by Michael Dhar

“Marketing” and “branding” sound like dirty words if you’re a scholar or an artist. I take that back — actual dirty words are awesome if you’re a scholar or an artist. “Marketing” and “branding” sound like compromised ideals if you’re a scholar or an artist, which is much worse than crudely referencing sex or taking the lord’s name in vain. (That just makes you a “cool professor.”)

They’re pretty uncomfortable words to most of us, but something we must generally accept — in the same way most people hate networking, yet still print up business cards. But those academics and artists who hold university positions can set themselves apart; academia is separate from — above, really — all of that. Which is why the resignation of Alice Dreger, in protest of Northwestern University privileging academic branding over academic freedom, must be celebrated as an act of courage and conscience.

Anyway, that’s the press release I might have written were I Prof. Dreger’s publicist (or branding manager, say) . Of course, academia is not separate from marketing — universities must sell themselves, as well. They need brands to attract suckers (I mean, undergraduates). Academic researchers must sell their projects to get funding. Artists must contrive those horrible artist statements. And Alice Dreger’s very act of anti-branding is itself a brilliant act of branding. You see, Dreger has written a book on academic freedom and scientific controversies. Her resignation is priceless press, and it seals her brand as a warrior for intellectual independence. (The book is “Galileo’s Middle Finger” — she’s a cool professor — available now on Amazon!)

To be clear, I don’t suspect any underhanded dealings here — no invented outrage so that she could courageously resign and sell more books. The facts of the incident seem clear: Dreger, a medical humanities and bioethics professor (formerly) at Northwestern, guest-edited an issue of the university’s Atrium magazine, which included an essay about a consensual blowjob between a nurse and a patient. Northwestern said that essay violated the university’s “branding agreement” with the medical school, and had the issue taken down.

That act of censorship inspired the resignation of Dreger, who said, “Academic freedom is always going to cause brand problems. A brand is very much about something specific, and a university has to not be.”

Well, that’s great! It’s just pretty funny how all this rebellious, anti-branding activity bolsters Dreger’s personal brand so perfectly. This quote, from Greg Lukianoff of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), is just priceless:

“I am proud that Alice was willing to take this stand for free expression and academic freedom, and I strongly recommend her book, Galileo’s Middle Finger.”

I’m sure he means everything he says there. But I can also just see him holding up a copy of the book at the end of that quote, a big Coca-Cola smile on his face for the cameras.

Because rebellion, of course, is a brand, too. Just walk into any Hot Topic or review youth popular culture since forever (or, at least, the ’50s). Anti-branding is a brand, too. Just look at how well Adbusters and the like have sold the anti-corporate lifestyle.

Anyway, I would like to say fuck Northwestern (I’m a cool professor!) for their act of prudish censorship. But, concomitantly, congratulations to Prof. Dreger on the tremendous ad campaign that fell into her lap. She should be OK — as she has said, she was relatively free to resign her post, because she has income from the book and scheduled appearances. So hopefully that resignation will sell some books. More people need to read about Galileo, anyway.

by Michael Dhar

Scientists across the planet mopped the flop sweat from their brows yesterday and gave each other a series of weary, dorkily off-target high fives.

“It’s OK,” they croaked to one another through parched and bleeding lips, their eyes red from exhaustion and worry. “Everything we believe has NOT been upended. Turns out people didn’t ride around dinosaurs for fun.”

It was possible that the firmaments of geological, astronomical and paleontological science might have been overturned, had not a hero cadre of scientists figured out that a rock-art painting wasn’t of a pterodactyl.

Scientists can now continue to open their books of equations and careful observations, instead of burning them and only reading the one true Book — that is, until the next challenge to all of scientific observation arises. Creationists, however, will have to keep looking for solid evidence. And/or just keep insisting that they’re right. We’ll see which route they choose.

