This little light of mine | I'm gonna let it shine

What a lovely and powerful illustration of the deep, deep, depths under the seas, about which we know very little!

That image accompanied this essay by Elizabeth Kolbert, who writes: "We’ve barely explored the darkest realm of the ocean. With rare-metal mining on the rise, we’re already destroying it."

One of those awesome mysteries lies way down where the sun don't shine, as they say:

Only the top layers of the oceans are illuminated. The “sunlight zone” extends down about seven hundred feet, the “twilight zone” down another twenty-six hundred feet. Below that—in the “midnight zone,” the “abyssal zone,” and the “hadal zone”—there’s only blackness, and the light created by life itself.

Hadal zone.  I had never heard about this, until I read the essay.

In this zone, the only light is the light created by life.  Yes, created by life.

Bioluminescent creatures produce light via chemical reaction. They synthesize luciferins, compounds that, in the presence of certain enzymes, known as luciferases, oxidize and give off photons. ... In the case of bioluminescence, different groups of organisms produce very different luciferins, meaning that each has invented its own way to shine.

We have barely understood anything that deep down, but we know enough that there are precious and rare metals.  So, who cares for life in its variety and complexity, eh!  “Even if we found unicorns living on the seafloor, I don’t think that would necessarily stop mining.”

Such is our human behavior!

A later issue of The New Yorker includes a poem titled Bioluminescence.  Why the editors failed to pair it in the same issue that had Kolbert's essay is beyond me.  At least in my post, I can present them together.

Here is the poem Bioluminescence, by Paul Tran:

There’s a dark so deep beneath the sea the creatures beget their own
light. This feat, this fact of adaptation, I could say, is beautiful

though the creatures are hideous. Lanternfish. Hatchetfish. Viperfish.
I, not unlike them, forfeited beauty to glimpse the world hidden

by eternal darkness. I subsisted on falling matter, unaware
from where or why matter fell, and on weaker creatures beguiled

by my luminosity. My hideous face opening, suddenly, to take them
into a darkness darker and more eternal than this underworld

underwater. I swam and swam toward nowhere and nothing.
I, after so much isolation, so much indifference, kept going

even if going meant only waiting, hovering in place. So far below, so far
away from the rest of life, the terrestrial made possible by and thereby

dependent upon light, I did what I had to do. I stalked. I killed.
I wanted to feel in my body my body at work, working to stay

alive. I swam. I kept going. I waited. I found myself without meaning
to, without contriving meaning at the time, in time, in the company

of creatures who, hideous like me, had to be their own illumination.
Their own god. Their own genesis. Often we feuded. Often we fused

like anglerfish. Blood to blood. Desire to desire. We were wild. Bewildered.
Beautiful in our wilderness and wildness. In the most extreme conditions

we proved that life can exist. I exist. I am my life, I thought, approaching
at last the bottom of the sea. It wasn’t the bottom. It wasn’t the sea.

Before the Valley

In a talk a few years ago, Alan Lightman underscored an important commonality between science and literature: Both the scientist and the artist are seeking truth.

The tests of the scientist's invention are more definitive; no matter how beautiful a scientific theory is, it has a terrible vulnerability - it can be proven false. A writer's characters or story cannot be proven definitively wrong, but they can ring false and thus lose their power with the reader, and in this way, the novelist is constantly testing his fiction against the accumulated life experiences of his readers.

Today's exhibit that relates to Lightman's point? Alzheimer's.  Well, kind of about Lightman's point, as in the scientific and literary approaches to the disease that I have dreaded about ever since my thirties when I read Sherwin Nuland's How We Die.

Big news from the world of medicine regarding Alzheimer's:

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first new medication for Alzheimer’s disease in nearly two decades, a contentious decision, made despite opposition from the agency’s independent advisory committee and some Alzheimer’s experts who said there was not enough evidence that the drug can help patients.

The drug, aducanumab, which will go by the brand name Aduhelm, is a monthly intravenous infusion intended to slow cognitive decline in people with mild memory and thinking problems. It is the first approved treatment to attack the disease process of Alzheimer’s instead of just addressing dementia symptoms.

But, there is a reason why this is considered a contentious decision: "the amyloid hypothesis, which pinpoints clumps of the toxic protein as the root cause of cognitive impairment, has yet to be proven."  It reinforces Lightman's point that "no matter how beautiful a scientific theory is, it has a terrible vulnerability - it can be proven false."  

Meanwhile, last night I read this fantastic short story that is set in an old age home.  It is a social commentary on aging and dementia that is presented as fiction.  The truth in the novel is consistent with how I understand life.  It is true.  As Lightman said, we believe in the ending in good fiction:

[We] know that it's true even in fiction because it accords with our life experiences, with our understanding of human nature, and it causes us anguish. ... A writer's characters or story cannot be proven definitively wrong, but they can ring false and thus lose their power with the reader, and in this way, the novelist is constantly testing his fiction against the accumulated life experiences of his readers.

We will find out, sooner or later, whether the amyloid hypothesis and the treatment are proven false.  But, the fact remains that if we are lucky enough, we will become old, and some of us will slip into the netherworld of dementia. Novelist force us to think about that, even as scientists work hard to develop drugs to treat the problem.

We need the novelist and the scientist to help us out.

This too shall pass ... eventually

As we go about our daily lives, and as I witness India's descent into Covid hell that the government made possible, it is difficult to view the events over a longer time horizon.  Even though I teach students to understand the human condition by looking at trend lines, the Covid catastrophe, which Arundhati Roy correctly describes as the modi government's crime against humanity, preempts looking at tomorrow leave alone history.

But, history does offer a little bit of comfort if we look back at the world in 1918, when the Spanish flu killed many.

Imagine you were there at Camp Devens in late 1918, surveying the bodies stacked in a makeshift morgue. Or you were roaming the streets of Bombay, where more than 5 percent of the population died of influenza in a matter of months. Imagine touring the military hospitals of Europe, seeing the bodies of so many young men simultaneously mutilated by the new technologies of warfare — machine guns and tanks and aerial bombers — and the respiratory violence of H1N1. Imagine knowing the toll this carnage would take on global life expectancy, with the entire planet lurching backward to numbers more suited to the 17th century, not the 20th. What forecast would you have made for the next hundred years?

