Wednesday 21 May 2008

Artemisia

Stephen H. Schneider in What Are you Optimistic About? suggests we should be optimistic about the behaviour of big business.
In the case of a company that is synonomous with GMO I have serious doubts that have been hugelly amplified of late. Their well-known weed-killer, which whichever way you approach it is devasting of living cells and surely does induce cancer and other conditions, so rejected by those familiar with effects in horticulture, has been unsuprisingly put forward -by the company- as a treatment for malaria. They want it to be tested, using intravenous delivery, on children in Africa.
When I think of what companies such as this are doing I am unavoidabley persuaded thay have racialist agenda. How it would get in a business based in (once upon a time in Wrexham which was progenitory, I recall to Yale itself?) St Louis Missouri, Well, I cannot imagine.

So check out Artemisia. Stephen Jones the geneticist, in his book Coral, notes how the apparent sex determinator (at least in humans) and rat-maddener Toxoplasma is closely related to Malaria.

Saturday 17 May 2008

Relusion

I've read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion this week past. I needed no primer toward atheism.
I do note that "evidence" is the crucial application that Dawkins insists upon in debate on the existence of belief and the exercise of such in action. I don't see that we can let our selves become brow-beaters to the religious without being as bad as some "animal rights" activists are for arguing against the use of animals in experiments and other cruelties they are made to suffer through lack of human ingenuity. We simply need law to protect us (society) from the religious, though to also protect the religious from being able to be open about their - I think there is evidence for - unavoidable relusion.

I`ve read Dawkins, among others on the "popular" Science shelf, since the mid-1980's. More than a decade after beginning that habit I began reading Jacques Derrida. I do think Dawkins has fallen for something that is of symptom throughout his mindings in The God Delusion. Though maybe it is his way of leading others to state from evidence what he dare not?
I got a style of ironic paraphrase on my construction of my range of interests (whilst financially curtailled from sharing to scrutiny) that I know I developed from reading Avital Ronnel. Ronnel in The Test Drive traces the consideration of "evidence" and when I fill in the gaps I conclude that Albert Camus`s The Fall best presents the viral antagonism that Science is turned to by Hierarchies exactly in the way "religious" that is making crypto (not much a secret) Social Darwinism produce a quasi-market condition (why markets fail...). That is to say when, as atheists, we fail to work on the details of the society we have solidarity toward, we contribute to the promotion of a less scruinised use of Science as Law(ful).
I really think Dawkins should be persuaded to read, or read about, Jacques Derrida. He may find he finds something to identify with if he gets us all scrambled by similar basketing as Dawkins obliges in his obvious relish of the Sokal incident.

The God Delusion is valuable conribution to culture, and a rare reflection on the activity of Atheism in face of hostility. However I am concerned that it cannot do enough for our Atheist solidarity becasuse of it's optimistic incursion into the position of "believers". Part of that optimism is that of expected literacy which is also distorted by Dawkins gentleness on the science.

Humans are not that superlative as some of the exceptions amongst their production are, and we all need hold that thought.

Friday 16 May 2008

Philosophy

I wish that the opening pre-amble monologue of "Wings of Desire" were all the film were (with Ms Kinski only drifting through the landscape).
Now imagine a place that that believed all a person is is the sub-vocal chatter that the under evolved are sensitive (give them wings that they never had a use for). These sensitive types who own quite vocal - due to incontinence of will - noise spews around everyone else.
What happens?