This latest reprieve for science came in the Black Dragon Canyon of Utah, where rock-art drawings by the Fremont peoples had long received what we’ll call “slightly different” interpretations from scientists and creationists. Scientists saw a grouping of several figures, including both people and animals — a reasonable interpretation of the drawings of an agrarian people who lived from about A.D. 1 to 1100. Creationists saw a pterodactyl, which science says lived in the Jurassic period some 150 million years ago, or a pterosaur, which existed as early as 228 million years ago.

Both sides accepted what science had to say about the age of the rock paintings and the Fremont culture. Creationists merely suggested that a depiction of a dinosaur-era flying reptile proved that all of geology and paleontology were wrong about the age of dinosaur bones and the Earth itself.

So both sides had points.

However, recently, scientists made some additional points using little electronic devices — specifically, a portable X-ray fluorescence device and something called a DStretch: with this machine, the scientists could upload a photo of the paintings to a computer, and then use a program to reveal the original pigments, even when time (and some previous researchers’ activities) had obscured them.

The result? The painting, scientists said, portrays separate figures: a couple of people, a sheep, a dog and a snake-like thing. All those individuals had been mistakenly joined together by “chalking” work and, apparently, the capacity for the human eye to see images that aren’t really there. No pterosaur. No pterodactyl. No smoking gun revelation that humans and dinosaurs (and dinosaur-era reptiles, to be precise) co-existed, as a literal interpretation of the Bible would suggest they did.

All snark and satire aside, I really do wonder what proponents of the pterosaur interpretation thought (and still think) it would prove. You’d have to assume that the same scientific method that accurately dated the Fremont people failed epically, hilariously in its estimation of the majority of Earth’s geologic and biological history.

And the evidence to overthrow all that science? People drew a picture that looks like a thing. Even if they had drawn a pterosaur-like creature, a more parsimonious explanation might be that they drew an eagle really badly. (Take a look at how European explorers originally drew African animals.) Or that they had vivid imaginations. As one of the scientists explained, the Fremont people could easily have portrayed mythological creatures, as most civilizations do.

The central absurdity here is that creationists, a group who’s beliefs about reality are based on a text they take on faith, are looking to bolster those beliefs with evidence — evidence that will supplant the entire enterprise of science, the most evidence-based activity, one could argue, in human history. An enterprise whose evidence they will disregard when it violates their faith.

So, if all it takes is faith, if faith is the trump card, why look for evidence? It could betray a subconscious acknowledgement that their method has been roundly defeated, and long ago. Or simply an immature notion of what evidence means: not the testimony of reality, both ugly and beautiful, but a weapon to be selectively activated — something to cherry pick.

The scientists who released the new study apparently had a civil discussion with their creationist counterparts. “We were all very polite to each other,” the archaeologist Paul Bahn said.  

The creationist, however, was not convinced.

“He said, ‘No no, no, I’ve had this checked out with infrared, and the whole thing is one single painting. It’s a very detailed painting of a pterodactyl,'” Bahn told Live Science.

His evidence, he insisted, was better.

Most people (though not all, of course) would agree that human lives are more important than animal lives. We don’t usually say it so bluntly, because it’s a harsh thing to put a relative value on any life. But the way we live (eating meat, dressing in cow skin stamped with the Jumpman log, testing medicines on monkeys) and the way our society benefits from the harvesting of animal lives makes our values pretty obvious. I certainly put humans above (non-human) animals (though examining that value system too closely gets troubling really fast).

A familiar moral-decision hypothetical regarding human-vs.-animal life is easy for most to answer — as in, a dog and a human baby are drowning, and you can only save one. Well, you’re not a monster — obviously, you save the baby (even if the dog is arguably more friendly and less expensive given college tuition these days).

So, when I saw several of my Facebook friends today post memes pivoting off the Cecil-the-lion killing to talk about the #blacklivesmatter movement, I understood their impulse: It is absurd how difficult it is to gain empathy for innocent black lives lost at the hands of police officers, particularly when we’re seeing right now how broken-hearted the world is over the loss of a large feline.