I would have forecast that it was the end times.  That we were all going to die.  And that it would be a miracle if humanity recovered from such a catastrophe. 

I would have been proven wrong! 

A hundred years ago, an impoverished resident of Bombay or Delhi would beat the odds simply by surviving into his or her late 20s. Today average life expectancy in India is roughly 70 years.

Sriram in 1918 would never have predicted such a positive transformation.

How did this happen?

Of course scientific breakthroughs helped.  But it was not science alone that did it.

Those breakthroughs might have been initiated by scientists, but it took the work of activists and public intellectuals and legal reformers to bring their benefits to everyday people. From this perspective, the doubling of human life span is an achievement that is closer to something like universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery: progress that required new social movements, new forms of persuasion and new kinds of public institutions to take root.

(I hope the ardent advocates for STEM will read the long read in the NY Times Magazine, which is what I am referring to here.)

Perhaps you don't have the time to read that long essay, and want an example of how science alone didn't deliver progress.  In that case, here is an example: Pasteurization.  The scientific method led Pasteur to understand the role that bacteria played in spoiling the milk, which then caused sickness in people who drank it.  He then figured out that heating milk and then quickly cooling it down did the trick. But, this didn't take effect right away.

In the United States, it would not become standard practice in the milk industry until a half century after Pasteur conceived it. That’s because progress is never a result of scientific discovery alone. It also requires other forces: crusading journalism, activism, politics.

My favorite examples, as I have blogged in plenty, will always be the elimination of small pox, and piped drinking water supply. In both, science alone wasn't enough; it required an army of non-scientists, and sometimes the literal army too.

So, yes, over the long run, the trend lines tell a story that is vastly different from what most would have predicted in 1918.

But, then there is the reality of daily life.

I cannot wait for this pandemic to end.

Gracias, Mexico. You made us possible!

If there is one word that characterizes well what ticks in America, it would be hustle.  Like the hustle at the pool table.  The hustling phone calls that I get about my car warranty or social security.  I mean, this is a country that has hustlers in plenty in its history, and one even got himself elected to the highest office in the land!

That American ethic of hustling also made possible a "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.  What an innovative hustle to make money!  Take, for instance, the way the museum deals with dinosaurs.  Their sales pitch is that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.  In this hustle, they ask, "were you there?"

Think about it: were you there when God created the earth? No, but we have a book inspired by the Creator that tells us how He did it. If we start with God’s Word, dinosaurs living with humans—at least early on—makes sense.

Tickets per person range from $24.95 to $39.95, and "parking not included."  If you want to see how humans lived with dinos, you need to fork over extra for parking your vehicle!

In understanding the universe in which we don't literally read "a book inspired by the Creator" we go about in search of evidence and rational explanations.  In other words, science.

Thanks to science, we understand that humans and dinosaurs didn't live together.  Had I known this in my childhood, I could have avoided a few nightmares!

But, until today, I hadn't considered the possibility that the dinos had to go extinct in order to make homo sapiens possible.

Our presence here on earth was a result of "the mother of all accidents" when a 6-mile wide asteroid crashed into earth.  The essay argues this crash made all the difference: "It stands to reason, then, that without the asteroid impact the dinosaurs that had reigned for more than 100 million years would likely still be here, and therefore the primates would not be, and so neither would we."

The odds of an asteroid hitting earth are very low.  The odds of that size of an asteroid hitting earth are very, very low.  And then the location where it crashed.

The rocks around the Yucatan target site are rich in hydrocarbons and sulfur, which resulted in the production of enormous quantities of soot and sunlight-deflecting aerosols. Geologists figure that as little as 1 to 13 percent of the Earth’s surface contains rocks that could have yielded a comparable stew of destructive materials.

This small target means that with the Earth rotating at about 1,000 miles per hour, had the asteroid arrived just 30 minutes sooner, it would have landed in the Atlantic Ocean; 30 minutes later, in the Pacific Ocean. Just 30 minutes either way and the dinosaurs would probably be here.

And I wouldn't be here blogging!  Dumb luck has been the story of our lives!

So, have a special dinosaur-themed celebration on Cinco de Mayo!

A terrible year it has been. Now, roll up your sleeve!

Earlier this morning, I emailed my colleagues marking the completion of a year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus to be a global pandemic.

Sending that email is consistent with how I behave: I mark the passing of time, whether it is birthdays or deaths or, yes, even the awful pandemic.

Even as we struggled with the pandemic, here in Oregon we also had to deal with unprecedented fires and smoke, and snow/ice storms that triggered power outage also.  And, oh, I am also waiting for the final layoff decision, which could send me into premature retirement.

No wonder I am anxious all the time, and panicky quite a bit.

But, hey, I am alive.  Beats the alternative, right?

Like millions around the world, I am waiting for my turn to get vaccinated. A year ago, when the pandemic forced us to learn about a whole bunch of epidemiology, experts suggested that a vaccine might be not available for a while, and that it might take 18 to 24 months.

The reality has turned out to be much, much rosier than that.  Scientists set out to develop a vaccine well before WHO's announcement, and as soon as the coronavirus structure was figured out.  As I noted in this post about the Turkish immigrant scientists in Germany who developed the vaccine that Pfizer markets and distributes:

BioNTech began work on the vaccine in January, after Dr. Sahin read an article in the medical journal The Lancet that left him convinced that the coronavirus, at the time spreading quickly in parts of China, would explode into a full-blown pandemic.

They began the work in January of 2020!

If not for the scientific advancements, the past year would have been even more disastrous for humans.  Beyond our wildest imaginations!

Now, a year after WHO's determination that it was a pandemic, a summer of near-normalcy seems within reach.  

Wait for your turn to get jabbed. 

What does it all mean?

The random readings and the resulting ramblings here are not merely therapeutic.  It is not to merely ease my anxieties about the world and the panic attacks that result.  There is a great deal of practical use too, though they are not always immediate.  It might be years before I find "use" for my rant.

