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| May 2006 »
A neat summary of recent advances in evolutionary theory and embryology is in the recent The New York Review Of Books. The writers point out that Hox genes, recognized not so long ago, direct the growth and development of an organism by acting as a series of switches and growth guides. Many of these newly discovered genetic agents were noticed by studying embryonic development, as the big puzzle in evolution is now how exactly can simple genes dictate the growth of and evolve into such complex organs like eyes and hands.
Well, it seems the “simple” genes don’t exactly dictate all of that, that it happens in development, gradually, where the Hox genes act as switches that allow some genes to be expressed and others to remain silent. They do this piecemeal, as an organism grows, so all the information doesn’t have to be stored in one massive genetic file, it’s like a series of trap doors that get opened when the right triggers are activated. Therefore the Hox genes “direct” the development of each specific organ and evolutionary changes and mutations don’t therefore have to happen in the whole gene, which would increase the risk of catastrophe (a dead freak) but instead mutations can happen within the confines of the Hox “instruction manuals” for specific organs. In fact, many organs’ developments are self-regulated. The complex network of blood vessels or nerves, for example, is not mapped out in advance. An algorithm is set in motion and the network then more or less creates itself, reacting to its environment. So, the instruction manual does NOT have to be as big and as complex as the thing it describes. And instruction such as “keep the river on your right” eliminates that need for an elaborate map.
This reminds me that yesterday Jane, who is working on the video elements of Here Lies Love, found the film that Marcos’ mistress Dovie Beams was brought to Manila to star in many years ago. We all assumed that Imelda, discovering Marcos’ affair, squashed the film shoot back in the 70s before it was even done. The film was to be a dramatization of Marcos’ supposed exploits and his affair with a Filipina resistance fighter during WWII. Heroism and romance — with the Filipina warrior gal to be played by an American B movie actress! Jane discovered on the web that a print of this film exists in Germany — or it was released in Germany in the late 80s and the print is floating around somewhere.
Here’s the network analogy:
Previously to Jane’s German discovery, on the IMDB database, only two films featuring Beams as an actress ever showed up. Now, although she never entered this new information into their database, this third film pops up as well. The web has “noticed” a new connection, a new path through the jungle, and has incorporated it into itself, where relevant. No one did anything; the web did it by itself. Or so it seems.
So, it seems that the Hox genes allow for a more and more complex organism than the number of genes should be able generate by themselves. Previously it was thought that complex organisms like us should have many many more genes than simple life forms — and that evolution happened when these new genes gradually got added to the sequence by accident. But it now seems that the difference in the number of genes between lower life forms and us is nowhere near as large as it “should” be. The Hox genes offer an explanation of sorts as to how this is technically possible — the series of switches and triggers are a system in which less can be made to do more. Ingenious.
The Hox gene and regular gene combination raises questions.
Isn’t it odd that, to some extent, the genes present in even the lowliest bacteria contain much of what is necessary to make vastly larger and more complex creatures? Quantitatively there is not that much less information even in lowly lifeforms. Does this mean there is a lot of redundant unused information in the genes of a simple organism? What is the “extra” information doing there? Why would any organism have stuff it doesn’t use? How could anything like that possibly evolve? Creationists probably have a ready answer here.
Darwinists claim the opposite — that this common genetic base or framework proves that we all came from the same place. That to have needed real genetic additions evolution would have happened even more slowly than it did. So, in their opinion, this system was the way it had to happen. At least in the time scale we observe. And the genius of the design is that it uses simple building blocks but makes the absolute most out of them. One can make a simple brick, or a skyscraper, but the ingredients are identical.
What that says to me then is that most life on Earth is, genetically speaking, one organism. I don’t mean this metaphorically, I mean it literally. The various shapes and forms that life takes are ways that it, the uber organism, has found to occupy every available niche — but it is the always the same genetic framework that is being propagated everywhere, more or less. Darwin would claim that a lineage exists from one primeval single celled creature to almost all the world’s bacteria, sloths, ants and people. There may be other primeval things that offer radically different genetic frameworks, but this one genetic model has prevailed, and did so well that it pretty much took over the planet. (I wonder if some viruses are the seeds of alternate genetic design possibilities, as yet unrealized?)
So, to an alien species from another galaxy, all life on earth might appear almost as one organism, vast and shape shifting. Where we see difference they would see similarity. To them it would appear as if this one organism had not only flourished, but was so spread out across the planet and that the Earth itself might be seen as one seething being — an organism (of which we are just a part) filling every available nook and cranny. A creature that even created an environment conducive to itself. Oxygen, an atmosphere, soil — all, to some extent, made by life. The One that is All has a relationship with its host rock that is symbiotic.
