I have a problem with Link's quiver capacity

In a week that has been nothing short of exhausting, this video makes me happy. And yes, I do think Legolas and Green Arrow tease Link at parties. (Alt Text: Episode 1: Link's Weapons)

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

It certainly is an exciting time to be alive. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, Castro stepped down as president of Cuba, Obama leads the race for President, and SNL is back on the air. But my thoughts have been far from world events recently. I'm working my way through Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and the experience is to say the least overwhelming. I've been told that Dawkin's 1976 study is a foundational work in the field of genetics. The basic premise states that genes will act "selfishly" in order to ensure further self-replication. This does not imply that they do this consciously, but as Dawkins carefully lays out, the selfishness is behavioral, not subjective. To put it differently, organisms that behave selfishly (they benefit at the expense of others) tend the survive and pass their genes to the next generation. That behavior is then repeated. Even apparently altruistic behavior can be shown to ultimately benefit the genes of the altruistic host.

My explanation is far too simplified to give justice to Dawkin's work. In his mouth, the workings of creation take on a glorious simplicity even if the explanation for them is laboriously worked out. He discusses how genetic "selfishness" plays out between species, families, sexes, and within individuals.

My mind has been awash with life and the wonders of biology. Dawkin's book is the answer to the ultimate "how" and a partial response to the "why." It reminds me of the narrator's quote from the latest film adaptation of War of the Worlds (2005): "By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges." We exist because we can. Sure it's a tautology, but a wonderfully assuring one.

Ah, I'm getting carried away. In another life, I might have become a biologist. But for the remainder of this one, I'll content myself with the work of others.

Florida strengthens stand on evolution and discards the myth of creationism

What wonderful news! Florida has revised its science standards and strengthened the role of evolution in K-12 education. Even though the word "theory" is thrown around dubiously in a manner meant to appease (but not support) the creationist agenda, "theory" is clearly defined as something more than just an educated guess. The new standards mandate that children recognize that "[scientific] theories are well supported explanations" (77) just as laws are well supported descriptions and that these theories are based on widely recognized and accepted bodies of evidence. But more importantly, they emphasize that evolution is the foundation of biology and that natural selection is the modus operandi of species development. The new standards are a huge step toward improving education for our children.

Now back to improving my science education: Dawkins on genetic evolution...

ur sleep is fail

I've been dreaming of cataloging discrepancies, LC call numbers and misplaced books. Hell, I'm not even a proper librarian, not even in a proper MLIS program yet and I'm already a victim of the late-night phantoms of archivists and academic librarians. The humble administrative assistant should be saved from these horrors until better prepared to deal with them.

Happy Darwin Day!

Today is Charles Darwin's 199th anniversary! Celebrate than life and work of the man who figured out how life can exist in so many diversely wonderful and wonderfully diverse forms. Without you Mr. Darwin, we might still be stuck thinking we were made from mud. And I didn't come from no mud ;-) So here's to you, Mr. Darwin! [raising his glass]

Evolution: so easy a caveman can do it

"You can pare Darwin's big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin's): "Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design." I have put "which occasionally miscopy" in brackets because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don't need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational "bucks" are provided free. "Given sufficient time" is not a problem either - except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time." (Richard Dawkins, "Why Darwin Matters", 2/8/08)

I love the beauty of this description. Dawkins has such a way with words that even the most unscientifically minded of us can comprehend the most magnificent and seemingly complex biological processes. His book, The Selfish Gene, has been sitting on my nightstand for weeks. There will be time...

Alice Walker on Barack Obama

(h/t Sivacracy)

2004 Eos Zinfandel (Paso Robles)

Faded, purple/red color. On the nose, earth with spicy fruit (great nose!). On the mouth, raspberries and vine (think tasting the seeds of the raspberries). Wonderful tannins that wrap around your tongue and linger on the finish. This is a great little wine for $9. I'm serving it with homemade pizza.

Thursday Link Roundup (and Grad School Musical!)

My goodness it's been a busy week. The gf's birthday, the superbowl, the headaches that accompany my yearly lenten ritual of giving up caffeine... the weekend couldn't get here sooner. But until then, enjoy these sites:

• If grad school became a musical, would its soundtrack resemble this?
• Who doesn't love Jorge Luis Borges? Check out this "new" interview. (h/t TEV)
• Both the United Church of Christ and the American Fisheries Society have endorsed evolution. Way to go! Now if we could just get Florida to join the ranks of the enlightened.
• 207 pranksters stand still for 5 minutes in Grand Central Station. (h/t/ Boing Boing)
• Is fan fiction (fanfic) the id of writing? if:book thinks it over.

Why I'm voting for Obama

For the first time I'm excited about the presidential race. I've hovered between Clinton, Edwards, and Obama over the last few weeks but have finally come to settle in the Obama camp. Why? Well, there are political and party reasons but above all Obama is a candidate that I can be excited about not just now but beyond the election. He could be the type of president that I would follow in the news and wonder "What is President Obama doing today?"

I've spent the majority of Bush's presidential term trying to ignore him, cringing at the sound of his voice, and going into epileptic shocks at the news of his policies and pronouncements. Obama can wipe the slate clean and give me a government worth believing in. Ok, that sounds cheesy and vacuous but as I walked under the I-110 underpass this morning on my way to work and saw this poster plastered on the concrete wall, my heart skipped a beat and I wanted to believe.

What Steven Pinker thinks you should read

From Critical Mass: The NBCC invited all the former finalists and winners of our book prize to vote in the winter edition of the NBCC's Good Reads. [...] He voted for James Flynn's "What is Intelligence." Here's what he had to say about it.

"Flynn explores one of the most intriguing findings in the social and cognitive sciences: that IQ scores have been rising for decades. Avoiding simplistic dichotomies and politically correct moralizing, he analyzes the ascendance of "scientific spectacles" as a cognitive tool within the general populace. Flynn's brevity and lack of pretension belie the profundity of the phenomenon he discovered and the forces (whatever they turn out to be) that cause it."

His name is mud...

...does not refer to the doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth.

From World Wide Words: "The Oxford English Dictionary, in an entry revised in December 2007, finds the first example of the phrase from 1823, more than four decades before Lincoln was assassinated. Moreover, the term appeared in a British book, A Dictionary of the Turf. This was written under the pen name of John Bee by John Badcock, a man about whom so little is known that even his date and place of birth and death are unknown. It’s thought he was born about 1810 and died about 1830. A short life then, but one full of writings about horses and riding. His entry in the slang dictionary reads: “Mud, a stupid twaddling fellow. ‘And his name is mud!’ ejaculated upon the conclusion of a silly oration, or of a leader in the Courier."

Who knew? I wonder if the writers of National Treasure 2 plan to rewrite the script?