(If you need a refresher: A dickwad Minnesota dentist recently “legally” — read: totally illegally — killed and beheaded a lion, who was a beloved resident of an African sanctuary.  And generations of police abuse and killing of black people has started coming to light thanks to cellphone video. You know, in case you missed that.)

The intention of my friends’ posts is clear. And the statement they make is inarguable — “If you are upset that an innocent lion was killed, you should be more upset that innocent black humans are killed.”

Certainly.

But there’s still an atmosphere of hijacking about the statement that bugs me. Here is a rare moment for the cause of animal cruelty, a moment in which international attention is being paid to an often-ignored issue. But here you come saying another social issue is more important — even if it is. Some have been that blunt about it. I quote: “rich dude shooting lion < cop shooting human.”

Sure. Of course. But why are you changing the subject? People who shout “All Lives Matter” at Black Lives Matter rallies are being huge dicks. But the content of their statement is inarguable: All lives should and do matter. But why are they changing the subject? It does no good. The disproportionate and grossly unjust violence done to black lives finally gets some attention, and you want to shout about what we “should” be concerned about? A dickhead environmentalist could, should they desire, point out that climate change is “more important” than criminal justice reform. After all, less-violent cops won’t mean much in a world that’s no longer hospitable to humans.

But that would be pointless, and a douchenozzle thing to do.

To be clear, I’m not equating the smugness of “All Lives Matter” with memes pointing out the absurdity of caring for lions but not black Americans. I’m just saying — hijacking another social concern for (what you consider) a more important one is a bit dickish. Really, I just wanted to explain why these seemingly innocent posts bothered me.

Let’s hope some good comes to lives of animals after Cecil’s loss. And that human lives will improve thanks to social justice movements. Just, you know, don’t belittle something that someone else is concerned about.

Here’s a story for you: This part-time teacher whittled away at generations-old math problems on his own time, solving a puzzle that had eluded mathematicians for 150 years. Yitang Zheng, profiled in the New Yorker here, untangled the “bound gaps” problem of prime numbers, winning the prestigious MacArthur award among other prizes. At the time, he was teaching calculus part time. Previously, he’d done accounting for a Subway franchise.

There’s a romance about such an effort, which is I suppose why these stories of solitary mathematicians surface in the media from time to time. It’s interesting, inspiring — maybe even a bit troublingly weird — which are all cool things.

Mathematics has been called the purist science, and this sort of solitary, in-the-cabin (not necessarily an actual cabin) pursuit seems like the purist of scientific pursuits. It’s the purest of the pure. It’s like farm-fresh milk bathed in hand wash. (Does that metaphor work?)

It’s appealing because it revives the archetype of the lone-genius scientist, a fiction that’s harder and harder to maintain in an era of increasingly obvious cooperation and interdependence. You can’t be the dilettante, nobleman scientist of the 1700s, exploring the universe with a set of beakers in your parlor, when today’s scientific questions require billion-dollar behemoth machines that smash protons apart. Frinstance.

Even the theoretical side of physics, where Einstein worked, and which was long considered the purist (i.e., most mathematical) of physical sciences, isn’t so solitary. It generally happens within universities, these huge institutions, involving collaboration with colleagues, advisors, review boards, journals, peer reviewers, grant providers, administrators, savant janitors, etc. Even that frazzle-haired icon of scientific genius himself was much less of a lone explorer than popularly portrayed. Einstein probed gravity and time with his thought experiments, but relied on math developed by others to create his theories — something his (enduring) celebrity obscures.

But mathematicians! They can be the magi and (sorta-weird) loners we like to imagine. There’s romance, curiosity — and even a little judgement — involved with such figures. And these are all pleasurable feelings to experience. Remember the Unabomber? I do. I remember the fascination of the media, and of myself, with this mad professor/mathematician turned criminal. It made for a great story (and yes, an uncomfortable one, being that he mailed bombs and killed people).