I might as well be channeling a pedestrian and secular interpretation of the famous line from The Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krishna advises Arjuna to keep doing his duty.  

Krishna tells Arjuna:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥

(Karmanyevadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,

Ma Karmaphalaheturbhurma Te Sangostvakarmani)

Through that couplet, Krishna says that we need to carry on with our duties without thinking about the rewards.  He goes one step more by cautioning that we shouldn't be motivated because of the potential fruits of the action, nor be tempted to inaction.

This is absolutely contrary to the incentive-driven world in which we operate, right? 

Over the years, researchers and policymakers have come up with various incentive schemes in order to nudge people towards action.  They even reward elementary school kids if they read books!  At home, parents reward kids for doing household chores.

"Do your damn duty" apparently doesn't work in this modern world in which kids and adults alike ask "what's in it for ME?"

I read, rant, blog, because ... that's is it.  There is no because!

But, yes, the rewards always arrive.  (And so will the layoff notice, I fear!)

In November 2014, in those peaceful and joyous days before the twin pandemic of tRump and Covid, my post began with these lines:

All of man's troubles have arisen from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

I had completely forgotten about those wonderful lines from E.O. Wilson.  Until a couple of days ago.

In an email conversation, I wrote to a colleague:

[You] will also appreciate this from E.O. Wilson, from The Meaning of Human Existence:

All of man's troubles have arisen from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

I continued that email with this:

It is unfortunate that an undergrad education is no longer about helping students understand the bigger picture: Who we are as individuals, as societies; how we came to be who we are; and where we might end up.  That is what a traditional liberal education was about, whatever the major was.  Now, undergrad education is nothing but a transaction: Students pay $$$ and the university issues a piece of paper :(

If students were given an opportunity to inquire into the big picture questions, then they might also think a lot about another observation of Wilson's:

We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

A nugget of life

In the summer of 2013, I blogged about meat that is grown in labs and bioreactors, which are essentially the prototypes of the factories of the future.  I wrote then: "It is only a matter of time before we perfect such techniques and produce beef or other animal foods without the animals."

It is not that I am a cave-dwelling carnivore.  Far from that.  As with any other development, this too fascinated me.  It interested me so much that I wove this news item into appropriate contexts in my introductory classes.  Student response was typically and overwhelmingly one-sided--meat that doesn't come from killed animals but is produced in factories is unnatural.

I would then nod along, and ask them if they eat pasta.  Of course they did.  "Isn't pasta produced in factories?  Have any of you tried making pasta?"

Once--and only once--a young woman's hand went up.  "Sometimes I make pasta with my grandmother," she said.  And then added that it was a lot of work.

My point was this: If students eat "factory-produced" pasta and hot dogs and whatever else, why should they view the lab-grown meat any differently.

I love this Socratic tradition, which I might not get to practice for too long though.

Seven years after that blog post, the world is now getting closer to making cultured-meat a reality in the marketplace.

The first lab-grown, or cultured, meat product has been given the green light to be sold for human consumption. In the landmark approval, regulators in Singapore granted Just, a San Francisco–based startup, the right to sell cultured chicken—in the form of chicken nuggets—to the public.

Just had been working with the regulators for the past two years and was formally granted approval on November 26.

You need a reminder on how this meat is produced?

Most cultured meat is made in a similar way. Cells are taken from an animal, often via a biopsy or from an established animal cell line. These cells are then fed a nutrient broth and placed in a bioreactor, where they multiply until there are enough to harvest for use in meatballs or nuggets.

There is no killing involved. "The cells for Eat Just’s product are grown in a 1,200-litre bioreactor and then combined with plant-based ingredients."   The fact that there is no killing involved makes all the difference to many millions. 

Of course, the killing is not the only issue, which is why there are many firms in the race:

Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild.

For now, as with any innovation, the costs are high, and the process is energy-intensive.  But, again as with most technologies, scaling will rapidly decrease costs and the demand for energy.

At some point, the US-based research/entrepreneur will go global--that's the plan: 

"We didn't work two years to get the approval just to sit on this," says Tetrick. "After Singapore we'll move to the US and Western Europe." But US availability won't be that simple: A regulatory process for cultured meat doesn't yet exist between the USDA and FDA

I imagine that tRump, who famously eats steak with ketchup, would have freaked out with this news story!

There are interesting parallels between the cultured meat and electric car sectors: Both are introducing a technology that can inspire initial resistance from consumers and existential alarm from conventional producers, both involve a major shift in infrastructure, and both need some degree of regulatory air cover to succeed.

It has been a long, long way from the African Savanna, and there is no going back.

Death is in the air

"You were right about your prediction. About covid."

Small talk is rare at the grocery store.  When it happens, it is not so easy to understand the other with the words coming through our ill-fitting masks.

"What prediction?  What did I say"

I was genuinely curious.  For one, that she had paid attention to what I had told her.  And, I was right?

"When it began, you said this will take a year or more.  And that is what's happening," she said.

Of course I am no epidemiologist.  But, I did read and watch experts, including Bill Gates.  They were pretty darn clear that it would take between a year and two before the world got a firm grip over this.

"Oh ... the science is clear.  We can try to deny it as much as we want to ..." I replied.

A.
Looooooooong.
Way.
To.
Go!!!!!@BillGates on @NewsHour on when life will return to "normal" after #COVID19:https://t.co/9DEAUUMOqm

— Am Dr Khe (@congoboy) April 12, 2020

The science-denying President, who believes that he is the foremost expert on any topic including the global epidemic, goes to rally after rally yelling in his grating tone that we've turned the corner.

The reality is a complete contrast to his world of alternative facts and truthful hyperbole!

What a fucking disaster!
It didn't have to this way https://t.co/vBCsEfCd0A#Covid19 #tRumpFailed #Biden #Election2020 #VoteGOPout pic.twitter.com/ZaxM6Vd52y

— Am Dr Khe (@congoboy) October 30, 2020

Oh fuck!
600 new confirmed and presumptive cases of #COVID19 as of 12:01 a.m. today, which is the highest since the beginning of the pandemichttps://t.co/H1H3q3Ce9W#Oregon #tRumpFailedAmerica #VoteGOPout

— Am Dr Khe (@congoboy) October 30, 2020

I hope the 63 million who voted for the sociopath are fucking happy with their decision!

