WHO WON THE WAR IN LEBANON

I think this article is a nice counterbalance to the news from Lebanon as interpreted by Hezbollah. Just because I’m being fair here does not exactly make me a fan of modern day Israel and all of its policies, but neither do I have a solution to that part of the world’s problems. All I can see is that the average man on the street is taking a hell of a beating over there, and probably, all he/she wants to do is love and support her/his family.

Hezbollah Didn't Win

[OPEN QUOTE] Arab writers are beginning to lift the veil on what really happened in Lebanon.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Friday, August 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs' claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical "Arab Street."

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, also believes in "a divine victory." Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his "wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon."

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.
Let us start with Lebanon.

Immediately after the U.N.-ordained ceasefire started, Hezbollah organized a series of firework shows, accompanied by the distribution of fruits and sweets, to celebrate its victory. Most Lebanese, however, finding the exercise indecent, stayed away. The largest "victory march" in south Beirut, Hezbollah's stronghold, attracted just a few hundred people.

Initially Hezbollah had hesitated between declaring victory and going into mourning for its "martyrs." The latter course would have been more in harmony with Shiite traditions centered on the cult of Imam Hussain's martyrdom in 680 A.D. Some members of Hezbollah wished to play the martyrdom card so that they could accuse Israel, and through it the U.S., of war crimes. They knew that it was easier for Shiites, brought up in a culture of eternal victimhood, to cry over an imagined calamity than laugh in the joy of a claimed victory.

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it. A claim of victory was Hezbollah's shield against criticism of a strategy that had led Lebanon into war without the knowledge of its government and people. Mr. Nasrallah alluded to this in television appearances, calling on those who criticized him for having triggered the war to shut up because "a great strategic victory" had been won.

The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese Parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

Mr. Nasrallah followed his claim of victory with what is known as the "Green Flood"(Al-sayl al-akhdhar). This refers to the massive amounts of crisp U.S. dollar notes that Hezbollah is distributing among Shiites in Beirut and the south. The dollars from Iran are ferried to Beirut via Syria and distributed through networks of militants. Anyone who can prove that his home was damaged in the war receives $12,000, a tidy sum in wartorn Lebanon.

The Green Flood has been unleashed to silence criticism of Mr. Nasrallah and his masters in Tehran. But the trick does not seem to be working. "If Hezbollah won a victory, it was a Pyrrhic one," says Walid Abi-Mershed, a leading Lebanese columnist. "They made Lebanon pay too high a price--for which they must be held accountable."

Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name."

There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as "one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time." He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon's existence in the service of Iran's regional ambitions.

Before he provoked the war, Mr. Nasrallah faced growing criticism not only from the Shiite community, but also from within Hezbollah. Some in the political wing expressed dissatisfaction with his overreliance on the movement's military and security apparatus. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they described Mr. Nasrallah's style as "Stalinist" and pointed to the fact that the party's leadership council (shura) has not held a full session in five years. Mr. Nasrallah took all the major decisions after clearing them with his Iranian and Syrian contacts, and made sure that, on official visits to Tehran, he alone would meet Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei.

Mr. Nasrallah justified his style by claiming that involving too many people in decision-making could allow "the Zionist enemy" to infiltrate the movement. Once he had received the Iranian green light to provoke the war, Mr. Nasrallah acted without informing even the two Hezbollah ministers in the Siniora cabinet or the 12 Hezbollah members of the Lebanese Parliament.

Mr. Nasrallah was also criticized for his acknowledgement of Ali Khamenei as Marjaa al-Taqlid (Source of Emulation), the highest theological authority in Shiism. Highlighting his bay'aah (allegiance), Mr. Nasrallah kisses the man's hand each time they meet. Many Lebanese Shiites resent this because Mr. Khamenei, a powerful politician but a lightweight in theological terms, is not recognized as Marjaa al-Taqlid in Iran itself. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese Shiites regard Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Iraq, or Ayatollah Muhammad-Hussein Fadhlallah, in Beirut, as their "Source of Emulation."

Some Lebanese Shiites also question Mr. Nasrallah's strategy of opposing Prime Minister Siniora's "Project for Peace," and instead advancing an Iranian-backed "Project of Defiance." The coalition led by Mr. Siniora wants to build Lebanon into a haven of peace in the heart of a turbulent region. His critics dismiss this as a plan "to create a larger Monaco." Mr. Nasrallah's "Project of Defiance," however, is aimed at turning Lebanon into the frontline of Iranian defenses in a war of civilizations between Islam (led by Tehran) and the "infidel," under American leadership. "The choice is between the beach and the bunker," says Lebanese scholar Nadim Shehadeh. There is evidence that a majority of Lebanese Shiites would prefer the beach.

There was a time when Shiites represented an underclass of dirt-poor peasants in the south and lumpen elements in Beirut. Over the past 30 years, however, that picture has changed. Money sent from Shiite immigrants in West Africa (where they dominate the diamond trade), and in the U.S. (especially Michigan), has helped create a prosperous middle class of Shiites more interested in the good life than martyrdom à la Imam Hussain. This new Shiite bourgeoisie dreams of a place in the mainstream of Lebanese politics and hopes to use the community's demographic advantage as a springboard for national leadership. Hezbollah, unless it ceases to be an instrument of Iranian policies, cannot realize that dream.