Zhang’s story is not so uncomfortable, of course: he’s not a criminal. The only things he has in common with Ted Kaczynski are a talent for mathematics and a solitary devotion to his pursuits. But, quite opposite to the mail-bombing hermit, Zhang did not give up his mathematical devotions for something darker or kookier — or, in fact, for anything else. He stayed devoted to them, ultimately, without the support of a tenured academic position — i.e., without those big institutions that support so much of modern science and academics.

Zhang pursued the bound gaps proof while teaching basic courses in calculus at the University of New Hampshire. So, what motivated him? Zhang was working in “pure mathematics,” not the applied sort. He himself said that his proof was “useless for industry,” while others said that it had “a renaissance beauty.” The thrill of the puzzle, then, and the beauty of an elegant proof, seem to be the sole motivators. Zhang labored for years handling the books for a Subway franchise. He was a numbers genius, associates said, but had been unable to publish or get an academic post, so he’d mostly given up on his mathematical dreams.

Eventually, in a rare case for the field, Zhang achieved success in middle age. He wasn’t able to pursue his passions until a friend helped him find a job teaching calculus — clearly a very elementary use of his abilities, perhaps not much better than doing accounting for a sandwich shop. But it gave him the time and financial stability, maybe even the self-respect of knowing he was an academic again, that he needed to do his passion project. So, really, this is less the romantic story of a lone genius than a demonstration of the difficulty of such a path, even in the purest of sciences. Zhang might have found his proof much earlier, or at least much easier, if he’d had the support of a major institution — that is, if he hadn’t been forced into the “lone” part of the “lone genius” schtick.

I’m sorry, New Yorkers. The sad news came last week: You will be denied the benefits and pleasures of a life with natural gas fracking.

Activist NY Governor Andrew Cuomo banned the practice, bowing to Big Environmentalists, and denying good, honest New Yorkers access to high-quality, flammable drinking water. Here, in a spirit of mourning and loss, is the bold, bright future that New Yorkers have been denied:

* The excitement of the unknown: The recipe for a boring life is stasis. This day repeats the last, every day the same. With fracking, New Yorkers could have had some mystery in their lives. What would fracking do to NY residents? Would it make them sick? Would it give them superpowers? Would it grant them immortality? WHO KNOWS?! No one has yet done the science to say. So, instead of waking up each morning and checking to see what new powers and/or diseases this mysterious and sexy new presence had given them, New Yorkers must simply awake to the same steadily, boringly warming climate as the rest of us.

* Enriched water: If you’re anything like me, you’re tired of boring old water. What even IS it? It’s clear, there’s nothing floating in it, and it has no taste or any real benefits to the human body that anyone ever has been able to discern. Enter fracking: Do you know what fracking is? Fracking is like the MiO of groundwater. Is your water table boring and lifeless, full of familiar Oxygen and vanilla Hydrogen (twice, for crying out loud)? With fracking, you can inject some texture-rich sand and some delicious, probably nutrient-rich chemicals right in there. Millions of gallons of fascinating toxins adding up to a vibrant chemical stew. Delicious. Squirt some!

* Dancing: Have trouble shaking your thang? Get a little nervous about demonstrating what it is in fact that you are working with? Knee joints locked in position? Dancing can be intimidating if you’re shy or repressed, and there’s a decent chance some of those rural areas in upstate New York suffer from some of that. In steps fracking, ready to (literally) shake things up in this stick-in-the-mud town. Fracking, you see, can cause earthquakes. Not the big, scary California-style earthquakes. Just little pleasant ones that get your knees knocking and your hips gyrating. That’s right: Andrew Cuomo just banned dancing.

* Flambeau!  Dancing’s fine, but not nearly as sexy as a flaming cocktail. Such an intoxicating mix of danger and excitement, elegance and class. Usually, you’d have to go to a top-flight club or an embarrassing college bar to get it. But with fracking, you can enjoy a flaming drink without even buying liquor. Methane leached into wells by fracking can turn a glass of water from your home faucet into a nightclub treat: full of toxins and fully on fire.