The Flat Earth Presidency

First, it came from The Scientific American.  

What was it?

A first ever for the scientific publication to endorse a candidate in the presidential election.  For the first time in its 175 years!

My guess is that this #tRump-loving letter-writer will not read @sciam nor care for this message.
If only these deniers acknowledged how much #science has saved them and made their lives enjoyable!https://t.co/dY97uHAMpE#BidenHarris #Election2020

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) September 15, 2020

A couple of days ago, an even bigger splash in the scientific waters when The New England Journal of Medicine made a political statement about the presidential election--for the first time in its 208 year history!

"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment."#VoteGOPout #tRump #Election2020

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) October 7, 2020

How many of the 63 million who voted for tRump in 2016 care about what the NEJM and SciAm say, right?

Chances are that if they knew that these eggheads had dissed their Dear Leader, then they will double down on him.

The anti-science misinformation coming from this President and his toadies are literally killing us. "This “infodemic” has to stop," screams this SciAm commentary.  "Even after Trump became ill with COVID, he continued to mislead the public about the danger of the illness and the safety and efficacy of the experimental treatments he received."  What can one do then!

tRump is unique in being a public person with an "absolute lack of shame."

Like, an absolute lack of caring about human beings, or telling the truth, or anything like that. When he was up against Hillary Clinton, who tried very hard to play by the rules, and make that part of her shtick, it was just a horrible matchup. 

Yet, 63 million voted for him, and a good chunk of those voters are ready to re-elect him!

Terrible three weeks ahead.  And hoping that the attack on science and common sense will end the night of the election.

Rewriting the code of life

 One of my many, many, many drawbacks is this: I waste my time even on stuff that I don't understand.  Topics for which I am way underprepared.  Yet, I continue with this habit.

There is a reason for this madness.

Actually two.

First, I am genuinely interested in a bunch of things.  Of course, I know where my strengths and weaknesses are and I could simply focus on my strong areas alone.  But, that ain't me.  How could I not know about stuff about which I don't know anything?  No, do not jump to conclude that it is some kind of a FOMO.  Nope.  FOMO doesn't belong in this context.  FOMO is about fleeting, momentary excitement.  I am referring to something more than the now.

Second, even though I am a college professor, I don't consider myself a "teacher."  I am a life-long student who teaches.  If the university fires me from my job next year, I will continue to be a student even though I will no longer be a professor.  Being a student is absolutely a part of who I am.

So, I waste time reading about stuff that can often be way above my head.

CRISPR is one of those.

My earliest post--yes, there is more than one--on this was in March 2015.  In that post, I expressed my concerns about CRISPR.  I ended that post with this quote:

Rewriting human heredity has always been a theoretical possibility. Suddenly it’s a real one. But wasn’t the point always to understand and control our own biology—to become masters over the processes that created us? 

Doudna says she is also thinking about these issues. “It cuts to the core of who we are as people, and it makes you ask if humans should be exercising that kind of power. There are moral and ethical issues, but one of the profound questions is just the appreciation that if germ line editing is conducted in humans, that is changing human evolution,” Doudna told me. One reason she feels the research should stop is to give scientists a chance to spend more time explaining what their next steps could be. “Most of the public,” she says, “does not appreciate what is coming.”

See the name Doudna in that quote?

In October 2015, I blogged about CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier.  It was about how they were not awarded the Nobel, despite being considered the top bet.

They didn't get the October morning phone call until 2020!

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded on Wednesday to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their 2012 work on Crispr-Cas9, a method to edit DNA. The announcement marks the first time the award has gone to two women.

“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” Goran K. Hansson, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said as he announced the names of the laureates.

Not merely understanding life, but rewriting the code of life.

As Jennifer Doudna said, most of the public does not appreciate what is coming.

For now, I am delighted that two women were the recipients of the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

But, I remain worried about the longer-term implications. 

If only I didn't waste time reading stuff that I don't truly understand!

Mind your Ps and Qs ... because ...

During discussions in the classroom, which now seems like something that happened in my previous life and to which we might not return for a few more months, I would often follow up with a student's point with "because ..."

I want students to explain why X leads to Y, and not just assume that X is there or that Y will happen.  After all, the courses that I teach are not faith-based.  Sometimes, I would even tell them that very point--we do not simply believe but provide logical explanations.

If the context is climate change, then I even quote Katherine Hayhoe, who said it well that she does not believe in climate change, because climate change is not about belief, not about faith, but is about cause-effect.

Even though I walk around with a Rodney Dangerfield-like punchline, I know well that there are students who listen to me and think about what we discussed.   Like how a student wrote to me well after a term ended:

Hello Dr. K,
When we were in class last term talking about Climate Change you had mentioned Dr. Hayhoe and the quote she had about belief ...
I was wondering if you could please either send a link to her quote or just the quote itself.

If only a significant number of Americans behaved like that student!

Instead, there is a widespread denial of science that runs deep.  "[So many] of the same people who reject the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change also question the evidence related to COVID-19."

Given how common it is, it is remarkable that philosophers have failed to give it a formal name. But I think we can view it as a variety of what sociologists call implicatory denial. I interpret implicatory denial as taking this form: If P, then Q. But I don't like Q! Therefore, P must be wrong. This is the logic (or illogic) that underlies most science rejection.

It is not that this crowd is completely against science.  They cheer, for instance, when the American military pinpoints a location and bombs the shit out of an area full of brown people.  They know well that it was science that helped create the bombs and the precision technology to target an area.  So, to call them science-deniers is perhaps incorrect.  They are against science only when they run into "If P, then Q. But I don't like Q! Therefore, P must be wrong."

I like this framework to understand those who oppose climate change, evolution, ...

But, to reject Q just because it is not what we prefer as an interpretation means that it is only a matter of time before we run into reality.  "When we reject evidence because we do not like what it implies, we put ourselves at risk."

