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Fred, too, has his doubts:

The question of the origin of life interested me. The evolutionary explanations that I encountered in textbooks of biology ran to, “In primeval seas, evaporation concentrated dissolved compounds in a pore in a rock, a skim formed a membrane, and life began its immense journey.” I saw no reason to doubt this. If it hadn’t been true, scientists would not have said that it was.

Remember, I was fifteen.

In those days I read Scientific American and New Scientist, the latter then still being thoughtfully written in good English. I noticed that not infrequently they offered differing speculation as to the origin of life. The belief in the instrumentality of chemical accident was constant, but the nature of the primeval soup changed to fit varying attempts at explanation.

For a while, life was thought to have come about on clay in shallow water in seas of a particular composition, later in tidal pools with another chemical solution, then in the open ocean in another solution. This continues. Recently, geothermal vents have been offered as the home of the first life. Today (Feb 24, 2005) on the BBC website, I learn that life evolved below the oceanic floor. (“There is evidence that life evolved in the deep sediments,” co-author John Parkes, of Cardiff University, UK, told the BBC News website.”)

The frequent shifting of ground bothered me. If we knew how life began, why did we have so many prospective mechanisms, none of which really worked? Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup. Forty-five years later, it still does.

I’ll be interested to see how many people attempt to make the case that he’s an anti-evolutionist know-nothing like Joe Carter and I simply because he’s a Christian. This is one of the more complete demolitions of the essential silliness that is neo-Darwinian evolution that I’ve seen; it will be interesting to see what the True Believers at the Panda’s Thumb make of it.

It will be particularly interesting to see if they actually provide a direct answer to a single one of his questions.

Ihatedashrub considers a new confession of faith:

Craig, you deal in generalities more than anyone who posts on this blog or did you forget the time you told me to repent for the mere fact I’m a registered Democrat.

Well, did you, Shrub? In case you forgot, this is ground zero for the Cthulhu 2008 campaign. Slogan: “Why Vote For The Lesser Evil?”

We’re still in negotiations with Azathoth with regards to the vice-presidency. Shub-Niggurath was eager to dip her many cloven toes into the pool, but the Mighty Tentacled One didn’t feel the nation is ready yet for two evil Elder gods wearing female form running for national office, considering the likelihood that “Hillary Clinton” will do so in 2008.

There is still some debate continuing over whether our slogan might be counterproductive, as both Susan Estrich and Ralph Reed agreed that there are many Americans who might view Mighty Cthulhu as the lesser evil when viewed in comparison with “Hillary Clinton”.

From Drudge:

“Siding with the GOP when you live in the bluest state around is almost like wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey at a New York Yankees’ home game,” says [Playgirl Editor-in-Chief Michele] Zipp in the April issue of PLAYGIRL. ”I cannot tell you how many times a person assumed I voted for John Kerry in 2004. Most of the time, I don’t have the heart to tell them, or the energy to discuss my reasons for going red this election year. But this is Playgirl magazine so it’s about time I was the one who bared what’s underneath.”

How could a member of the media who produces adult entertainment for women possibly side with conservatives from the red states? Zipp spells it out. “Those on the right are presumed to be all about power and greed – two really sexy traits in the bedroom. They want it, they want it now, and they’ll do anything to get it. And I’m not talking about some pansy-assed victory, I’m talking about full on jackpot, satisfaction for all.”

“The Democrats of the Sixties were all about making love and not war while a war-loving Republican is a man who would fight, bleed, sacrifice, and die for his country. Could you imagine what that very same man would do for his wife in the bedroom?” asks Zipp.

Okay….

Hack relates some high level hypocrisy:

“[Air Force general Thomas] Fiscus was known as the Darth Vader of the Air Force’s legal establishment for his zealous pursuit of sexual misconduct,” says retired U.S. Marines Corps Lt. Col. Roger Charles, who recently completed an exhaustive investigation of the former general’s formerly secret life.

Charles notes that several years ago, when a married female lieutenant colonel with an impeccable military record was nailed for adultery and her commander wanted to slap her on the wrist with an Article 15 nonjudicial punishment and let her retire, Fiscus fought for a general court-martial – at which she was found guilty and sentenced to be dismissed from the service. She committed suicide before the sentence was approved to preserve her retirement benefits for her family.