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) hosts a Channel 4 (UK) two-part series on religion called “The Root Of All Evil?” Doubt it will ever get shown in the U.S., which has now become a fundamentalist country. Or is on the fast track to that destination. Wish they’d show this 2-part series in exchange for “teaching” creationism or adding, “in God we Trust” into the Pledge of Allegiance. Not that Dawkins is level-headed either. But at least he presents the opposite extreme, which doesn’t get much airing, for fear of loss of job, sponsorship or death. He doesn’t pull any punches, which is shocking for someone who lives in the U.S. to hear. Maybe there is so much self-censorship in the U.S. (we who wag fingers at China) that Dawkins’ statements seem shockingly radical.
In my opinion, science, his “religion”, proceeds as much from faith as much conventional religion does. It’s now a scientific fact (pun intended) that one simply doesn’t see what one doesn’t want to see. It doesn’t register. It isn’t noted or remembered, either. Do scientists think they are immune to this? You lot in the lab coats think you really are completely objective? I can think of many instances, as one preacher claims, of science teaching now considered ridiculous. OK, the temperature at which water boils is pretty undisputed, but when we get close to ourselves — to medicine, health, psychology, sociology, and religion — things start to break down. I believe the 21st century will be the century of biology as the last one was of physics and chemistry — but we’re not there yet. The hubris of policies backed by “rational” scientific research and the “testimony of experts” has probably done as much harm in the world as any religion. Both science and religion have a lot to answer for.
That said, he’s right about a lot of it and it needs to be said. Religions are indeed intolerant, exclusionary and sometimes downright loony (“barking mad” was his phrase) — but as a student of Darwin he should expect that something or other in human social and psychological systems, some inherited behavior, must respond to these needs that humans seem to seek answers to or relief from. Religion fulfils so many psychological, social and cultural requirements that its continued existence — it sprouts up again and again — shouldn’t be surprising. It probably can’t be squashed or eliminated.
It justifies invasions, social and personal ostracisms, clannish behavior, community giving, accepted morality — all at the same time. What else can make wanton slaughter of foreigners seem like a morally good thing yet murder of one’s own group seem like a bad thing? And aren’t those common evolutionary-based human impulses? Impulses that only need some mental and emotional justifications? Isn’t it obvious that there is a gene for religion that provides exactly those justifications?
The ministers, rabbi and imams interviewed all seems to believe that without the big stick of religion humans would run amok. I agree with Dawkins that they wouldn’t — animals have morality, too — it’s something we do for our own good — though some small percentage will try to find a work around. Religion doesn’t seem to have “solved” that problem. In fact we can see it often seems to encourage the aggressive dog-eat-dog tendencies that they claim they try to suppress.
What Dawkins sadly ignores is the attractiveness and beauty of religion. And that faith can indeed ease pain and suffering — in which case is not the lie of religion better than the ugly bitter truth? Doesn’t faith often help people recover from illnesses? Aren’t believers often happier? Aren’t religious precessions fun and aren’t mosques and churches usually magnificent? (Maybe a little overly awesome, belittling, but still.)
In such cases, why not accept the lie? What harm would it do?
Granted, seeing all the “practically” useless temples and churches, impeccable and grand in the midst of squalor and poverty, sets one’s teeth on edge. But, if one can see the processions and mumbo jumbo, the miracles and murmurings, as metaphors rather than as literal fact then it might be easier to view religion as the greatest artistic expression of humankind — or much of it, anyway.
Sadly, most believers don’t view their faiths as metaphorical — they believe Jesus actually rose from the dead, that Mary was a virgin and that visiting a stone in Mecca will make you a better person. Sadly, you don’t often get the nice benefits of faith — the happiness and the hope — without the superiority, closed-mindedness and hatred. Can’t these two sides of a coin be separated? Is there something in this (possible) gene that always entangles these two? Fix us, please.
Dawkins should be able to answer that one, that’s his area of study.
Finland to be represented in the Eurovision song contest by a demon metal band, Lordi. The national officials are embarrassed, but there’s lots of press. Every day is Halloween for these guys. Beat that, Gorillaz — these guys could really be a bunch of geezers but who will even know as, like Kiss of old, they refuse to be photographed without their costumes.