The list of names of those who never endorsed Hezbollah, or who broke with it after its Iranian connections became too apparent, reads like a Who's Who of Lebanese Shiism. It includes, apart from the al-Amins, families such as the al-As'ad, the Osseiran, the al-Khalil, the Hamadah, the Murtadha, the Sharafeddin, the Fadhlallah, the Mussawis, the Hussainis, the Shamsuddin and the Ata'allahs.

Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, "Hezbollah is 'Iran in Lebanon.' " In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year's general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly—despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes.

Hezbollah's position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is--a Khomeinist Trojan horse--would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.

Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. "Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States," says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. "But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory."

Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002). [CLOSE QUOTE]

CRYING THROUGH TEARS

Yesterday morning, I went through a series of emotions which intrigue me to no end. I woke up feeling very tired (turned into a cold which I now have) and embattled. Feeling embattled is a life long state of mind and emotion for me which I uncovered in some counseling I went through sixteen or so years ago. I can first recall feeling embattled when I was four years old and went to live with my grandparents when my folks divorced. The school I went to was in a tough neighborhood and full of bullies, and I started school when I was four because my birthday is in October since I would soon turn five. I was young and tender, so from that day I was embattled, though sometimes I can even imagine that my battle began on the day I was born because my mom and I went through a sixteen hour labor battle. She never had another child so you can imagine how she felt about her one experience of childbirth. I shared that longest day with her. Add to that that I was born in 1937 and some of my earliest memories are of wartime radio broadcasts and of my America being at war with enemies everywhere.

Anyway, yesterday I found myself thinking I would sure like to lie down and sleep and give up the struggle. This is not a suicide wish. It’s just a feeling of exhaustion and wanting rest . . . only eternally. Then I was crying and went to where my wife was getting ready to go to work to share a hug with her. Telling her my tale, I suddenly thought it was all very funny, and so I began laughing while my tears didn’t stop. There I was, laughing and crying together. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before. It’s a new state of mind. Then, in the middle of my epiphany, I realized that this laugh/cry state is a fitting metaphor for the emotional struggle of life and death for everyone: tragicomedy.

Laughing through tears is a very good metaphor for living.

THE SOLDIER IN ME

You think I wasn't aware of soldiering and wartime as a very young child? The top photo is of my dad (kneeling on left) and his three brothers, two of whom went off to serve while the other two stayed behind to build the weaponry that supported the other two. Next photo is me in St. Louis at three, all geared up as a soldier, Sam Browne belt and all. Finally, me at Great Lakes Naval Training Center at graduation, 17 years old, getting into the Navy, between wars so that I never had to fight even though, I thought at the time, I wanted to. Too many WWII movies, you see.

A ROCK WORTH NOTHING

Yesterday, I was listening to public radio and I heard a very interesting thing. Diamonds are really worth nothing. They’re almost as common as rocks. They’re everywhere, and if it wasn’t for the DeBeer’s Company controlling the entire diamond market, the price of diamonds would plummet. They are that damn common. Now, when I look at married women, I look at the big diamonds clunking up their ring fingers, the rocks they’ve come to expect from their fiances, now husbands, and I silently laugh at the gaudy displays of sham wealth on their fingers. I also think a bit about all the crown jewels, those crowns with all those shiny diamonds, really worth nothing. It’s the greatest sham going when you think about it.

NOW HERE’S A REALLY PRECIOUS CARBON-BASED PRODUCT

According to Fareed Zakaria in Newseek, May 22, 2006, p. 41, “Since the mid-1970s the demand for petroleum in Western Europe and Japan has been flat. In the United States it has doubled.”

Can we ask for any more proof that the average American is a lunk-headed idiot than such a fact as that?

The Real Sam Browne Belt

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SCIENCE DISAPPEARS FROM BUSHITE GOVERNMENT LIST
AND THEY CALL IT EDUCATION AMONG FUNDAMENTALISTS
PITY THE POOR HOME SCHOOLED

This was not the entry I planned today, but this information came in from a friend on the Internet, and it's serious business. Unable to win in the courts or among the experts in biology, the fundamentalists may be trying this sort of small-minded, but dangerous, supression of knowledge (described below) with which they don't agree. Even though we can take comfort in the fact that by such actions, fundamentalist are tacitly admitting that their religious nonsense can't win in fair competition among "intelligent Americans", the comfort can be small when we think that there are people in government so dictatorial and dogmatic that they can act like little Hitlers. One can feel how it must have felt to be Galileo under the religious persecution of his times. That's just how ancient and frightened current fundamentalists are.

[OPEN QUOTE] August 24, 2006

Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List

By CORNELIA DEAN

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. "There is no explanation for it being left off the list," Ms. McLane said. It has always been an eligible major."

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said students seeking the grants went first to their college registrar, who determined whether they were full-time students majoring in an eligible field.

"If a field is missing, that student would not even get into the process," he said.

That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.

One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter.

An article about the issue was posted Tuesday on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Krauss said the omission would be "of great concern" if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology. The grants are awarded under the National Smart Grant program, established this year by Congress. (Smart stands for Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent.)

The program provides $4,000 grants to third, or fourth-year, low-income students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed "critical" to national security.

The list of eligible majors which is online at is drawn from the Education Department's "Classification of Instructional Programs," or CIP (pronounced "sip"), a voluminous and detailed classification of courses of study, arranged in a numbered system of sections and subsections.

