Fountains of Wayne: Welcome Interstate Managers
You might have a bit of trouble getting hold of it. Well, at least Amazon did, maybe there was just a temporary shortage. Well worth the effort though - very good album. To quote the review snippet on the sticker on the front, "you should buy Welcome Interstate Managers. In the unlikely event that you don't like it you could increase the sum of human happiness by passing it on to a friend". They're right, it makes you one happy person to listen to. Think Wheatus, but grown up with a Ben Folds tone to the lyrics.
On a Ben Folds theme, there's a new single ('Landed') out, but Sony haven't released it to the UK version of iTunes, so I can't get hold of it to tell you exactly how good it is. Album's out soon(ish), though, so we'll see...
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US school's new challenge to Darwin
This bothers me slightly. It always seems that there is no possibility that a compromise can be reached between creationism and evolution theory. The fact is that it's perfectly possible to support both ideas within the same framework. I won't pretend that the suggestion that I'm about to make is new - it's been aired many times before, most comically by Dave Gorman in his Googlewhack Adventure book (which is brilliantly funny and sobering in equal amounts). The theory goes something like this: there is/are a God/Gods, and he/she/it/they set in place a sequence of events which led to the evolution of the species. I can hear the sharp intake of breath from here. "No," you say, "that's simply not plausible!" What, less plausible than the whole universe being created in six days, or the quite ridiculously small chance that life would come into being and grow as complex as it is without some intervention? Come on, give me a break!
I'm not actually decided myself yet. I mean, I'm a scientist, and I've seen how tenacious life can be, but that's not really an argument for either side, is it? Creationists would argue that the existence of life in bizarre and unlikely places simply proves that God exists. Otherwise, how would these evolutionary unlikelihoods even exist? But Darwinists would argue that it's proof that there is no need to have a God designing everything, that life itself is such an all-conquering force that it will spring into existence at the merest hint of a water molecule and some amino acids. Neither side is particularly convincing, and there's evidence for both. I find it hard to believe that the Bible's story of creation as told in Genesis is meant to be a literal story, and if you assume that it isn't, there's plenty of room for interpretation, none of which actually conflicts too strongly with the products of millions of years of evolution. But creationist arguments often centre around the implausibility of random evolutionary events leading to human beings from the primordial sludge which existed 3.5 billion years (give or take) ago. That's silly. I can prove that evolution is a fast and powerful force. Bacteria are fairly simple entities, but in fact have a moderate degree of genetic complexity; they just happen to be quite small, and therefore made up of only a few components. Bacteria are found everywhere on earth. Everywhere. In all places. The single most extraordinary of these, however, is the type of bacteria which live on the control rods of nuclear reactors. Not only are these guys subjected to the most intense heat, but they are constantly bombarded by radiation. Radiation is one of the biggest causes of genetic mutation, and mutation usually leads to cell death. Sometimes it doesn't, as in the case of cancer cells, but most of the time mutated cells die or are killed. Intense radiation should kill all life. Nothing should survive in a nuclear reactor, and yet in the fifty years or so we've been playing with fission, a type of bacteria has evolved which is stable against the immense radiative bombardment that it receives on a daily basis, and in fact thrives upon it. That's a rather short space of time, on the scale of the hundreds of millions of years evolution has been going. So it would seem that the evolutionary viewpoint has rather strong support, wouldn't it? Except for one thing - you get all the ingredients of the most basic life forms possible and put them in a test tube, and what do you get? Nothing, except for a big mix of ingredients. Life doesn't spring into being. So, how did it do it in the first place? Some scientists have suggested a lightning strike might have kick-started life, blending and heating the components in such a way as to make life appear out of the goo. Well, try it. Take your test tube and put 10,000V through it. It won't make life, I can guarantee you that. It'll boil everything inside, and dissociate the amino acids. D'oh, not exactly the result you were looking for, right? Another favourite is the possibility that life started elsewhere, and came in on bits of space rock ("asteroids", we like to call them...). This always leaves one question conveniently ignored - where the hell did this life come from, and how did it start at that end? Who knows, maybe God(s) made the universe, then breathed a bit of life into a bit of rock, and threw it at the nascent Earth, knowing that it would eventually lead to a race of highly intelligent, self-aware, inquisitive gits, because the chemistry on the surface and the predicted number of meteor impacts for the foreseeable future (which is, of course, the whole expanse of time) is just right. When you look at how ridiculously complex life is, there's no way you can discount any of these possibilities on the basis that they're a little unlikely. Life itself is unlikely. Very fuckin' unlikely.