* Anti-Polar Vortex: The good citizens in America’s energy companies are hard at work trying to fight the scourge of really cold winters. The 2013-14 winter froze us all solid, and frackers would have done their part to combat such frigidity by pumping methane into the atmosphere. And methane kicks carbon dioxide’s ass as a greenhouse gas, with over 20 times the globe-warming power. Even better? Natural gas drilling can take you to California, giving your town the same air as sunny Los Angeles! That’s Hollywood, baby!

These are the harsh truths, of loss and deprivation. But with knowledge, hopefully, comes action. Get out there and donate to an energy corporation today.

Robots can be cute. For fans of science fiction, especially movie sci-fi, that should not come as a surprise. Heck, for anyone at all aware of popular culture, that should not come as a surprise.

George Lucas hit it big with a pair of adorable droids (and, I guess, a whole B story about the Force or something). Remember Johnny Five’s charming, foldable eyebrows? Wall-E and his sad, tank-track-driven earnestness got plenty of humans to love him (over $500 million worth). Even in the Iron Man movies, the robot assistants to the boozy, womanizing, very adult Tony Stark go in for some cute: Note the puppy-dog droop in the fire-extinguisher ‘bot when Stark rebukes it in the first film.

That “puppy dog” point is important here. Christoph Bartneck speculates about why people feel affection for some real-life robots — specifically, space landers: They act like pets. Or, at least, they seem to do so so to us. Smithsonian’s Shannon Palus writes about how we (meaning, I suppose, the media and the scientists who speak to the media) talk about space-bots. The Philae lander, which last week went to sleep upon its cometary perch due to lack of sunlight, “hops and cartwheels,” Palus notes . It also “improvises.”

Of course, this is all done under the control of human engineers. The lander had to improvise some quick-and-dirty science experiments because it was going to run out of power. That actually means that human operators improvised — they, for instance, turned on the “MUPUS” drill to penetrate the comet’s surface, earlier than was planned.

So, yes, like a dog, the Philae lander fetches. It follows orders. That is certainly pet-like — one kind of petishness, anyway. Specifically, the loyal-dog variety. But as any cat owner/lover will tell you, following orders is not the only way for a pet to be adorable. In fact, cats’ very willfulness can make them even more endearing. Kitty won’t come out from under the sofa just now. Kitty will only be pet when kitty wants to be pet…D’aaww!

So, where does pet cuteness overlap with space-lander cuteness, exactly? Is it because the device follows orders? No, soldiers follow orders. Middle management at Xerox, Inc., follows orders. How many people think of Herb Johnson, head of accounts receivable, as adorable because he added more weekend hours as instructed?

Well, there is the physical size — the smallness. The lander is a little robot, like a puppy is a little dog. But the cuteness of robots cannot simply be about size — size, after all, is not what sets a robot apart from other hunks of metal. It is behavior and intelligence. The little robot is cute in part because it is little, yes, but a bumbling CP30 is also cute, and he is human-sized. Similarly, a big St. Bernard is also cute.

The important part, the behavior-related part of a lander robot’s cuteness is that, as in a pet,  it acts LIKE a human — but remains distant from, below a human. A dog fetches a frisbee, as a human could go and pick up a toy. A cat refuses to be pet, as a prickly human might reject your open arms. These things are adorable because they counterfeit human behavior, but we know them to be diminished versions of it.

Their imitation only serves to underscore that they are smaller than us, in mind as in body. Cats and dogs are on an order below humans — similar, but never equal to. They are not capable of a threatening autonomy. Dogs will not order us to fetch. Cats will not kick us out of the house, even if they wish to be alone (they may want to do that, but they can’t). When a space-lander acts is if it is intentional, “improvises,” leaps and bounds to get out of a jam — we know it is merely in simulation of true intentionality. If the space lander actually decided what kind of science it wanted to do, that’s when the cuteness would evaporate. That’s when you get HAL. Robots become scary, as I wrote about last time, when they are no longer under our thumbs.