Last September, Jekyll was revealed as Hyde when the double life of the very-married, by-the-book senior enforcer caught up with him via an anonymous letter to the Air Force chief of staff. The investigation that ensued literally caught Fiscus with his pants down: He had almost as many uniformed playmates as the Air Force has B-2 bombers. He had sweet young things stashed everywhere, including on his Pentagon legal team – which allowed for quickies with the chosen, whom he also was kind enough to counsel about their careers and cook for while buck-naked.

Unless you’re personally acquainted with men in the services, you’re unlikely to grasp how completely out of control the fraternization problem is. The military wives hate it, especially the Navy wives, since the bored girls on ship don’t tend to differentiate between the married and the unmarried guys. The men hate it, since the women seldom pull their weight, which hurts both their unit rating and creates more work for them. And most of the women aren’t actually all that keen on anything that will land them in combat, as the spike in pregnancies immediately prior to announced deployments tends to suggest.

And should a draft be deemed necessary, as it likely will should a new front open while the Iraqi Occupation continues, it’s going to be hard to argue that young men have to serve when young women don’t. But what sort of father is going to allow his daughter to be drafted? None of the fathers I know.

I’d like to ask those of you inclined to believe in the efficacy of prayer to pray for a little boy in Minnesota, Andrew, who was just diagnosed with leukemia last night. He’s my cousin’s son, and he’s not quite two years old. If you’d pray for his complete recovery, and for his parents, Jim and Laura, I’d appreciate it.

Thank you.

RM is aquiver with anticipation:

What do you think of this? The first blogger gets a daily pass to White House Press Corps.

My first thoughts are that the guy is either gay or having an affair with Judith Regan. My second are: BFD. Blogs are like books, it’s the information contained that matters, not the medium. The Internet is not changing everything, it’s simply expanding our options.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the ability to work remotely. And as an uploaded superintelligence, it certainly makes it a lot easier to circumnavigate the globe. But its an evolutionary development, not a revolutionary one.

From Drudge:

Paglia challenges: “At this time of foreboding about the future of Western culture, it is crucial to identify and preserve our finest artifacts… As a student of ancient empires, I am uncertain about whether the West’s chaotic personalism can prevail against the totalizing creeds that menace it. Hence it is important that we reinforce the spiritual values of Western art, however we define them.”

Her new book is directed toward BOTH ends of the political/cultural spectrum. Paglia has selected religious poems in it (Donne, Herbert), as well as radical poems of social protest (Blake, Whitman). From canonical Renaissance verse to Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock, there are poems about the all-devouring maelstrom of politics (Yeats) and also about the awesome vastness of nature and the cosmosess.

[The ENTIRE poetry establishment, all the honored, famous, adulated major living poets are excluded from the book! Poet laureates, Nobel prize winners teaching at Harvard, none of their poems made the cut; Paglia’s choices of contemporary poets are obscure or unknown.] “Paglia argues that critics can no longer read, poets can no longer write, and the unacknowledged legislators of our age are writing advertising jingles for peanuts,” the LONDON TELEGRAPH says of BREAK BLOW BURN.

Excellent! Good to see Miss Paglia finally back in action. I’m not sure she fully recognizes from whence the totalitiarian creeds spring – economics and politics have never been her strong suit – but I find her to be the most intriguing intellectual figure of our time.

I do wish Blogger would let you when it’s going out to lunch and isn’t registering a post, and when it is simply taking it’s own sweet time. Hence the double-dribble, sorry. Anyhow, Bruce, fronting is a basketball term which simply means “stay in front of”. So, if you’re fronting someone, you’re keeping yourself between them and the ball in an attempt to prevent a pass.

“Fronting the post. We front the post when the ball is below the foul line extended and the offensive player is on the block. If the ball goes above the foul line extended then we three quarter the post with an arm and leg. Remember you should have weak side help against any lob pass. If the offensive player goes off the block then we play behind the post.”

The danger of fronting is that if the other team can manage to pass in to the post anyhow, it’s an easy basket. So a short player can’t effectively front a taller player, Steve Nash can’t front on Kevin Garnett. From this derives the tangential concepts of an inability to effectively deal with or defend against something, or, alternatively, to portray a false image.

What I wrote yesterday was, of course, a direct quote from the Beastie Boys awesome “So Wat’cha Want”, off 1992’s CHECK YOUR HEAD. While I was down with PE, Big Chilly was a huge Beasties fan. I can’t hear them without thinking of the old days in the Digital Ghetto. Good times.

Where’d you get your information from, you think that you can front when revelation comes? Yeah, you can’t front on that.