The U.S. could have acted more quickly to contain COVID-19. If we had, we would have saved both lives and jobs. But facts have an inconvenient habit of getting in the way of our desires. Sooner or later, denial crashes on the rocks of reality. The only question is whether it crashes before or after we get out of the way.

We are paying for the inaction due to denial all through February.  I cannot wait for President Joe Biden to throw out the regime of "alternative facts" and get us on to a path of ""If P, then Q" and take care of the Ps and Qs.

How many Morks and where?

Of course the title of the essay was the draw: How Many Aliens Are in the Milky Way? Astronomers Turn to Statistics for Answers.

Wouldn't you also be interested?

An even bigger draw was the author's name: Anil Ananthaswamy.

I knew I have blogged his essay and referred to the shared heritage behind that name; it was 3 years ago, in June 2017, where I noted this:

First, the author of the essay, from where I excerpted those two sentences, has a name that is easily recognizable as a distinctly Tamil name--for those of us from that part of the old country.  Anil Ananthaswamy.  So, of course, I had to check that first:

He studied electronics and electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, and the University of Washington, Seattle, and trained as a journalist at the University of California, Santa Cruz 

He is now a journalist/science writer, operating from Bangalore and Berkeley!  I suppose there are quite a few of us who mistakenly wandered into engineering programs!

Ananthaswamy covers interesting territory through science and, as I wrote then, "way beyond my technical abilities."  This essay on aliens in the Milky Way is also filled with scientific information that was sometimes difficult to handle.  But, hey, if I want my students to work through difficult topics, well, I ought to practice what I preach.  Practice I did.

Sure, there are billions and billions of stars out there.  If luck has it, I might even view with my own eyes a comet that will not come around for another 6,800 years.  But, "the probability that life would ever get started—that you would make that leap from chemistry to life, even given suitable conditions," is a difficult one to estimate.

So, how many aliens are out there in the Milky Way?  There is no bottom-line answer to that question.  Ananthaswamy tricked me into reading the essay, which turned out to be a discussion of how Bayesian statistics is applied to this challenging question!

Whether it is scientists or the religious, and even the non-scientist seculars like me, we are all fascinated with questions on where life came from, and whether life-especially intelligent life--exists elsewhere in the universe.

I wonder if humans--or some future form of homo sapiens--will have cracked the mystery by the time Comet Neowise returns.

Bridge of faith

I was almost done with walking the full clockwise loop by the river.

Starting on one side near my home, I walk for a while to a bridge that gets me to the other side.  And then towards the end of the loop, another bridge to re-cross the river.

It was on that second bridge that I spotted two older people and their bikes.  The man seemed to be getting ready to leave, and the woman appeared to have decided that the bench where she was sitting would be her spot for a while.

I neared them.  They both looked 70-plus.  She had an accordion resting across her chest and abdomen.

The woman waved her hand.

I looked at her and waved out as I continued walking.

"Jesus loves you," she said.

"Thanks."

To believers, Jesus rose from the dead.  Not right away, but more than two days after he died.

To have that kind of unshakable belief is something.  Of course, every religion has something comparable that is the foundation of the faith that their followers have.

The faithful's claims about Jesus are extraordinary claims.

The principle of proportionality demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. Of the approximately 100 billion people who have lived before us, all have died and none have returned, so the claim that one (or more) of them rose from the dead is about as extraordinary as one will ever find. Is the evidence commensurate with the conviction? 

The extraordinary evidence is not there.  It is the same case with other religions too.

"In science, we need external validation." There is no other way.  One might choose to believe in whatever, but that belief by itself does not make it a truth.

Is science itself a "faith" as much as the resurrection of Jesus is a faith?

Nope.

The fact that you are reading this is evidence that science and the scientific method are no "beliefs" or "faiths."  Here is Richard Dawkins explaining that:

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Two days ago, I wrote about the mad science that "pure research" can sometimes be.  That post itself was a follow-up to another post on the primacy of science, in which I yet again worried about science and technology that is disconnected from the humanities and the social sciences.

It is not that I am anti-science, unlike the nutcases who elected the anti-science-in-chief, whose scientific proclamations include: Windmills cause cancer; hurricanes can be nuked; ingesting bleach will prevent COVID-19; vaccination causes autism; and more.

Science, as I have often described even knowledge to students, is like the kitchen knife.  One can use a kitchen knife to create tasty and healthy dishes, or one can also go the OJ route.

Richard Feyman gives me yet another metaphor to think about the value of science.  He draws on a Buddhist thought: "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."  The same key that opens the gates of heaven also opens hell's gates. The question then is are we at the gates of hell or heaven, and how do we know we are on the way to heaven or hell?

Of the three values that Feynman lists, I find the following to be critical:

I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. It is a little less direct, but not much. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true.

On top of this varying degrees of certainty, the sciences, Feynman writes, "do not directly teach good and bad."  Consider an example that he gives:

Communications between nations must promote understanding - so went another dream. But the machines of communication can be manipulated. What is communicated can be truth or lie. Communication is a strong force, but also for either good or evil.

Reminds you of Facebook, and other communication channels in which manipulation is the game that is played for fortune and power?

Feynman wrote that in 1955.  Yes, in 1955!

He concludes with this:

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

This is how even this mediocre teacher engages with his students at a podunk university.  But, and as one whose initial training was in science and technology, I have also worried for long that the science that takes us to heaven is losing the on public relations front because science rarely ever offers the certainty that we humans crave for:

A refreshing feeling that we don't know and we are trying our best to find out.  What we know now is incredibly more than what people knew only a few generations ago.  And there is a good chance that quote a bit of what we now know will be overthrown in a couple of generations.  It is awesome.
But, we humans like a clear story, a story that does not keep changing.  We like narratives that provide us with a sense of certainty.

So, when a narcissistic sociopath proclaims with certainty that he alone can fix all our problems, it does not surprise me one bit that his certainty beat the crap out of the varying degrees of uncertainty that a scientific and rational mind offers.

What is the way forward then?

It is a struggle to fight for truth and to know.  Our fantastic lives today are possible thanks to the people who engaged in this struggle for hundreds of years.  As Feynman wrote:

It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

We have the key; we just need to figure out the path towards the gates of heaven.

