Harping on various things (is this what blogs are supposed to be?)

I hear people all around asking “Do you believe in evolution?’ Such an American question; we make everything into a religion. Evolutionary theory is a strong theoretical framework to understanding all life on this planet and possibly others. This is not something that needs to be believed in or not—without it we just would not be even to first base in the fields of biology, ecology, biochemistry, medicine, many more.

Driving past the local hospital yesterday I noticed the sign on their new psych ward—they don’t call them “psych wards” anymore, they are now Behavioral Health Clinics. I suppose I can understand why they don’t want to label the patients, in or out, to whom they provide services, but the connotations to me are scary, implying that their goal is just to help people create external behaviors that fit the mold regardless of those peoples’ internal thoughts and feelings—true behaviorism; control the reinforcement and they will push the right levers.

My year now has only 364 days since I have deleted Mothers Day. It does not exist for me any more. So I spent much of that blank day digging in the garden that formerly was my mother’s. Did a lot of weeding and some early planting. Interestingly enough the only activity that almost completely stops me from thinking is gardening. Pottery, car mechanics, hiking, any other supposedly non-intellectual endeavor just sets my brain cells off and running--I can’t wait to finish the current book or get to the keyboard. But digging shuts them down. When I dig I don’t blog (and the world is probably grateful).

Why do you think for some reason that humans have stopped evolving ? Even many respected scientists think so. Sounds like the usual anthrocentrism in different clothes to me. A huge experiment in differential reproduction rates vis-à-vis the “less developed” nations is currently running; we will never know the results because our lifetimes are not long enough for an objective view. At the same time we “developed” nations are experimenting (recklessly) on the overall genetic fitness of our populations when they are bathed from birth in myriad chemicals and drugs and fed foods approaching the lower limit in acceptable nutrition. Yet many say that genetic evolution is no longer important, that it is cultural evolution, the evolution of ideas (memes) that has taken over and will carry on into the future (?) of the human race. Perhaps this is so. It seems to me that both things could be going on and it wouldn’t hurt us to pay attention to what we feed our kids. Actually they is recent startling evidence (startling to those who remember the disgusted dismissal of “Lamarckism” in college biology classes-- Lamarck said that giraffes had long necks because they stretched so hard to get the high leaves) that learned behaviors are transmissible between generations to some extent.. So far this evidence is restricted to the level of bacteria, but if this type of evolution is found to act in other life forms as well, wouldn’t it be interesting? We should know in 2-3 generations—if it works the kids will have square eyes and prehensile thumbs.