Okay, I’ve got some actual work to do, so Bane, try not to scare any visitors to death. Nate, if Jamie shows up, tackle him before he goes over there and they take out a restraining order against us. Gregg too, for that matter. Crystal, if the wolves start to get out of hand, drop the A word, or if the need is really dire, the CW word, to distract everyone.

So a few sciffy-sissies still have their panties in a bunch over the fact that I said that “no women write hard SF” when it would apparently be more precise to say “nine women write hard SF”. (Bloody hell, I should have written that, just because it would have actually been much funnier to spell it out like that.) Although it’s hard to be precise, as not a single Electroloon was able to answer what I thought was a simple, straightforward question: how many women are writing hard SF? How many women published a novel best characterized as hard SF in 2004? But amidst all the hissy-fitting, they did come up with around nine names, so nine out of three billion is 0.000000003, or as those of us who are capable of normal human interaction would say, zero.

Since they consider me a vile bigot and I consider them to be sexually repressed, socially retarded lunatics in dire need of an exercise regime, but we belong to the same organization, the answer is obvious. They need me. They need my leadership. I need to take these poor neurotic souls under my wing and help them. Unfortunately, it is too late to declare my candidacy for the SFWA presidency in 2005, but next year – assuming I haven’t completely forgotten about it, maybe someone can try to remind me – the campaign begins! Bane, Nate, it’s time to step up. Get published, join, and be my wingmen. I’ll need a Vice-President and a Secretary of Defense. They don’t have that office yet? No, but they will…

After a year of suffering through the stewardship of a nice, painfully well-intentioned gentleman who all but promised to lead the organization to new heights, (with a straight face, no less), I figure that they’ll turn to me like Italy turning to Mussolini at the moment of its greatest need, at which point I will institute the following program:

1. Weight-training for all the scrawny math guys. How can you expect respect from your publisher when you can’t kick his ass? You want to see fear on the other side of the desk, or at least an awareness that you can crush his throat in your hand if you’re so inclined.
2. A forced exercise regime for all the carbohydratively challenged. The first time I did a book signing, this kid looked at me and said: “you don’t look like a writer, you’re not fat.” It’s a Fashion Emergency! We’re changing our look and my good friend Giorgio will be hired to handle the designs. Yes, it will use up the entire Poor Writers Insurance Fund, but we’ll make it back 4x on licensing the knock-offs within three years.
3. All beards and goatees will be subjected to the newly established Facial Hair Committee, and all whispy tufted chin and cheek growths will be shaved. This goes for the women too.
4. The extensive SFWA lesbian collection will be required to participate in Jenna Jameson Hits the Books, the first in a series of SFWA adult entertainment DVDs. (Great, now I’ll end up winning the stupid election and someone will expect me to go to meetings.)
5. All agents will be taken out and whipped, receiving five strokes for each host upon whom they’ve been parasitically feeding, then exported to China. That should slow the bastards down a bit in their construction of the Greater Co-Prosperity Spere Part II: Bend Over And Smile, Tanaka-san. A good word from a former host will reduce the sentence to re-education at a vocational school in an attempt to reclaim what could eventually turn into a useful member of society. Actually, this could work for stockbrokers too, come to think of it.
6. A Nebula Award Ridicule Jury will be established. Its job will be to examine the Nebula ballots and throw off any novels, novellas, novellettes, short stories or scripts and throw out any that don’t pass the laugh test. Great, so you’ve got ten little friends, go have lunch with them and they can vote you queen of the prom. Now go home. Only individuals who never bother to nominate anyone for anything will be permitted to serve on this jury, which will be liberally supplied with alchohol.
7. Speaking of scripts, Nebula Awards will no longer be given out for scripts. I’m sure Peter Jackson is keeping the week of April 28th free just so he can fly into Chicago on the off-chance he wins the big trophy. Who are we kidding?
8. Joan Rivers and Isaac Mizrahi will be flown in to comment on the fashions worn by attendees at the annual Nebula awards weekend. “And this year, aged brown corderoy jackets with leather patches on the sleeves appear to be all the rage!”

That should do for starters.

UPDATE – I almost forgot. I told a woman “you can’t front on that” after she demonstrated a failure to understand non-Webster English, some dude named Steven Gould wrote: “What language is this guy speaking? Is he from this dimension?” Right, I’M the one on the fringe.

UPDATE II – Also, when I first looked up the guy, I spelled his name incorrectly, and the web site indicated rather strongly that he was dead. My first thought was, well, no wonder he’s so out of it.