Part 26, biological and biomedical sciences, has a number of sections, each of which has one or more subsections. Subsection 13 is ecology, evolution, systematics and population biology. This subsection itself has 10 sub-subsections. One of them is 26.1303—evolutionary biology, "the scientific study of the genetic, developmental, functional, and morphological patterns and processes, and theoretical principles; and the emergence and mutation of organisms over time."

Though references to evolution appear in listings of other fields of biological study, the evolutionary biology sub-subsection is missing from a list of "fields of study" on the National Smart Grant list—there is an empty space between line 26.1302 (marine biology and biological oceanography) and line 26.1304 (aquatic biology/limnology).

Students cannot simply list something else on an application form, said Mr. Nassirian of the registrars‚ association. "Your declared major maps to a CIP code," he said.

Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as "a clerical mistake." But it is "odd," he said, because applying the subject codes "is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation."

"I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional," he added. "But I have to take them at their word."

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "It's just awfully coincidental," said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.

Jeremy Gunn, who directs the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that if the change was not immediately reversed "we will certainly pursue this."

Dr. Rissing said removing evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable majors would discourage students who needed the grants from pursuing the field, at a time when studies of how genes act and evolve are producing valuable insights into human health.

"This is not just some kind of nicety," he said. "We are doing a terrible disservice to our students if this is yet another example of making sure science doesn't offend anyone."

Dr. Krauss of Case Western said he did not know what practical issues would arise from the omission of evolutionary biology from the list, given that students would still be eligible for grants if they declared a major in something else—biology, say.

"I am sure an enterprising student or program director could find a way to put themselves in another slot," he said. "But why should they have to do that?"

Mr. Nassirian said he was not so sure. "Candidly, I don't think most administrators know enough about this program" to help students overcome the apparent objection to evolutionary biology, he said. Undergraduates would be even less knowledgeable about the issue, he added.

Dr. Krauss said: "Removing that one major is not going to make the nation stupid, but if this really was removed, specifically removed, then I see it as part of a pattern to put ideology over knowledge. And, especially in the Department of Education, that should be abhorred." [CLOSE QUOTE]

HUMANS ARE SLAVES TO CULTURE

“…everyone believes they live distinctive lives, make unique choices, follow their own paths… these beliefs provide a cover story for the real truth that socially constituted impersonal existence dominates everyday life.”

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (1889-1976), was the philosopher whose concept roughly translated as “being there” became the inspiration for Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There in the movie version of which Peter Sellers may have found his greatest role as Chauncey (the) Gard[e]ner. Heidegger pretty much thinks most humans are robots, but for different reasons than I think we are robots. In the following three paragraphs (pp. 193-194), William Schroeder summarizes Heidegger’s thoughts on this one aspect of the human condition:

“Heidegger’s second existential is the impersonal mode of selfhood. Being with other people typically produces a standard way of doing things: a characteristic handling of a tool, a typical formulation of an issue, a normal pattern of organizing the day, a standard response to specific situations. In each of these cases, people typically seek what everyone seeks, they choose what everyone chooses, they think what everyone thinks, and they feel as everyone feels. This is the impersonal mode of existence each person lives: each person lives as everyone else lives. Since acting, thinking, feeling, and choosing are defining features of human life, to replicate others' responses is to have no distinctive selfhood of one's own, to be merely an exemplification of typical collective responses. Usually people do not realize they live impersonally. The second half of Heidegger's Being and Time shows how to achieve a different, more personal and individuated way of life that he calls "authentic" selfhood. His basic point is that this personal selfhood is an achievement—that it always transforms the more basic, impersonal mode of living and is always threatened by it. The average, everyday way of living is impersonal and thus not merely oriented toward others but also highly normalized: one speaks in the voice of others; one responds to current events as everyone responds; one values just what others value. Because people often live impersonally, Heidegger argues that achieving genuine selfhood is more difficult than philosophers like Husserl—who make the self their starting point—assume.

“Beyond this, the quality of one's self-knowledge and of one's understanding of human existence and ultimately of being itself depends on one's mode of selfhood. Those who live personally or authentically can thus gain sharper comprehension of things themselves; those who live impersonally possess a weaker grasp of truth, largely because they rely on traditional frameworks and formulations and because they fail to approach their experience with open, attentive eyes.

“Taken together, Heidegger’s and Scheler's insights show that other people are more deeply embedded in human existence than philosophers typically acknowledge. Indeed, the lives most people lead are simply expressions of some normalized way of living. Other people thus quite literally constitute one's experiences and responses. But everyone believes they live distinctive lives, make unique choices, follow their own paths. Heidegger suggests these beliefs provide a cover story for the real truth that socially constituted impersonal existence dominates everyday life. Heidegger makes no effort to show how this mode of selfness develops and changes, but he reveals a new way in which other people penetrate, structure, and sometimes govern one's existence.”

From Continental Philosophy: a critical approach by William Schroeder (2005)

IS THE BIBLE THE LAST WORD IN TRUTH???
I THINK NOT!

On this page you’ll see that even the simplest passages have, through time, been changed and altered in various renditions of that supposed “word of god”, the Bible, until no one can claim to have any truth when they quote from that collection of fictions, poetry and partially-factual history.

A POETIC ENTRY

I was born in Ohio, in Dayton, and grew up there, just 70 miles north of Cincinnati which, itself, sits on the Kentucky border. Half of the citizens of Dayton had moved there for economic opportunity over the decades from Kentucky. Sometimes, listening to the accents, I'd swear I lived in Kentucky too. I was told when I served in the Navy in Massachusetts that I also had a Southern accent. In the synapses of my brain I connected emotional prejudices to the concepts of "hill billies" and "Southern accents" which I struggle with to this day, sixty-eight years along in my life journey.