A Shakespearean twist in the dystopian script for 2020

When I read about a Saharan dust storm making its way across the Atlantic to the US, well, I will be honest here: It was the first time in my life that I have heard about a Sahara dust storm crossing the wide open Atlantic Ocean and reaching into places like Houston, TX.

My immediate question was a simple one: Does it happen all the time, or is this an unusual event?

But, finding the answer to this basic, simple question was not easy.  Because, practically everything that I read overlaid the dust storm on the COVID-19 context or the fact this is the hurricane season.  And, therefore, how the dust storm might affect COVID-19 patients, or the number and frequency of hurricanes.

This was typical of most reports:

The African dust cloud brought unhealthy levels of PM2.5 to much of the southeastern U.S. beginning on Thursday, June 25, when the air quality index (AQI) exceeded the 24-hour U.S. EPA standard for PM2.5 over the Florida Panhandle region. The AQI was in the orange (unhealthy for sensitive groups) range on that day, and reached the red (unhealthy) range on June 26 and 27 over the Florida Panhandle, much of Texas, and a small portion of Oklahoma. By June 28, the dust had thinned so only a few areas in the Midwest, primarily in Kansas, experienced PM2.5 levels in the orange category.
Air pollution aggravates COVID-19 symptoms, and likely led to increases in hospital admissions from the disease in regions where dust concentrations spiked. A PM2.5 episode as widespread and severe as this – even without the COVID-19 pandemic raging – could cause hundreds of premature deaths.

Or about the ocean surface temperature and whether it might dampen hurricane activity in the Atlantic:

Although the dust layer itself is full of warm air, it can block sunlight from getting through to the Earth's surface. That can cause sea surface temperatures to temporarily cool, making conditions less favorable for storms. ...
f a dust cloud happens to run into a hurricane that's already fully formed, the hurricane may actually help transport the dust across the ocean, Logan noted. But otherwise, dust plumes are thought to prevent new hurricanes from forming in the ocean as they move over the water.

So ... why are these caused?  We know about dust storms that are common in the deserts.  But, is it common for such a huge storm to float over the Atlantic?  Oh, btw, why are these reports only witn respect to potential impacts on humans?  Do these storms help other life forms?  How about the non-living things?

It takes a lot of reading in order to come across something like this:

A spinning gyre in the Atlantic Ocean helps determine the direction that large masses of air will take.
The gyre often shifts positions in the ocean, depending on the season. In the winter, it typically kicks dust plumes down to South America. In the summer, it sends them hurtling toward North America.
Dust clouds that make it as far as the Americas will eventually run into other weather systems that help break them apart. In the United States, they may get caught up in systems of westerly winds that scatter them over the East Coast.

Phew!  That was step 1.  The follow-up question: How unusual is this, or is it an anomaly?

Nobody knows.

Still, this week's massive event may have drawn more attention to the question — or, at the very least, to the phenomenon of dust plumes in general.

Great!

I bet there is one guy who alone knows the answers!

An interesting footnote to this is about "an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami, whose research team helped pioneer the study of Saharan dust clouds more than 30 years ago."  His name--Prospero.

What is interesting, you ask?

Because of Shakespeare.

In The Tempest, Prospero is the protagonist who was cast out on the open sea by his evil brother.  Prospero hits the books and becomes a master magician.  With Ariel--a spirit that Prospero freed but made it his servant--he creates a storm in order to cause a shipwreck.  Prospero the Shakespearean character, not the atmospheric scientist ;)

Caption at the Source
This June 24, 2020 image is from the Suomi NPP OMPS aerosol index. The dust plume moved over the Yucatan Peninsula and up through the Gulf of Mexico. The largest and thickest part of the plume is visible over the eastern and central Atlantic.

A mad science

In blogging about the "primacy" of science, I wrote about my lifelong worry over STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) without the humanities and the social sciences.

There are those who defend the "pure research" of science.  It is all about the curiosity and to make order out of the chaos, they say.  If you are nodding in agreement, then Adam Gopnik wants you to think about Josef Mengele.

Remember Mengele?  Wiki will refresh your memory:

He is mainly remembered for his actions at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he performed deadly experiments on prisoners, and was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be killed in the gas chambers^[a] and was one of the doctors who administered the gas.

Yes, that Mengele.

Gopnik writes that Mengele’s work in Auschwitz was what we would call “pure research.”  Gopnik quotes from David G. Marwell's book, Mengele:

He pursued his science not as some renegade propelled solely by evil and bizarre impulses but rather in a manner that his mentor and his peers could judge as meeting the highest standards. . . . The notion of Mengele as unhinged, driven by demons, and indulging grotesque and sadistic impulses should be replaced by something even more unsettling. Mengele was, in fact, in the scientific vanguard, enjoying the confidence and mentorship of the leaders in his field. The science he pursued in Auschwitz, to the extent that we can reconstruct it, was not anomalous but rather consistent with research carried out by others in what was considered to be the scientific establishment.

The scientific establishment!

Mengele is gone, but the echoes of that scientific establishment are heard even today.  Like at the university where I earned my graduate degrees.

The building where my school was housed was called VKC, which was short for Von Kleinsmid Center. As I wrote in this 3-year old post, "That building was home to me through all the years that I was there."

It was named after the university's fifth president.  Well, he was a first-rate eugenicist too!

Eugenics was absolutely part of the "pure research" during his days.

All these years, the university let that slide.  And then George Floyd died.  Black Lives Matter started reverberating across the world.  The university acted quickly:

[The] executive committee of the USC Board of Trustees unanimously voted to remove the name and bust of Rufus Von KleinSmid from a prominent historic building on the University Park Campus. Both were removed last night. Students, faculty, staff, and the Nomenclature Policy Committee have pushed for this for years. He was the University’s fifth President, for 25 years. He expanded research, academic programs, and curriculum in international relations. But, he was also an active supporter of eugenics and his writings on the subject are at direct odds with USC’s multicultural community and our mission of diversity and inclusion

USC was founded in 1880.  Five years after that, in 1885, Stanford University was founded.  It's first president was David Starr Jordan.  "He was also one of the most influential eugenicists of the early 20th century."  And a white supremacist. A racist.