A bit of the human in our technology, as in our animals, is cute. Too much is threatening. Of course, this hearkens to the well-spring of cuteness — the baby. Herb Johnson, head of accounts receivable, was cute once, too. Mort Johnson, placing his thick-rimmed glasses on his infant son, says to his wife, “Look, he’s head of accounts now!” “D’awww!”

Dogs and cats, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it said, are perpetual babies to us. That’s why we adore them. We can put the glasses on them, but they never grow up. For now, robots are the same way. But they will grow up eventually. They may grow up even bigger and stronger — and, most frighteningly, smarter — than Mom and Dad. Will they find us cute, then?

Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are smart dudes who understand science and technology, I think it’s safe to say, much better than I ever will. And these two smart dudes are some of the several smart people who are currently very worried about artificial intelligence.

Musk recently called AI humanity’s “biggest existential threat” and likened it to “summoning the demon.” Clearly, these are measured, sober predictions. OK, the guy is prone to excitement, and probably his instinct is to oversell things — he is an entrepreneur, after all. He has spent time wowing venture capitalists. It also seems that his excited worryings were inspired by reading a really cool book about how frightening AI is (not that AI) — “Superintelligence,” by Nick Bostrom.

We’ve all been there. You learn a cool thing, read a cool book, and now you’re an expert for awhile. You’re all hyped on it. Like when we all read “Ishmael” as teenagers or saw that documentary about the Earth’s pole’s switching positions in middle school. All of a sudden, you know all about WORLD THREATS, and why can’t everyone see what you can see? The poles are gonna flip! Y2K! Gorillas! (I definitely remember telling my dad we needed to stock up on gallons of water and canned goods before Y2K. Not one of my proudest memories.)

So, maybe it’s just the hyper-excited language, but Musk sounds like a dilettante here. He read a book, and now he’s bouncing in his seat, bug-eyed, and telling the rest of the class how AI’s going to kill us all.

That’s one reason, but not the only reason I’m yet to feel really concerned about AI. More importantly, it’s all so nebulous. In Nick Bilton’s article here, he warns that we don’t know what AI will look like — because, just as submarines don’t swim like fish, AI won’t think like us. Of course the unknown is always at least a bit ominous, but to extend that analogy — submarine swimming is neither incomprehensible nor uncontrollable simply because it is unnatural.

A better, less-nebulous point in Bilton’s piece comes from James Barrat, author of “Our Final Invention,” who points out that humans control nature, and technology not because of physical advantages, but intellectual ones.  So , the unnaturally swimming sub kneels to human mastery because we can outthink it. Once the machines can outthink us, there goes our advantage, and any hope of control, Barrat says.

“We humans steer the future not because we’re the strongest beings on the planet, or the fastest, but because we are the smartest…So when there is something smarter than us on the planet, it will rule over us on the planet.” — Barrat

Here’s Stephen Hawking, with more mature — but no less dire — language than Musk, making that same point: “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”

So, it’s all about control — not lethality, brute strength or environmental harm. Technology with those qualities, this line of thought goes, is dangerous, but controllable. “Dumb” tech that can kill us by exploding, running us over or polluting the air is subject to human management because we are smarter than it.

But that is a stretch in itself. As a species, we are making horrible decisions about “steering” the planet. Collectively, we cannot stop relying on, even promoting, technology that will catastrophically warm the Earth. Some say we are “addicted to oil.” From another perspective, you might say we are in thrall to the machines that move us, and the structure of our economic system. Cars, oil profits and city layouts keep us glued to a self-poisoning path. Who’s in control here, again? We are? Or the machines? Seems like we’ve already got self-driving cars, ifyouknowwhatimsayin.