For a long time, when I thought of Dayton and the South, I felt like I feel when I watch the movie "Gummo" which is an accurate inner portrait of my feelings about my childhood in my own northern Southland. "Gummo" was made in Tennessee (with deep Tennessee accents) but was fictionally set in Xenia, Ohio which was a smaller country town, fifteen miles east north east of Dayton, where a tornado passed through back in the early 70s, killing many and cutting a half mile wide swath through Xenia's center.

When, eventually, I came west to the Pacific Northwest, I felt like I was escaping something, escaping the violence, ignorance and poverty as portrayed in that strange and disturbing movie. Some of my feelings were expressed in these three poems which I wrote less than two years after arriving in Cheney, Washington. Unlike many with "down home" pretensions and hopes, I wanted to escape what was eating me about my roots, but like most folks, my feelings were deeper, more ambivalent and confused, than my simple statements can reconcile. I think the poetry says it all better.

KENTUCKY HOME

I remember how it was—the snow and split rail fences,
The gray, low sky and pressing clouds, and I was on the ridge
Above the hollow where, through black bare hickories,
Bill and Pop came, making tracks through snow, fresh fallen,
Come in a night blizzard of wind that kept awake the house,
The hounds out ahead of them, finding scents
Of nothing I could recognize, circling and lunging
Through drifts, barking, a sound mixed in the hollow
With the sound of angry, human voices fractured by the bodies
Of hickories, distinct in the still, white glistening,
Arguing about something I was too young to understand—
They said—now let loose in the gray morning between them,
Till, finally, Pop gave out a yell for Birch, Bill's true
Birch, and that dog turned in his tracks, came back, called
From the scent, left the fallen oak he'd been sniffing at,
Came back, wagging his tail, thick with winter fur, dark
Against the fresh-fallen snow, when Pop lifted his Colt's
Steel-cold barrel to his hip high to fire from there,
And Birch dropped with a single yelp to bleed in snow,
And spring did not remove his body from that spot.























PAST SEATTLE
for Geoff P.

"Our settlement's only sign of life was smoke;
It drifted up in calms between the blizzards.
I recall it was the color of the sky.
There was never enough food so we ate tubers,
And what the snow did to us we never forgot;
It was the one sure fact we lived against.
The graves spread on a knoll to the east
Where the birch and the pine were thinnest,
And the path to the knoll stayed dark all winter.
In the spring, the grass there came back lush."

Generations later, I stand on the coast
And think west across water that whispers
In my dreams, and I remember that voice.
It rains way too much here, for days obscuring
everything with mist. I drink too much, get drunk,
Try to boogie myself out of the plain facts.
Too many days, I think of them
Who I never knew. Their graves in the snow
Stretch a long shadow, even to this time.
I stare too much out of barroom windows
While Greyhounds gun by from the passes,
Their snowed tops already running slush,
The smoke of their exhausts beaten down by rain.























RISING IN CHENEY

Where I came from, towers shove sense into the sky,
The eye is driven by sheer weight of stone up
To the transparent blue men live by. It takes
Elevators to lift them, in a soundless
Rattle of chains, to higher places.
Men get hauled around a lot like that,
In desperate clusters, and hold their breaths,
Driven dizzy by the artificial highs.

There's a mile of road from there to Cheney,
And the Rockies slope the glance a natural way up
From the commonness of grass along the way.
You're a long time on the other side
Before the land lets you in, and you know
How breathing's a natural way to live.

Cheney's a two-story town at most—
No one's got to strain beyond that climb,
Movement settles to an easy walk,
And the sun gifts everyplace with its own low shadow.
Effortlessly, by accidental glance,
You receive the sky's blue sense. Living
Becomes a matter of sitting tight, rising
Less than a deep breath exhaled.

We call this photo "Chi Chi displays the family jewels." Chi Chi is our long-haired chihuahua.


WELL I’LL BE A MONKEY’S UNCLE!
(As the expression goes.)

The following is a semi-long entry and is a column I found in the Spokesman Review (our local paper) several months back. But we can expect even more pieces of information about natural selection coming through to us from the human genome project which will be even more damning evidence against the hypothesis of intelligent design.


[OPEN QUOTE] Human-chimp link recent, theory says

DNA study claims species interbred after divergence

David Brown 
Washington Post 
May 18, 2006

When the ancestors of human beings and the ancestors of chimpanzees parted ways 6.3 million years ago, it was probably a very long goodbye. Some of their descendants may even have gone back for a final tryst.

That's the conclusion a group of scientists has reached, using a comparison of the genes of human beings and their closest animal relatives to sketch a picture of human origins far more detailed than what fossil bones have revealed.

According to the new theory, chimps and humans shared a common, apelike ancestor much more recently than previously thought. Furthermore, when the two emerging species split from each other, it wasn't a clean break. Some members of the two groups seem to have interbred about 1.2 million years after they first diverged – before finally going their separate ways for good.

If this theory proves correct, it means modern people are descended from something akin to chimp/human hybrids. That's a new idea, and it challenges the prevailing view that hybrids tend to die out.

It also strongly suggests that some of the oldest bones of "proto-humans" – including the 7-million-year-old Toumai skull unearthed in Chad in 2001 – may have belonged to a line of non-hybrids that died out, and were not human ancestors at all.