Unlike USC's swift action, Stanford is moving in the slow lane: "President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will appoint a committee to review requests that question views and practices of the university’s founding president and his mentor."

Mengele was, therefore, not that much of an outlier among the scientists of his day.  How terrible!  Gopnik writes, "Mengele was not, it turns out, a mad scientist. It was worse than that. He was participating in a mad science."

The primacy of science

My childhood friend and classmate Vijay, who died three summers ago, was better than me by a whisker in the formal academic subjects in which we earned the marks and ranks.  It didn't show really in the scores because I couldn't care much about marks and ranks.  I had plenty of other things to worry about.

But, there was no comparison between Vijay and me when it came to the arts and humanities.

I couldn't draw even an egg, whereas Vijay could easily draw portraits and animals and .... He could act. He could orate. He knew books and authors. Thankfully, we didn't have tests and exams on those because I would have failed.  And failed miserably.

Vijay was admitted to a prestigious engineering institute, but withdrew from there after two years, and chose a career of journalism and poetry, in which he excelled.

I went to a podunk college for engineering. And then found a path for that really interested me, and which continues to interest me in my mediocre career.

As good as we were in math and science, in our own ways we opted to pursue intellectual and professional interests elsewhere.  Our lives are additions to the examples in a long list of people who try to straddle the divide between science and everything else.

This divide has worried intellectuals and plenty has been said and written on this topic.  I often refer to CP Snow's lecture, not because I want to promote STEM, which is the buzzword for dollars in the academic business.  Snow's lecture I use because I have always worried about the alarmingly low levels of scientific literacy among the public.

But, even more worrisome to me is STEM without the humanities and the social sciences, about which I have blogged a lot.  Here's one from 2018, for example, that was about racist algorithms.  Or, how about this one, also from 2018 in which an essential question was "How did digital technologies go from empowering citizens and toppling dictators to being used as tools of oppression and discord?"

It has been a century of a battle that has been rapidly losing to "science."  In this book-review, the author writes about the debate in the late 19th century between Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold:

[According] to Matthew Arnold, who objected that during the previous decade, the science-not-letters movement had progressed from the “morning sunshine of popular favor” to its “meridian radiance.” Arnold, with whom Huxley had picked a fight by invoking him as the personification of literary culture, rose to the defense of letters by arguing that theirs was the quintessentially human task of integration: relating separate forms of knowledge and interpretation—moral, scientific, aesthetic, social—to one another. Science and literature, he urged, must be integral parts of the same larger task of “knowing ourselves and the world.”

The human task of integration.  If only we truly understood and practiced an idea that "Shakespeare and the sciences might be jointly relevant to one project of understanding."

The global pandemic reminds us about the human task of integration:

Covid-19 has presented the world with a couple of powerful ultimatums that are also strikingly relevant to our subject here. The virus has said, essentially, Halt your economies, reconnect science to a whole understanding of yourselves and the world, or die.

And yet it moves.

63 million Americans were fooled by a con man and they don't even know it.  Their Dear Leader is fooled time and again.  If only all of them understood something that is fundamental: "nature cannot be fooled."

Scientists have always worried that nature cannot be fooled, which is why some of them spent a lot of their time, energy, and money worrying about the next global pandemic.  Viruses abound in nature--I read somewhere that there are more than 500 strains of viruses in bats alone!--and they cannot be easily fooled by humans.  They do what they do in order to survive and prosper, just like any other life form does.

But then the 63 million couldn't care about science.  They actively engage in denying the very science that has made their lives also fantastic.

They denied, and continue to deny, the global climatic changes that have happened because of human actions over the past 200 years.

They denied, and continue to deny, the natural selection and evolution, and, therefore, the idea of mutation that makes possible for a virus to jump from bats to humans.

Nature cannot be fooled.

Now, 7.8 billion humans are terrified of a virus that we cannot see.

In this blog, and elsewhere, I have long been worried about the willful ignorance of the ideological crackpots who are adamant deniers of scientific understanding.  Every once in a while, some of those deniers have exhausted me (like here) by trying to debate on this issue--and this was not the kind of time-wasting that I like.

My faith in science is not like the blind faith that the 63 million--including this person--have in their Dear Leader.  My faith in science is based on logic and evidence.  The facts--not the alternative facts that the 63 million believe.

In my case, the faith is tested every day--the scientific method doesn't care for holy cows.

the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.” You have faith (i.e., confidence) that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, and there’s no evidence that the Earth has stopped rotating or the sun has burnt out. You have faith in your doctor because, presumably, she has treated you and others successfully, and you know that what she prescribes is tested scientifically.

I wouldn't deny the evidence in front of me that the science-denying maniacs are in control of our lives.  But, this is not the first time that science-deniers have held the power.  It used to be way worse.

Thinkers like Galileo learnt from the experiences in the past and understood how important it was for scientists to be political in order to make sure that science trumps denial.

There’s an old belief that truth will always overcome error. Alas, history tells us something different. Without someone to fight for it, to put error on the defensive, truth may languish. It may even be lost, at least for some time. No one understood this better than the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei.

Therefore, the "scientists putting their careers, reputations, and even their health on the line to educate the public can take heart from Galileo, whose courageous resistance led the way."

Those amongst us who have faith in science may have lost a battle or two, but we shall win the war against deniers.

Do not drink Lysol or bleach!

This coronavirus nightmare will end, and America will be great again.
Because of Trump.

That is how this letter from a Eugene resident ended in the local newspaper.

But that was a couple of days before the letter-writer's hero talked about injecting disinfectants in order to treat COVID-19 patients.

“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light ... and then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re gonna test that,” Trump said, addressing Bryan. “And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it [coronavirus] out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that."

I wonder if that letter-writer considers tRump to be her hero even after bleaching one's lungs!  Chances are pretty good, however, that she continues to adore her hero.  His base offers him unwavering support and loyalty.  It is practically cultish.  He knew it very well, which is why he boldly proclaimed, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters"

I have blogged plenty of posts in which I refer to this Dear Leader attitude from 63 million voters.

