What Adam Should Have Said

In honor of comments made by certain people and by the illustrious Jerry Falwell (though not about Teletubbies this time) let me just say, if you believe in the Judeo-Christian mythology, I tell you, it is a truly sad and sorry lot of men that were descended from Adam - because he wasn’t much of a man.

What kind of man says nothing to defend his only friend? What kind of man refuses to take responsibility for his own actions? What kind of man does nothing to protect his lover?

Adam could have said “Please Lord, I ate of the Apple of my own free will - punish me, but please don't punish her.” Or he could have said, “No Lord, it was I who took the Apple – she didn’t even know.”

Adam could have begged his God to forgive Eve. He could have begged to suffer her judgment as well, in order to keep her safe. But he didn’t. He said nothing.

Adam should have said, “Lord, I see now that you are cruel and unjust and that you are petty and hateful. I see that you are vain and have created us so that you could torture us just so that we will worship you and adore you.”

Adam should have said, “Lord, there is no Paradise where there is fear and slavery.”

And when Adam was finally cast out, he should have turned and said, “And anyway, Eve and I hate apples - we prefer peaches.”

Now that would have been cool.

-Just a peasant

Painting of "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt

Bad Math?

I have repeatedly warned you - Don’t Trust Them. Included along with religious zealots and politicians are, of course, the Pharmaceutical Companies. Merck Corporation produced and congratulated themselves on the sales of its pain killer, Vioxx. Vioxx is a COX-2 inhibitor classified as an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug).

Here’s how it works. Your body produces a particular lipid called prostaglandin. Prostaglandin molecules do many things including interact with cells in the smooth muscle of your vascular system (to regulate constriction), spinal neurons (to regulate pain), and blood platelets (which can affect cell aggregation). Prostaglandin is first built up from a fatty acid molecule and one particular step in this molecule building process involves oxidation of a precursor of prostaglandin. The enzymes needed to facilitate this particular step are known as a cyclooxygenase. In short, they are referred to as COX-1 and COX-2. NSAIDs work to inhibit COX enzymes.

COX-2 is associated with tissue inflammation and therefore, pain. However, by inhibiting prostaglandin production you also alter the balance of other molecules closely related to the prostaglandin pathway like thromboxane and prostacyclin. This alteration could, hypothetically, lead to cardiovascular problems such as myocardial infarction. This is bad.

Originally, before 2000, Merck claimed that Vioxx was safe. People died. Merck removed Vioxx from the market in 2004. Then Merck claimed that Vioxx is only dangerous after 18 months of use. Now, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, it seems that many problems occur only 4-6 months after taking Vioxx and some patients experienced problems even earlier. The investigators for Vioxx claim that they only had “one-half the safety” data to analyze.

WHAT?! Half the data? Are you actually telling me that they had the ethical audacity to publish a paper, on a for human consumption product, before all the data were in? Worse, am I supposed to believe that they could only report on the data from the last half of the study before they had the first half? They’re lying! As is usual with pharmaceutical companies, their associated researchers cherry picked the data and the team supervisors and the corporate investors were happy. Merck, a company that at any time, can tell you their net worth, liquid assets, liabilities, stock exchange value, and a thousand other accounting notes suddenly claims “bad math.” Give me a break!

What is the cost of this cherry picking? At least 28,000 deaths domestically (FDA estimate) and perhaps 70,000 deaths internationally. Now that really is bad math.

-Just a peasant

Photo by Daniel Watson

Plasticine and Fingerprints

This is a quick technical note for people working with small plasticine models and having trouble removing fingerprints and other surface defects. I found that flame polishing works very well especially before making plaster molds. Brush a flame gently, back and forth over the target area and the plasticine will melt, removing the prints. Be careful as you can also deform your target if you heat for too long. You can also do a bit of flame molding too. If you make a mistake the plasticine is still workable - so don’t worry.

If you are doing stop motion animation you might not want to do this as the model surface becomes fairly reflective and will affect your camera lighting balance. However, it seems like it would still be good for metallic or shiny objects.

- Just a peasant

Firefly Squid

When I first started studying biology, my main interest was with marine invertebrates. Some of my favorites were the Cephalopoda - squid, cuttlefish, and octopi - mainly because of the beautiful bioluminescent displays they sometimes give.

This beauty is Watasenia scintillans, the Firefly squid.

Yes, I'm attracted to pretty, blinking lights.

-Just a peasant

Photo from Tsuneo Nakamura

Outside the Laboratory

"I made a pilgrimage to save this 'human’s race' - never comprehending the race had long gone by. "

– Modern English

Photo of starving children in Sudan searching for ants to eat - by Hartmut Schwarzbach

My Memories of Being Homeless – Of Despair

I don't think a week, or a month, or anything less than a year is really enough to understand homelessness. At least that's my opinion. Also, and most importantly, is that real homelessness is not about the hunger or the poverty - it’s about the hopelessness.

When you are an undercover homeless person, perhaps doing an expose or thesis, you still have a future. There is definite point in time that your homelessness will end and where your talents will flourish, be recognized, and be rewarded. For the homeless person no such place in time exists. Being homeless is usually not the first choice for most people and the longer a person is homeless, the more the hope for a viable future diminishes.

The worst part of being homeless is the despair. I was one of the lucky ones – I still had dreams. I still wanted to be a famous rock musician and my despair was greatly minimized by this fact. But of course, it’s not enough to have dreams - you have to acquire the tools to facilitate your dreams.

I should mention that there is more than one type of homelessness. I discovered that there are a lot of people that have jobs but no home. Some people live in their cars. I soon got a job and became one of them. I made sure to get a job at a restaurant where I could have access to not only meals, but the bathroom sinks to wash up. It was easy to work extra shifts and stay indoors too. No one seemed to notice. With a second job, I eventually rented a small room in a house and of course, got back on track.