This narrative, by a team of geneticists and biostatisticians from the Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not only casts new light on the origin of humans, it raises questions about how all new species arise.

"This is contributing to the idea that species are kind of fuzzy. They become real over time, but it takes millions of years," said James Mallet, a geneticist at University College in London not involved in the new research. "We probably had a bit of a messy origin."

The research is the latest fruit of the Human Genome Initiative, the successful effort to transcribe and read out the entire genetic message of human chromosomes, which was completed in 2003.

The evidence of ancestral chimp and human interbreeding emerged from comparing parts of their genomes to each other and to those of gorillas, orangutans and macaques. The scientists now want to know whether similar "hybridization events" happened between other emerging species.

The separation into two species "left a footprint on our genome that we can go back and read," said Eric Lander of MIT. "We were never able to look at things like this before. What we need to do now is to collect more data and look for other smoking guns."

Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes that contain about 30,000 genes. Each gene is made of strands of DNA "letters" in a specific order, and the letters can change, by mutation, over time. The rate at which changes occur is fairly constant – and very, very slow.

As a result, genetic mutations can be used as a kind of evolutionary clock. The number of DNA differences between two species' versions of the same gene is an indication of how long the species have been separate – how long since individuals were last interbreeding and sharing genes.

When Nick Patterson of MIT and his colleagues at the Broad Institute compared the genes of humans and chimps, they found that one of the chromosomes—the female sex chromosome known as X—was 1.2 million years younger than the others. It appeared the two species shared a common ancestor who gave them both their X chromosomes, and did so more recently than the ancestors who gave them all the other chromosomes.
How could that be?

The best explanation, they scientists think, is that ancient humans and chimps broke away from each other not once, but twice. The first time was more than 6.3 million years ago. The second time was at least a million years later.

What probably happened was that some of the evolving human ancestors bred with the evolving chimpanzees. This was perhaps not as weird as it seems, for although there were some physical differences between the two groups, "the early humans must have looked pretty much like chimpanzees," said Mallet, the London geneticist.

Males have only one X chromosome, which is necessary for reproduction. As is often the case with hybrids, the male offspring from these unions would probably have been infertile.

But the females, which have two X chromosomes, would have been fertile. If some of those hybrid females then bred with proto-chimpanzee males, some of their male offspring would have gotten a working X from the chimp side of the family. They would have been fertile – and with them the hybrid line would have been off and reproducing on its own. The evolutionary clock indicates this happened no more than 6.3 million years ago, and perhaps as recently as 5.4 million years ago.

The idea that new species emerge in a slow and stuttering fashion was favored by Charles Darwin, said Mallet, the London geneticist. But in the early part of the 20th century, biologists came to favor the idea of clean breaks, with the "pure" lines of emerging species being stronger and fitter than hybrids.

In fact, Mallet said, about 10 percent of animal species are capable of interbreeding with related species, even though the number of individuals who do so in any population is very small. [CLOSE QUOTE]

THE BRAIN IS NOT
AN ALL PURPOSE
LEARNING MACHINE

This is not the first time I’ve passed on this idea, but here it is, again, in the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 42-44. And it goes into even more detail than other entries in this blog. Evolutionary psychology does not lend itself to the idea that the brain is a general purpose learning machine. This is one of the conflicts between old and new psychology. If evolutionary psychologists are correct, many changes will sweep through the field of psychology.

[OPEN QUOTE]
The traditional view of the mind is radically at variance with the view that emerges from evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists expect a mind packed with domain-specific, content-rich programs specialized for solving ancestral problems, For example, evolutionary psychologists would view attention not as a single mechanism, but as an umbrella term for a whole suite of mechanisms, each designed to select different information from a scene for different processing purposes. Some of these may be relatively domain-general and deployed via volitional systems to any task-relevant element in a scene—these are the attentional mechanisms that have been studied most, using artificial stimuli. The mistake is not to think these exist, but to think they are all that exist (Braun, 2003). for example, research with change detection and attentional blink paradigms is uncovering attentional systems that are highly domain-specific and deployed in the absence of any specific task demand. One system preferentially attends to human faces (Ro, Russell, & Lavie, 2001). A similar system snaps attention to the location at which a pair of eyes is gazing (Friesen & Kingstone, 2003). Yet another monitors animals for changes in their state and location: Changes to animals are detected more quickly and reliably than changes to buildings, plants, tools-even vehicles (New, Cosmides, & Tooby, under review). Better change detection for animals than vehicles is significant because it shows a monitoring system tuned to ancestral rather than modern priorities. Our ability to quickly detect changes in the state and location of cars on the highway has life or death consequences and is a highly trained ability in twenty-first century America, where the studies were done. Yet, we are better at detecting changes in the states and locations of animals—an ability that had foraging or sometimes predatory consequences for our hunter-gatherer ancestors but is merely a distraction in modern cities and suburbs.

The point is not just that attention will be composed of many different domain-specific mechanisms, but that each domain-specialized attentional mechanism will be part of a vertically integrated system linking the attended objects to domain-specialized inferential, learning, and memory systems. True, animals needed to be closely monitored because they presented either danger (e.g., predators) or opportunities for hunting (prey). But once detected, other specialized processing is needed. Barrett has shown that a predator-prey inference system develops early, regardless of relevant experiences: 3- and 4-year-old children have a sophisticated understanding of predator-prey interactions, whether they grow up in urban Berlin or in a Shuar village in the jaguar- and crocodile-infested Amazon, eating animals that their fathers hunted and killed (Barrett, Chapter 7, this volume; Barrett, Tooby, & Cosmides, (in press). Steen and Owens (2001) have shown that chase play in toddlers and preschoolers has features of special design as a system for practicing and perfecting escape from predators (see also Marks, 1987).