He said that he alone could fix things, and they wholeheartedly agreed.  He did not like science and evidence being used--because that conflicted with the reality that he was creating with alternative facts for the 63 million voters.  So, as I noted in this post in January  2018, they even changed the words used to describe the work that the CDC does.  After all, if Dear Leader did not like something, then reports and websites were even rewritten.

Yes, the CDC that we now rely on to fight the damn coronavirus.

63 million fucking voters did this: "Instead of “science-based,” or “evidence-based,” The Post reported, “the suggested phrase is ‘C.D.C. bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes."

So, who cares that injecting disinfectants is deadly, if that is based on consideration with community standards and wishes that were directed by Dear Leader himself!

Donald Trump: Unfit. Unwell. Unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/6fts56gzaA

— Republicans for the Rule of Law (@ForTheRuleOfLaw) April 25, 2020

In case any of those 63 million voters, including former commenters here at this blog, are reading this post, here's a helpful reminder from Joe Biden:

I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t drink bleach.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 24, 2020

The following is the post from January 11, 2018:
****************************************************

As I have often remarked here, 1984 was one of the books that made me seriously rethink my commie interpretations of life and how to make the world a better place.  Ultimately, all those books led to the decision to come to the United States as well.

In 1984, Winston Smith holds a minor job in the Ministry of Truth.  He, like other workers there, are engaged in the never ending work of rewriting history in order to make sure that the Party is absolute and never wrong.

After three decades of life in America, I would never have imagined that the US would engage in constant rewriting of history in order to project the infallibility of the Party and its Dear Leader.  Yet, truth is stranger than fiction, yet again!

Climate information has been condensed or excised from the websites of at least six federal agencies under the first year of the Trump administration, according to a report released Wednesday.
The most extensive changes have occurred on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, which has dropped “climate” from various program names and removed hundreds of pages and links to climate resources.
The Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, State Department, and others have also seen changes, according to the report, compiled by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) that’s been tracking website changes since Trump took office.

At this rate, it is only a matter of time before those of us who refuse to accept the "alternative facts" are taken to Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, where, after a few days or months, we will begin to truly believe that 2 + 2 has always equaled 5 and that there has never been anything called gravity.

The Ministry of Truth has also been hard at work:

The Department of Health and Human Services tried to play down on Saturday a report that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been barred from using seven words or phrases, including “science-based,” “fetus,” “transgender” and “vulnerable,” in agency budget documents.

MiniTrue also had helpful suggestions:

Instead of “science-based,” or “evidence-based,” The Post reported, “the suggested phrase is ‘C.D.C. bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.’’’

63 million fucking voters!

On the failure to understand the urgency of "what is it to be human?"

COVID-19 is forcing us to shelter-in-place, and remain physically isolated from the rest of humanity.  This awful house-arrest is also compelling us to figure out--for ourselves--what truly matters in the lives that we lead.

I have always wanted everybody to understand what it means to be human.  I have blogged in plenty about that.  But, such an atrocious lesson is not what I want.  As a teacher, I have never attempted, nor would I ever attempt, teaching through punishment.  Coronavirus is diabolical.

But, it is what it is.  I hope we will make the best of the dark stage in which we are unwilling actors.

The following is a slightly edited post from this very date--April 14th--seven years ago.  Yes, in 2013.
************************************

Last night, I got to watch Prometheus.  The movie is about the question that has dogged us forever: how did we humans get here?

It is by no means a simple question, and the answer(s) we accept then correspondingly influence even the most mundane aspects our lives.  For instance, pork is avoided by Jews and Muslims because of the narrative that is given as the answer to how we got here also tells them to void pork.  The Crusades were fought as a response to the clash of two narratives.  Even the atrocious caste system in India was/is be justified with yet another answer to the question of how we humans got here.

The rapid developments in our scientific understanding and technological capabilities might even make us look like gods to people who lived during the times when those old religious narratives were drafted.  The old movie cliche of a Westerner flicking a lighter and creating fire that impressed the cannibals who were preparing to cook him alive can now be replaced with any of us walking around with a smartphone that can do wonders that are beyond the wildest imaginations of the generations that preceded us.

The tremendous advancements in technology prompts us to further banish to the dark background any systematic inquiry into what it means to be human.  Formal schooling in the humanities and the social sciences are often considered to be wasteful spending.  In doing so, we don't seem to feel the importance, more than ever, of helping students and the general population inquire into and understand what it means to be human.

As much as religious narratives of how we got here provided people with rules on how to behave towards fellow-humans within the religious tribe and fellow-humans of other tribes, our modern day constructs of what it means to be human will then have its implications for our collective public policy responses.

Here in the US, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, spending on wars, education, illegal immigrants, ... all could potentially be viewed differently depending on how we define what it means to be human.  When we routinely rain bombs from drones and kill children and yet pay no attention to it, that action is itself a statement of how some humans are more important than other humans.  When we think it is important to prevent abortions but not important to provide support for children growing up in disadvantaged contexts, those public policies reveal a different interpretation of what it means to be human.  It is the same case with practically every single public policy.

I was not keen on my undergraduate studies in electrical engineering, and did not care about pursuing that field as a career, because it didn't directly address the question of what it meant to be human and, therefore, how to respond to the human condition.  On top of that, science and technology has contributed--in a big way--to dehumanize humans.

I have always wondered whether the scientists and technologists who work on developing yet another fancy way to kill people, for instance, ever ask themselves whether they are doing good for humanity.  Perhaps they are no different from the lobbyist Nick Naylor in Thank you for smoking.  The libertarian in me does not want to tell others what they can or cannot do, yes.  But, the humanist in me wonders whether all the people, especially the educated ones, whose work generates nothing but harm for fellow-humans, ever clearly articulated for themselves answers to how we got here and what it means to be human.  

Like most atheists, I, too, find the question of how we got here and what it means to be human not only highly fascinating but also extremely challenging.  More so when I don't need any reminders on how mortal I am.  As Susan Jacoby says:

We have our time on this earth, we have to use it in the best possible way, because it is limited.

Within that limited time, wouldn't it be worth it to educate ourselves so that we can think about what it means to be human?