When A Leaf Turns

When photosynthesis first appeared, it wreaked havoc with the environment. Organisms that utilized it ended up pumping tons of the poisonous gas that we call oxygen into the atmosphere, killing off great numbers of other organisms. It was such an efficient method of getting energy, though, that nothing else could compete.

Fast forward a few million years. After being almost completely torn down, nearly the entire ecology of the Earth is based on photosynthesis. Those organisms that don’t use photosynthesis themselves steal the energy from those that do by eating them. Then other organisms steal that same energy by eating them in turn. Virtually all organisms today are directly or indirectly dependent upon photosynthesis for their survival. It is the foundation of the earths ecology.

I think Intelligence may be the new photosynthesis. Intelligent beings like ourselves are capable of adapting to new environments at a rate that is unprecedented in biological history. A single human being can go from living on the coldest plains of the frozen tundra to the hottest depths of an equatorial rainforest within their own lifetime, a transition that would take any other species on the planet hundreds, thousands, even millions of years. We adapt so quickly that we are out-competing everything else on the planet. We are destroying the environment.

But you know what? Photosynthesizing organisms did the same thing. It can’t be helped. We represent a new, more efficient way of doing things that has, and will continue to, upset the equilibrium that has ruled since photosynthesis became the ecological foundation.

There are those that say we are destroying the planet, but as so many have pointed out before, that’s just plain ridiculous. The planet is so robust that we could never hope to destroy it, even if we tried.

The usual rejoinder is that we are in fact just destroying ourselves. I think this is almost (but not quite) equally ridiculous. We as a species are so adaptable that I doubt we could so easily be wiped out. Someone somewhere will find a way to survive.

But that is not to say that civilization as we know it could not come to an end. As the environment falls further and further out of equilibrium, our numbers will inevitably begin to decline, and the infrastructure upon which our way of life is built will become unsustainable. Civilization will fall, but humans will adapt and continue on. In what capacity? I couldn’t even begin to guess.

But I think our very adaptability will continue to exert a selective pressure on other organisms to either become more intelligent themselves, or to somehow exploit the intelligence of others. In time a new equilibrium will arise with intelligence as the new foundation.

I wonder what a world whose entire ecology is based on a foundation of intelligence would look like. And I wonder what they will be saying about the first intelligent beings and the havoc we wreaked.

Obama is once again inviting people on the internet to send in questions, this time via YouTube, which he will then select from and answer. The first time he said that the most popular questions would be the ones answered. Needless to say he learned his lesson and made no such promise this time. Why? Because last time one of the most popular questions was about marijuana legalization, and that is just not one that he wants to have to answer. As a dodge he pretended that the question was focused on using legalization as a way of stabilizing the economy, thereby making it seem ridiculous and deserving of no more than a cursory “silly stoners” type response.

Well, guess what. The most popular question by far this time is also about legalization. I’m guessing that he will simply refuse to answer this time since he can now choose which questions to address and which to ignore. What really got me, though, was that NPR has decided to follow Obama’s lead and present it as a silly question that few people actually care about.

The entire exchange here demonstrates NPR’s attempt to trivialize the matter by making it seem like a bunch of stoners were just having a laugh, and that real people know better (RAZ is Guy Raz, weekend host of All Things Considered, and Mr. JOHNSON is Clay Johnson, the technology director at the Sunlight Foundation. You can hear the interview and read the entire transcript here):

RAZ: Okay. So, can we infer that legalizing pot is the most important issue in America right now?

Mr. JOHNSON: Well, you know, if that was the case, then we probably have a lot of marijuana users going, dude, where’s my polling place or something like that, because they certainly don’t show up to vote.

RAZ: I got you. So before we could continue, I do want to play a few other questions that were submitted to President Obama.

Unidentified Man #2: How many turkey sandwiches can you eat in one day?

Unidentified Man #3: Would you support legislation for a national bedtime?

RAZ: Is this really an example of democratizing this process?

Mr. JOHNSON: Well, there’s a couple of things you have to look at here. First off, you know, YouTube is the venue where people are asking these questions, which is the home of cat on a Roomba punching a pit bull in a sweater vest.

RAZ: I didn’t see that one.

Mr. JOHNSON: Saying that this community is representative of American society at large is probably incorrect.

[...]

Mr. JOHNSON: …But it’s important to remember that just because, you know, an organization or a group or a community is the most well-organized doesn’t mean they’re the most popular. So when you see, for instance, marijuana questions being the top question, it doesn’t mean that they’re the most popular amongst all of America. What it means is this is the most organized community…

RAZ: Yeah.

Mr. JOHNSON: …that’s capable of getting their, you know, plus-one-ing their question.

Notice how the entire exchange is designed to make the whole issue look silly, from depicting the questioners as stupid stoners, to presenting obvious joke questions as equivalent to the legalization question, to making YouTube out to be nothing more than a place to find silly videos about nothing of consequence. Look, this is not a question being asked by a bunch of stoners sitting around a bong in their parent’s basement saying “Dude! Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get the Prez to say ‘marijuana’?!?” It did not get popular just because they all got their stoner friends to vote for it. This is a legitimate concern raised by those who understand that most, if not all, of the evils attributed to marijuana are a result not of the drug itself, but of it’s prohibition. It’s popular because so many people know this but are given no voice or are simply dismissed as stupid stoners who just want to get high without being harassed by the cops.

Read up on Alcohol Prohibition here in the US and tell me that we’re not seeing many of the exact same problems now with marijuana prohibition. Unfortunately those who prefer prohibition, whether for moral reasons or business reasons, have done an excellent job of convincing many people that the problems stem from the drug itself, and that prohibition is actually the remedy. It’s an amazing testament to the power of propaganda when skillfully employed.