This bothers me slightly. It always seems that there is no possibility that a compromise can be reached between creationism and evolution theory. The fact is that it's perfectly possible to support both ideas within the same framework. I won't pretend that the suggestion that I'm about to make is new - it's been aired many times before, most comically by Dave Gorman in his Googlewhack Adventure book (which is brilliantly funny and sobering in equal amounts). The theory goes something like this: there is/are a God/Gods, and he/she/it/they set in place a sequence of events which led to the evolution of the species. I can hear the sharp intake of breath from here. "No," you say, "that's simply not plausible!" What, less plausible than the whole universe being created in six days, or the quite ridiculously small chance that life would come into being and grow as complex as it is without some intervention? Come on, give me a break!
I'm not actually decided myself yet. I mean, I'm a scientist, and I've seen how tenacious life can be, but that's not really an argument for either side, is it? Creationists would argue that the existence of life in bizarre and unlikely places simply proves that God exists. Otherwise, how would these evolutionary unlikelihoods even exist? But Darwinists would argue that it's proof that there is no need to have a God designing everything, that life itself is such an all-conquering force that it will spring into existence at the merest hint of a water molecule and some amino acids. Neither side is particularly convincing, and there's evidence for both. I find it hard to believe that the Bible's story of creation as told in Genesis is meant to be a literal story, and if you assume that it isn't, there's plenty of room for interpretation, none of which actually conflicts too strongly with the products of millions of years of evolution. But creationist arguments often centre around the implausibility of random evolutionary events leading to human beings from the primordial sludge which existed 3.5 billion years (give or take) ago. That's silly. I can prove that evolution is a fast and powerful force. Bacteria are fairly simple entities, but in fact have a moderate degree of genetic complexity; they just happen to be quite small, and therefore made up of only a few components. Bacteria are found everywhere on earth. Everywhere. In all places. The single most extraordinary of these, however, is the type of bacteria which live on the control rods of nuclear reactors. Not only are these guys subjected to the most intense heat, but they are constantly bombarded by radiation. Radiation is one of the biggest causes of genetic mutation, and mutation usually leads to cell death. Sometimes it doesn't, as in the case of cancer cells, but most of the time mutated cells die or are killed. Intense radiation should kill all life. Nothing should survive in a nuclear reactor, and yet in the fifty years or so we've been playing with fission, a type of bacteria has evolved which is stable against the immense radiative bombardment that it receives on a daily basis, and in fact thrives upon it. That's a rather short space of time, on the scale of the hundreds of millions of years evolution has been going. So it would seem that the evolutionary viewpoint has rather strong support, wouldn't it? Except for one thing - you get all the ingredients of the most basic life forms possible and put them in a test tube, and what do you get? Nothing, except for a big mix of ingredients. Life doesn't spring into being. So, how did it do it in the first place? Some scientists have suggested a lightning strike might have kick-started life, blending and heating the components in such a way as to make life appear out of the goo. Well, try it. Take your test tube and put 10,000V through it. It won't make life, I can guarantee you that. It'll boil everything inside, and dissociate the amino acids. D'oh, not exactly the result you were looking for, right? Another favourite is the possibility that life started elsewhere, and came in on bits of space rock ("asteroids", we like to call them...). This always leaves one question conveniently ignored - where the hell did this life come from, and how did it start at that end? Who knows, maybe God(s) made the universe, then breathed a bit of life into a bit of rock, and threw it at the nascent Earth, knowing that it would eventually lead to a race of highly intelligent, self-aware, inquisitive gits, because the chemistry on the surface and the predicted number of meteor impacts for the foreseeable future (which is, of course, the whole expanse of time) is just right. When you look at how ridiculously complex life is, there's no way you can discount any of these possibilities on the basis that they're a little unlikely. Life itself is unlikely. Very fuckin' unlikely.
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