Gas is nearing 5 pounds a gallon here — that’s edging up to 10 dollars a gallon in U.S. money, a point at which I suspect Americans habits will begin to alter slightly. I remember when gas was 21¢ a gallon — probably in Texas or somewhere that had its own reserves and held the price artificially low. Easy now to imagine how, with gas that low, one might, thinking that there would be an endless supply, build a great network of highways, tear up train tracks and dream that every citizen who strives sufficiently might someday have their own idyllic home with a sizable yard and trees — a bit of rural retreat within motoring reach of the city.
Mobility — it’s how America got here in the first place, it’s part of the national character to keep moving, staking new claims, evolving. A new town and a new career. Or maybe just a new neighborhood and a longer drive to work.
What will people in the suburbs do when gas hits $10? Will they simply drive less? Give up that idea of mobility. That is already happening. But simply driving less is no insurance — the cost of everything that is trucked, every warehouse, home, shop or school that is heated and lit, every powered machine that makes every little thing — it will all add up, quickly, to increase the cost of living suddenly.
The cost of making goods in faraway lands — maquiladoras, offshore manufacturing — will suddenly increase due to shipping and storage cost increases, and the rise may even counteract and offset the cost savings of using cheap labor. All those Indonesian shoe factories and Mexican TV assemblers may not seem like such a good idea any more.
Norm had been to Ashley Beedle’s wedding the night before — DJing at the end of it. Beedle is one of the members of X-Press 2 — we did “Lazy” together and were on Top Of The Pops. I’m grateful for the chance to catch up on sleep.
The Armed forces' revolt against the Bush administration proceeds. A whole raft of generals, most of them recently retired, but having served in Iraq, now call for Rummy to step down. Other generals, not named and still serving in Iraq, join the chorus. The military doesn’t dispute the war — that may come later — but its execution, which anyone with eyes can see was not planned, thought out or performed with any competence whatsoever. The Army’s first duty is self-preservation — save the boys — and when they see arrogant incompetents putting the boys in harm’s way unnecessarily, they eventually rebel.
It was Army defections that dethroned Marcos in the Philippines.
I’m not a big supporter of the military or the military mindset, but they can at least be viewed as attempting to be professional about their job. And respected from that point of view. You may not want Dirty Harry to make a nation’s foreign policy decisions, but he or some other thin-lipped hero is who you want at your back when things get crazy. Not Rumsfeld, or Bush — the latter hasn’t succeeded in a single business he’s been handed on a platter his whole life.
My Back Pages
When I first moved to NY in the mid 70s I stayed with the painter Jamie Dalglish. In return for room and board I helped him sand the floors and renovate his loft on Bond Street — a stone's throw from CBGB as fate would have it.
I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess. Jamie occasionally made large abstract paintings and I wrote what later became Talking Heads songs. At one point Jamie decided to borrow some of the B&W video decks that were around at the time and do a kind of art talk show video — an artist and I would talk, but the camera would never show me. Here is the artist who later became Jeff Koons. I don’t recall ever seeing all of these — there are 7 hours’ worth!
Sorry Judas, we didn’t mean it, really.
The Gospel According To Judas makes the news. Some 1700-year-old papyrus scrolls — 66 pages — have been made public. Discovered in the 70s in Egypt. And they’re only seeing the light of day now? Egyptian antiquities dealers “circulated” them for a while — asking price around 3 million. Then the manuscripts went to Europe and finally rested in a safety deposit box in Hicksville, NY. Hicksville? They stayed there for 16 years. A Swiss dealer bought them and he tried to resell them. Note that none of these guys seemed to have any interest in releasing them to the academic world or to the public.
No buyers appeared, so the Swiss dealer finally “gave” it to a foundation, which, in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, has translated it — and has the TV rights.
Seems Judas says Jesus ASKED him to betray him, or so the writer of this Gospel claims. A bit like Milosevic having his day in court. The supposed bad guy, the betrayer, claims it was the others who betrayed him by twisting the story. Now, I’m not comparing Judas to a war criminal — but he is similarly despised by most Christians.
Do churches now include any of these new Gospels in The Book? — The Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Philip — are they planned to be in future editions of the Bible? Absolutely not. The Thomas Gospel was published in 1959 — it’s authentic but has never been included — its Buddhist-like Gnosticism contradicts too much of the existing church dogma. And this new one — whew — it really gives a new twist to the narrative.
Hicksville?
…
Saw Neko Case at Webster Hall last night.
Didn’t realize my lens cap had dropped off while I was there. Apparently after I left Neko found it and someone said it was mine.
Saw Beth Orton in the same room a few days later. Better sound down among the plebs.
Also saw an Iranian singer named Haale that sometime drummer Dougie Bowne is working with. A mixture of experimental downtown stuff with the vocal intensity of U2, but more intimate…and mostly in Persian.
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