Learning about animals is specialized as well. Mandler and McDonough (1998) have shown that babies distinguish animals from vehicles by 7 months of age and make different inferences about the two by 11 to 14 months. A detailed knowledge of animal behavior is necessary for successful hunting (Blurton Jones & Konner, 1976; Walker, Hill, Kaplan, & McMillan, 2002), and preschoolers as well as adults are equipped with systems specialized for making inductive inferences about the properties of animals (Keil, 1994; Markman, 1989; Springer, 1992; and discussion thereof in Barrett, Cosmides, et al., in press; Boyer, 2001; Boyer & Barrett, Chapter 3, this volume).

Atran and colleagues (Atran, 1998; Lopez, Atran, Coley, Medin, & Smith, 1997) provide cross-cultural evidence for a system specialized for sorting living kinds into hierarchically organized, mutually exclusive taxonomic categories that organize inductive inferences: The closer two species are in this taxonomic structure, the more likely someone is to assume that a trait of one is present in the other. Barrett, Cosmides, et al. (in press) have found a second parallel inductive system that uses predatory role to guide inferences. This system assumes that two species are more likely to share a trait if they are both predators than if one is a predator and the other an herbivore. This system categorizes animals as predators or not on the basis of minimal dietary information scattered amid other facts about the species' natural history. That is, the category predator is triggered by the information "eats animals" and guides inductive learning; the effect on trait induction is strongtwice the size of the taxonomic effect (Barrett, Chapter 7, this volume; Barrett et al., in press-a). Animal-specialized memory systems appear to exist as well. For example, Caramazza provides neuropsychological evidence that information about animals is stored in a category-specific memory system, functionally and neurally separate from that which stores information about artifacts (Caramazza, 2000; Caramazza & Shelton, 1998). From a traditional psychological perspective, content effects concerning animals are no more significant than hypothetical effects about door knobs, floorings, or words that rhyme with Quetzlcoatl. From an evolutionary perspective, however, animals were a selective agent of great magnitude and duration, and it would be a surprise if our brains were not strongly shaped by their hundreds of millions of years of interaction with other species.

We are emphasizing the content-specialized nature of processing about animals to illustrate an important point. The benefit of an attentional system specialized for monitoring animals is enhanced if its output is fed into inferential systems that infer their mental states and use this information to predict their likely behavior. The inferences and predictions generated by the mental state system are more useful if they are reliably fed into decision rules that determine whether escape is necessary. The monitoring system should also feed learning mechanisms that incidentally acquire information about the animal's properties; these, in turn, should feed memory systems designed to encode, store, and retrieve information about the animals monitored, according to ecologically relevant categories such as predator, taxonomically related, and so on. Animal-specialized attentional, inferen¬tial, behavioral, learning, and memory systems should be functionally integrated with one another, forming a distinct, category-based system. The same should be true for other content domains. Distinct, content-based information processing systems will exist to the extent that the computational requirements for adaptive problem solving for one content area are functionally incompatible with those for another (Sherry & Shacter, 1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992; Tooby, Cosmides, & Barrett, 2005).

Seen from this perspective, the ordinary categories of psychology dissolve. To have a textbook chapter on attention and a separate one on memory and then learning and reasoning does not necessarily divide the mind in the most appropriate way.
[CLOSE QUOTE]

YOU'LL FIND THIS LIST INTERESTING. . . .

We should see that the following list goes everywhere and gets front page coverage or at least into local columns.

I sent this list to one of our local right wing columnists, Mr. Dave Oliveria. A couple of years ago, he got self-righteous on me about my resistance to the war, and he quoted me something from a local army officer he admired, then, when I questioned the thinking of Oliveria’s hero, Oliveria came on with some cliché about I didn’t have the right to wash that officer’s jock strap or something like that. When I sent this list to Oliveria and asked him to publish it (because he was such a supporter of the military man), I also asked him if he’d served. He still has not answered that question. He politely told me to shut up and go take my meds. A real sharp debater, that one.

You can also see the conservative tendency to use a situation to support their case on one hand and then to not be consistent in its application. Think Bennett and Limbaugh! But I’m with Emerson on that one—consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. The only difference between me and Oliveria on the subject of consistency is that I’m fully aware that people are inconsistent because of the situations they find themselves in, whereas the conservative religious man like Dave is always trumpeting absolutism and attacking “situational ethics” as the downfall of the moral order. That is why fundamentalists find it hard to compromise in political debate and why they tend to use force to try to enforce moral absolutism on others. Then, of course, when in power, they sneak around to do their dirty deeds because they just can’t admit to being subject to the very human mental trait called “situational ethics.”

As you’ll note from the list below, there are some pretty big names on the chickenhawk list of non-servers. Do you think there’s some psychological compensation thingee going on with these Republican chickenhawks?

Democrats:

Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam. Paraplegic from war injuries. Congressman.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars,and Soldier's Medal.
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
Chuck Robb: Vietnam
Howell Heflin: Silver Star
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters.
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans:

Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
Vin Weber: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
Christopher Cox: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
Phil Gramm: did not serve.
John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
John M. McHugh: did not serve.
JC Watts: did not serve.
Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years as quarterback.
Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
John Engler: did not serve.
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers:

Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Paul Gigot: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
John Wayne: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.
Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
Ralph Reed: did not serve.
Michael Medved: did not serve.

