better for some reason. Maybe because it's an active verb. (Curse you college acting classes.)

I love this weather. It's constantly cool and breezy, even when the sun is out. It makes me think of fireplaces and campgrounds, of sitting by a lake with a bottle of wine and holding hands. Nature is more appealing to me in the fall. Everything is quieter, more relaxed. The world is having a drink before bed.

If I were to anthropomorphize the seasons (and really, who doesn't want to?), fall would be a man in his 50s. An outdoorsman. A man capable of handling things. He would like to work in his garage, and chop firewood, and take walks around his large tree-filled property. Fall is a kind of twilight-time. It signals the end of things, but it is not itself the end. I look forward to that.

There is a kind of sadness in late September, a grey mood, a slowing-down of things. One remembers what they meant to do in the past months but never got around to. One looks forward and sees cold white death. For the meantime, they live quietly in the dusk of fall.

The other seasons are fine. I like the endurance test of winter, the cautious optimism of spring, the warm summer nights. But fall is my true love. Fall and me, we're forever.

And that is beautiful.

The Origin of Stupidity

2009-09-25T15:05:00.000-05:00

This video has been getting some play on the old FB, and more recently on MetaFilter, so I thought I'd toss together some of my thoughts about Kirk, Ray, Darwin, and the manufactured controversy of ID/creationism vs evolution.

Backstory: Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort (a goofy creationist duo) are releasing a new version of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Their version is prefaced with a 50-page introduction by Comfort, who is most famous for claiming that bananas are verifiable proof of God's existence. They've released a video to promote their anniversary edition.

The video contains a slew of the usual creationist/fundamentalist canards: Christianity in under attack, Christians everywhere are persecuted, college will make you an atheist, our kids are being brainwashed by atheistic evolution, etc. Criss responds to these with scathing wit, so I won't do so here. Instead, let's ask the question: Why should creationists feel the need to release an anniversary edition of the Origin?

After hearing Kirk give a summary of the book's new introduction, I can tell you why: they are out of ideas. Every single 'attack' made by these loons against evolutionary biology has failed utterly, so they are reduced to spending their money on producing free books with a truth-free introduction. (Said introduction is apparently being rewritten by Comfort, and is not currently available for dissection. Expect more on this later.) Here's a sampling of what will be touched on in the introduction, according to Kirk:

- a history of evolution
- a timeline of Darwin's life
- Hitler's connection to evolution
- Darwin's racism
- Darwin's misogyny
- Darwin's thoughts on God

I'm not sure how they can screw up evolutionary history or Darwin's biography, but I'm sure they'll find a way. The Hitler zombie rears its ugly head here, as was to be expected. And then we have three ad hominem attacks on the man himself. As if Darwin's personal poilitics matter when considering the validity of evolutionary theory. The introduction goes on to cover the 'hoaxes' of evolution:

- nothing created everything
- the structure of DNA
- lack of transitional forms

I'll go ahead and repeat Criss here. Evolution is not abiogenesis. The structure of DNA is a hoax... how? Everything is a transitional form. Even you, Kirk.

Criss suggests taking as many copies as you can, tearing out the toilet paper, and giving them away to friends and family. I'm going to keep one with the introduction for my own amusement. Hopefully we can take this misguided effort and turn it into something useful.

Usher Redux

2009-09-22T14:23:00.000-05:00

This is the second time I've played Roderick Usher on stage. The first time was in college. We had a studio theater program that allowed students to write, produce, and direct their own work a few times a year. A friend of mine had chosen to lump a bunch of Poe stories together under the banner of "The Masquerade", and I was given the part of Roderick Usher. The production was ambitious to a fault. We had costumes, complicated lighting, and the Red Death who spoke entirely in sound cues. It was fun to do. We had a waltz. I still have my crushed green vest.

Now it's September of 2009, and again the House of Usher is falling. It started falling, at least for myself and the rest of the Fool Collective, about six months ago. Looking at my calendar now, I can see our first rehearsal was on April 2nd. You might think this is a lot of work to do be doing for a 17-minute show, and you might be right. But it's part of the Fool Collective process to play a long game with whatever project we're tackling. For myself, and for those interested, a brief outline of said process:

Get together a group of phyiscal performers. For Fear this was a combination of people we'd worked with before, and people we had been in workshops/classes with. We ended up with five boys and two not-boys.
Start with meetings/chats. We met throughout April just to talk about fear, death, depression, and whatever else seemed appropriate. Much of this is archived on the show blog.
Generate ideas via text and physical exercise. Most of our early rehearsals fell into two camps: we would be given a writing/thinking assignment and told to either blog it or bring to rehearsal, or we would be given a physical assignment to present to the group. These things influenced each other. Chairs were tossed in the air and landed on their legs. A light bulb was swung by the cord, faster and faster as a body descended into a box.
Collect the most interesting images and swirl them around in your head until you have an order. We were helped(?) on this step by the addition of the Poe story. Originally we were just doing a show about the fear of death. Having a specific text in which to base our physical abstractions gave us a clear direction to pursue.
Create sounds and lighting which support the images you've created. The Fool Collective likes to use practical lights, personal lights, multiple speakers systems, and atmospheric soundscapes. We try to transform a theater into a different place entirely. There are no seats in the House of Usher.
Rehearse it over and over until each moment has a purpose, and there is an overall clarity of focus. This does not mean, necessarily, that things will be clear to the audience. You find that out during previews. Or after.

Things will change during the performance run, of course. The different audiences will cause moments to be shorter or longer, and our cycling cast of narrators will lend their varied specialties to each run. Hopefully we have made something which will at least elicit reactions from the audience. At most, it will communicate something about the cyclical nature of life and death and perhaps reveal some novel elements of The Fall of House of Usher. I'll let you know what I think after performing it upwards of sixty times.