Ideally the news media should create opportunity for discussion by presenting real information about important topics. Instead NPR is trivializing this issue by pretending that it’s just a joke made by people too high to know what’s really going on. It is extremely dishonest and serves only to shut down conversation on an issue that affects not only this country but the entire world in one way or another.

Fuck you NPR for running this big steaming pile of shit and calling it news.

The true test of your beliefs is your willingness to give up your life for them. For anti-abortionists this has been a test that many have “passed” with flying colors (the following list of atrocities comes from Wikipedia).

• March 10, 1993: Dr. David Gunn of Pensacola, Florida was fatally shot during a protest. He had been the subject of wanted-style posters distributed by Operation Rescue in the summer of 1992. Michael F. Griffin was found guilty of Dr. Gunn’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
• July 29, 1994: Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, a clinic escort, were both shot to death outside of another facility in Pensacola. Rev. Paul Jennings Hill was charged with the killings. Hill received a death sentence and was executed September 3, 2003.
• December 30, 1994: Two receptionists, Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols, were killed in two clinic attacks in Brookline, Massachusetts. John Salvi, who prior to his arrest was distributing pamphlets from Human Life International, was arrested and confessed to the killings. He died in prison and guards found his body under his bed with a plastic garbage bag tied around his head. Salvi had also confessed to a non-lethal attack in Norfolk, Virginia days before the Brookline killings.
• January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer who worked as a security guard at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, was killed when his workplace was bombed. Eric Robert Rudolph, who was also responsible for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, was charged with the crime and received two life sentences as a result.
• October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death at his home in Amherst, New York. His was the last in a series of similar shootings against providers in Canada and northern New York state which were all likely committed by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Dr. Slepian’s murder after finally being apprehended in France in 2001.
• May 31, 2009: Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed as he served as an usher at his church in Wichita, Kansas.

The last one in the list is currently being prosecuted in court. It was apparently perpetrated by Scott Roeder who admitted to it both to reporters and in a court filing. Open and shut case, right? Right.

Except that a recent ruling by the judge in the case has created a whole new problem, not only with this case but possibly with all future cases of this type.

Let me ask you this. What do you think the effect would be if the penalty for murdering an abortion provider wasn’t life in prison or the death penalty, but rather a sentence of only 5-20 years? People obviously feel strongly enough to give up their lives, so what happens when it’s no longer your life at stake, but only a few years of it?

This may actually be a possibility now thanks to one of the judge’s recent rulings. According to the Associated Press “…Sedgwick County Judge Warren Wilbert decided he would allow Roeder to build a defense case calling for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter because he sincerely believed the May 31 slaying would save unborn children.” So what does that mean exactly? Well, here’s the definition of Voluntary Manslaughter and the penalty (from the Office of the District Attorney in Sedgewick County, KS)

Voluntary Manslaughter is the intentional killing of a human being upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion or upon the unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.

The sentencing guidelines provide a range of sentence from a minimum of 55 months imprisonment [or about 4.5 years] to a maximum prison term of 247 months [or about 20.5 years].

Even if the judge eventually tells the jury that they aren’t allowed to consider a Voluntary Manslaughter conviction, simply allowing the defense to present their case for it means that the damage is already done. By allowing it he is implicitly saying that anyone that thinks abortion is murder can make the claim that killing abortion providers is justified, and even though we may disagree the fact that it’s an “honest belief” means that it’s not murder.

And if the worst happens, and the jury is allowed to consider, and subsequently convicts Roeder of, Voluntary Manslaughter then it’s truly open season on abortion providers. After all, killing an “abortionist” would no longer be murder. It would still be a crime, but one with consequences that I think far too many people could probably live with.

So I’m lying in bed Saturday night watching cartoons. I hadn’t showered since Friday morning, but since I was at home and didn’t plan on going anywhere, I didn’t give it much thought. The wife meanwhile was laying beside me in bed with a computer in her lap, playing on Facebook as usual.

For no real reason I began to feel a bit randy (maybe it was the sexy pirate pictures of herself that she was posting). I was just about to turn to my wife and ask if she wanted to have sex when she says “Whew! Man, your balls kinda stink. I can smell ‘em all the way over here.”

Being the quick thinking, smooth talking ladies man that I am, I didn’t even miss a beat.

“Wanna mix your stank with mine?”

Between the laughter and the gagging, I eventually figured out that the answer was no.

I’m trying to post every day on Agnosiophobia, and no less than every third day over here. I got nothing at the moment (due in part to working a bunch of overtime). So I’ll just throw out a quote that struck me the other day:

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? – Scott Adams

I highly recommend that you go see District 9 because it really is a very good movie. But if you can’t then this video will at least give you the highlights.

(Thanks to Topless Robot for the heads up)

Update: I decided to put a link to the graphic instead in the name of fairness (it’s not cool for me to post the image in full). You can find it here: The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart – Odds of Airborne Attacks – Gizmodo.

In the meantime, some numbers to wet your appetite:

• Analyzing data from Oct 1999 to Sep 2009
• Over 99 Million Flights, traveling over 69 Billion miles.
• That’s one attack per 11.5 Billion miles
• or one attack per 3,105 years of air time

If you understand, things are just as they are… If you do not understand, things are just as they are…

I’ve found some new favorite wallpaper for my computers. These are absolutely amazing satellite images of Earth! From the site:

The images in this compilation are from the Landsat 7 satellite and were created to introduce the general public to the Landsat Program.

Various combinations of the eight Landsat 7 spectral bands were selected to create the vivid RGB composites that we have featured.

Go here or click on the image to see for yourself. I highly HIGHLY recommend it.