I found this here.

CONSCIOUSNESS

The most interesting field of debate these days is the one about the nature of consciousness. As I’ve said often enough, I believe I can almost imagine I’m a robot (at the deepest chemical levels) and consciousness is no more than the brain “hearing” the sense-based synapses talk among themselves, specifically using the auditory/visual systems, since some people “think” with images and some with language constructs. Consciousness is just an additional level of abstraction. The following paragraphs are by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, p. 59. He presents his idea of how consciousness evolved, with important reservations and a scientist's caution, of course.

“What about simulation? Well, when you yourself have a difficult decision to make involving unknown quantities in the future, you do go in for a form of simulation. You imagine what would happen if you did each of the alternatives open to you. You set up a model in your head, not of everything in the world, but of the restricted set of entities which you think may be relevant. You may see them vividly in your mind's eye, or you may see and manipulate stylized abstractions of them. In either case it is unlikely that somewhere laid out in your brain is an actual spatial model of the events you are imagining. But, just as in the computer, the details of how your brain represents its model of the world are less important than the fact that it is able to use it to predict possible events. Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error.

“The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology. There is no reason to suppose that electronic computers are conscious when they simulate, although we have to admit that in the future they may become so. Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself. Obviously the limbs and body of a survival machine must constitute an important part of its simulated world; presumably for the same kind of reason, the simulation itself could be regarded as part of the world to be simulated. Another word for this might indeed be 'self-awareness', but I don't find this a fully satisfying explanation of the evolution of consciousness, and this is only partly because it involves an infinite regress—if there is a model of the model, why not a model of the model of the model. . . ?”

ANOTHER IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY

Quite a few posts, back I included the photos of a couple of Iranian teenage girls in tight-fitting outfits, out on the Tehran town shopping. I called them the founding fathers of the Iranian revolution. I thought they were showing a lot of courage to be out their doing what they did and dressed as they were. It just seemed to me to be fitting that women would be the Thomas Jeffersons and George Washingtons of the Iranian freedom front rather than men. I must also wonder how our own Christian fundamentalists would be judging the dress and manner of these two young women? Wouldn't they be castigating the young women for dishonering their parents and acting up against authority? I have heard more than one Christian say nasty things about freedom. They have a slight tendency to honor obedience over freedom.

The following photo is of Samira Makhmalbaf, an 18 year old Iranian director who has already made two films that have received honors at Cannes.


“Blackboards” directed by Samira Makhmalbaf

"Originally released: 2000

"Teachers walk the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border, blackboards strapped to their backs, but no-one here seems to want their kind of learning. For many, Blackboards was one of the best films of 2000, a symbolic allegory worthy of Beckett. I'm not so sure. It's an important work, with moments of visual beauty and dark humour, but never achieves the tone of transcendence it strains for. Where The Apple transfigured a real story through its compassion, Blackboards seems to use Kurdish suffering rather coldly, clinically - especially compared to A Time For Drunken Horses, a simpler but perhaps more effective film rooted in the same setting."

—SF Said (Found on the internet.)

My wife and I checked this film out of the Spokane Public Library, watched it this weekend, and it was a very interesting film.

PS: These are the dog days for my garden. I don't have enough late blooming perennials and many of my plants have leaves that go ratty in August. As I was doing some watering tonight, I realized how bad things were getting to look. Plus, I haven't been keeping up on dividing some of my plants that have been around for four years. They're looking bad too. Smaller blossoms and droopy stems and thin plants. One or two of my purple cone flowers seem to be dying. Also, I've got a lot to learn about grouping my plants into pleasant combinations.

THE PALOUSE

Took a drive the other day out to the south south east of Spokane into the Palouse and snapped some pictures. On certain days in the past the Palouse country has been oppressive to me as I drove through wheat fields, stretching to the horizon on either hand, before and behind me for hour after hour. It was hot and sunny this day, and my car has no air-conditioning, so the drive got a bit sultry too after driving down and then back, mostly on Route 27, except when I was driving on primitive dirt or gravel summer roads. I even picked up a hitchhiker on one of the summer roads in the dirt with wheat pressing in close and up to the door handles on both sides of the road.

The Hitchhiker

To the left, east, off Route 27 on the way down.

Summer road in the dirt. Harvest was going on in some fields.

Weeds beside a gravel road near the southernmost tip of my day trip.

The greens, the oranges, the blues! To my left on Route 27, west, on way home.

I took a drive the other day into the Palouse country and shot about 48 photos. This is one I cropped to make what looks like a panorama, but it isn't.

I TOOK A TEST AWHILE BACK AND. . . .

I always describe myself as a leftist or a liberal, but when I took a political test I got a suprise. The following information is on the results page sent to me after I took the test:

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS, the political description that
fits you best is... CENTRIST

CENTRISTS espouse a "middle ground" regarding government
control of the economy and personal behavior. Depending on
the issue, they sometimes favor government intervention
and sometimes support individual freedom of choice.
Centrists pride themselves on keeping an open mind,
tend to oppose "political extremes," and emphasize what
they describe as "practical" solutions to problems.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 70%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 40%.

......................................................................
Where do you fit in? Go here to take the test yourself.