Predators - Food - Homeless Life - Hope

-Just a peasant

Look Mom! No Hands!

So the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. After all these years and plenty of blood, mostly civilian, we finally got ONE incompetent bad guy leader. Congratulations. I guess his New Balance sneakers didn’t carry him far enough.

Of course, if his terrorist cell operates anything like those of the FLN insurgency in Algeria he’ll be replaced with one of four or five guys who actually knew him. Even if they don’t, his group will be replaced by any of the other dozens of insurgent groups in Iraq. But kudos anyway.

It’s a funny thing about trophies – there are always so many more to win.

Baby of the Gods!

Could this be the newborn of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? It could be - but it’s not. Yet what is this feverish obsession that could generate $4 million dollars? Who cares about this stuff?

Beautiful babies are born every day in this world. Some of these babies, who are not famous, will go on to do great things for their communities. This cute baby I found in one Google search and 8 seconds. That's how easy it is to find a beautiful baby.

I’m sure that these two movie star deities love their Brangelina very much and it’s probably the center of their world right now. However, children of movie stars are usually not quite as luminous as their parents. In fact, quite the opposite. Yet many people are treating this child as though it had been poured forth from a golden vase being carried by a unicorn and filled with magical roses. We can only hope that this child is better at faking accents than Angelina.

Newsflash! - This infant has done nothing yet; it has not earned any part of its personality whatsoever. This baby has done absolutely nothing to prove it is physically or intellectually superior to all the other babies born on the same day. Why don’t we wait 25 years to see what this person will be like before we worship at its altar?

Anyway, if babies were really smart, like every parent claims about their own child, they would be born speaking an actual language we could understand. Then they could communicate their needs in a coherent and timely manner. Are you hungry? Are you scared? Are you wet? What the hell is “Goo Goo, Gaa Gaa” supposed to mean?! And didn’t you notice that the rest of us in the house sleep at night?!

Photo - NOT Brad and Angelina's baby - not mine either.

Blog Pictures Not Loading - Oh Well.

Unfortunately, we are having trouble uploading pictures to our blogs and there seems to be no solution on the horizon.

On the positive side, there's no way I'm going to hit my 300MB limit on photos. Yesssss!

For those of you that are really, really frustrated, just remember the employees at Google are just people too, after all. If you don't believe me, here is one of them (I'm pretty sure) at Niniane's Blog. Besides, you get what you pay for, right.

Come on people, it's not like a surgical patient suddenly having a negative reaction to anesthesia - right?

There was a time before television and motion pictures when words alone could suffice to carry the day. I'll just have to dig up some old sci-fi stories to pass the time until the problem is fixed.

A Fascist named Oriana Fallaci

The New Yorker had an article on Oriana Fallaci. I found it amusing and ironic, that this woman, who claims to have resisted Fascism and vehemently denounces Fascism, has indeed herself, become a Fascist.

The calling card of any fascist is bigotry against other ethnic types. Oriana Fallaci said of Muslims, “they breed like rats.” In a country like this one, where immigration is so historically prevalent, we have seen this calling card very often. In World War II, when the American citizens of Japanese ancestory were rounded up and put in internment camps, the governor of Idaho said, “The Japs live like rats, breed like rats, and act like rats.” In that same period there was also the film of Fritz Hipler, a Nazi film maker, The Eternal Jew which portrayed those of Jewish culture as rats streaming through the sewers.

And, with a sly smile, I also note that Italian immigrants to America were also deemed as being no better than rats. It wasn't that long ago that the average family size of Itlalian immigrants in North America exceeded the national average.

Like all fascists, Oriana also decries the fall of her precious Italian culture. This is the same culture where organized crime is the life blood of Italy’s government. And, like all immigrant groups, the Italians brought their own mafias here to the US.

It is also the same culture that gave birth to the Vatican Church. And of course, the poor Vatican is under siege by immigrants as well. Oriana's culture spawned the Vatican Church which, under Pope Pious the XII, allied itself with Adolf Hitler and the appealing idea of a single leader over representative democracy. The Vatican gladly made deals with Benito Mussolini to control people's lives such as the Lateran Treaties to control education among other things. That's Fascism.

The Vatican is also the church of the Inquisition and of many, many persecutions and burnings. It is the same religious institution that had a debate in 584, at the Council of Macon, over the issue, “Are Women Human?” That's ignorance. But it turns out that women are human – but just by one vote. I’m sure the mothers of the dozens of attending bishops would be very proud. Maybe only half of those men considered women human which actually seems to mathematically reflect the Islamic idea that a woman is worth only half of a man.

Essentially, Oriana supports one system of fascism over another – Italian-Catholic tyranny over Middle-Eastern Islamic tyranny. There is no doubt that, like every other religion, Islam brings it own form of militantism and oppression. Every group has its own lunatic fringe. Yet she seems to believe that Islam brings something opposite of Western culture - something alien as it were. It wasn’t that long ago here in America that the Catholic Church headed the Legion of Decency in an effort to stamp out immorality in the motion picture and television industry. It seems that they also have ideas about how society should behave and how women should dress.

Oriana Fallaci, you are no better a person than the tyrants you have interviewed. You’re no different than yet another Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. No different than any street thug – and I have met my share. I’m sure your anti-Fascist parents would be very proud of you though. You lack even the basic wisdom to distinguish individuals from the generalities of events or the institutions that control them and, like any fundamentalist terrorist, you embrace intolerance and violence as your existential modus operandi.

Yeah – you’re a real piece of work.

- Just a peasant

WWII photo of a little Japanese-American girl from California, deemed a grave threat to national security and American culture, on her way to a US internment camp - from the National archives. Nice.