......................................................................
7,105,460—THAT'S HOW MANY TIMES THE QUIZ
HAS BEEN TAKEN SO FAR.

How People Have Scored
Centrist 32.69 %
Right (Conservative) 8.22 %
Libertarian 33.27 %
Left (Liberal) 17.87 %
Statist (Big Government) 7.95 %

......................................................................
Other Political Philosophies

Right (Conservative)
Conservatives tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently
support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates "traditional
values." They oppose excessive government control of business,
while endorsing government action to defend morality and the
traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong
military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market
economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

Left (Liberal)
Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal
matters, but tend to support significant government control of the
economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net"
to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation
of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations,
defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action
to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Libertarian
Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and
economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one
that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.
Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose
government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate
diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

Statist (Big Government)
Statists want government to have a great deal of power over the
economy and individual behavior. They frequently doubt whether
economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in
today's world. Statists tend to distrust the free market, support
high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose
diverse lifestyles, and question the importance of civil liberties.

......................................................................
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DON’T BE A DODO OR A CUCKOO. EVOLUTION’S A FACT

The brief excerpt below exemplifies how genetic information can spread through species by some combination of selfish and/or altruistic genes. I’m passing this on from Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, pp. 102-104

[OPEN QUOTE] An example of a deliberately engineered misfiring of the maternal instinct is provided by cuckoos, and other 'brood-parasites'-birds that lay their eggs in somebody else's nest. Cuckoos exploit the rule built into bird parents: 'Be nice to any small bird sitting in the nest that you built'. Cuckoos apart, this rule will normally have the desired effect of restricting altruism to immediate kin, because it happens to be a fact that nests are so isolated from each other that the contents of your own nest are almost bound to be your own chicks. Adult herring gulls do not recognize their own eggs, and will happily sit on other gull eggs, and even crude wooden dummies if these are substituted by a human experimenter. In nature, egg recognition is not important for gulls, because eggs do not roll far enough to reach the vicinity of a neighbor’s nest, some yards away. Gulls do, however, recognize their own chicks: chicks, unlike eggs, wander, and can easily end up near the nest of a neighboring adult, often with fatal results, as we saw in Chapter I.

Guillemots, on the other hand, do recognize their own eggs by means of the speckling pattern, and actively discriminate in favor of them when incubating. This is presumably because they nest on flat rocks, where there is a danger of eggs rolling around and getting muddled up. Now, it might be said, why do they bother to discrimi¬nate and sit only on their own eggs? Surely if everybody saw to it that she sat on somebody's egg, it would not matter whether each particular mother was sitting on her own or somebody else's. This is the argument of a group selectionist. Just consider what would happen if such a group baby-sitting circle did develop. The average clutch size of the guillemot is one. This means that if the mutual baby-sitting circle is to work successfully, every adult would have to sit on an average of one egg. Now suppose someone cheated, and refused to sit on an egg. Instead of wasting time sitting, she could spend her time laying more eggs. And the beauty of the scheme is that the other, more altruistic, adults would look after them for her. They would go on faithfully obeying the rule 'If you see a stray egg near your nest, haul it in and sit on it.' So the gene for cheating the system would spread through the population, and the nice friendly baby-sitting circle would break down.

'Well', it might be said, 'what if the honest birds retaliated by refusing to be blackmailed, and resolutely decided to sit on one egg and only one egg? That should foil the cheaters, because they would see their own eggs lying out on the rocks with nobody incubating them. That should soon bring them into line.' Alas, it would not. Since we are postulating that the sitters are not discriminating one egg from another, if the honest birds put into practice this scheme for resisting cheating, the eggs that ended up being neglected would be just as likely to be their own eggs as those of the cheaters. The cheaters would still have the advantage, because they would lay more eggs and have more surviving children. The only way an honest guillemot could beat the cheaters would be to discriminate actively in favor of her own eggs. That is, to cease being altruistic and look after her own interests.

To use the language of Maynard Smith, the altruistic adoption 'strategy' is not an evolutionarily stable strategy. It is unstable in the sense that it can be bettered by a rival selfish strategy of laying more than one's fair share of eggs, and then refusing to sit on them. This latter selfish strategy is in its turn unstable, because the altruistic strategy which it exploits is unstable, and will disappear. The only evolutionarily stable strategy for a guillemot is to recognize its own egg, and sit exclusively on its own egg, and this is exactly what happens.

The song-bird species that are parasitized by cuckoos have fought back, not in this case by learning the appearance of their own eggs, but by discriminating instinctively in favor of eggs with the species typical markings. Since they are not in danger of being parasitized by members of their own species, this is effective. But the cuckoos have retaliated in their turn by making their eggs more and more like those of the host species in colour, size, and markings. This is an example of a lie, and it often works. The result of this evolutionary arms race has been a remarkable perfection of mimicry on the part of the cuckoo eggs. We may suppose that a proportion of cuckoo eggs and chicks are 'found out', and those that are not found out are the ones who live to lay the next generation of cuckoo eggs. So genes for more effective deception spread through the cuckoo gene pool. Similarly, those host birds with eyes sharp enough to detect any slight imperfection in the cuckoo eggs' mimicry are the ones that contribute most to their own gene pool. Thus sharp and skeptical eyes are passed on to their next generation. This is a good example of how natural selection can sharpen up active discrimination, in this case discrimination against another species whose members are doing their best to foil the discriminators. [CLOSE QUOTE]