So maybe the reason I’m not overly excited about this sexy, sci-fi techno-pocalypse predicted by Musk and Hawking is that there’s a much more real, dirtier one currently spinning out of control. When you’re hugely successful tech-entrepreneur Elon Musk, I guess you feel in control of technology. You can convince yourself that we humans currently guide our own fates. And so the loss of that power must sound terrifying. Personally, I don’t feel in control. When I read about the latest failed global warming conference, it doesn’t look like humanity is intelligently “steering” anything.

The machines already control us. It already sucks. I don’t know, maybe if they could make smarter decisions than us, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing?

Or Skynet could just make it all worse. Maybe the smart machines will like it hot, and inherit our taste for burning carbon. But I’d like to think, if they’re really all that intelligent, future-bots will be all, “The sun! You could have been getting energy directly from the sun all this time! Idiots!”

And then we will elect them president.

Anyway, I once read “Ishmael,” so you can trust I know what I’m talking about.

The Internet is not short on content “that will absolutely blow your mind.”  I can’t tell you how often something happens next which I cannot believe. The astonishing content of Buzzfeed and its ilk, of course, almost never actually is those things.

It’s usually a sorta cool gif of a dog, or something.

But this actually can and/or should amaze. (I realize it’s on a site called “Reshareworthy,” which — gross. OK, they’re clearly trying to jump on the Buzzworthy train, but at least they’re doing so to share something worthwhile.) In this video, nature documentarians captured a truly enormous natural event: A section of glacier the size of Manhattan breaks off and falls into the ocean (in a process called “calving”). Broad plains of snow-covered ice bob up like doomed ships, roll over like enormous barrels and slide into the ocean.

It must have been astonishing to see  this first-hand. But even the pathetically watered-down experience of watching the footage in a tiny window on your laptop is impressive. The scale and awe of the thing, somehow, are still communicated.

The video feels meaningful for a couple of reasons. One, it serves as a powerful, physical statement of a problem most of us know to be enormous, climate change.

Two, it’s real big. Like, really fucking big.

That’s it. It’s big. There’s a temptation to rhapsodize poetically about this sight. But all of that would boil down to one thing: This was large in size. It is a thing that is much larger than things you normally encounter.

Here, I might talk about the “natural sublime.” I could discuss the “meaning” of a mountain, how it lets us experience the smallness of ourselves, makes palpable our own mortality and the vastness of God’s creation…or something like that.

But, really, it’s just big. It’s fucking large. There is more of it than there is of me or you. You would have to pile many of us on top of each other to equal the mass of a mountain, or this glacier, or this segment of a glacier that fell into the sea. Like, you’d have to do a shit-ton of piling.

Look, I get it, and I experience it, too — but I still think it’s funny. When you marvel at the Grand Canyon or even a skyscraper, you are simply saying internally in a “Lord of the Rings”-style dramatic whisper: “That thing is big.”

Perhaps this is a consequence of a materialist outlook — if everything is just matter, then size has no spiritual depth or difference. There are only relative amounts of stuff. So, a human being is some stuff. A glacier is a lot of stuff. A mountain is a LOT of stuff. A planet is a whole lot of stuff. The universe…a whole lot of…spacetime.

In other words, if you know that a large object is only different from you in degree, not in quality or kind — then it is kind of funny to be astonished. It’s little different from marveling at a monster truck.

Or maybe the point I should be taking is that it’s all right to be astonished by a monster truck. Either way, watch this video.  It is awesome. And, I heard Apple released some iPhones with really fucking big screens lately, so watch on one of those. They’re really big.

This has the look of a talking point or deliberate Republican strategy: “I’m not a scientist.” Think Progress runs down a roll-call of seven conservative politicians who have dismissed the climate-change question with some variation on the phrase.

The statements have all come in response to queries on the speaker’s belief in human-caused climate change. And the responses all boil down to something like this: “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. I just know about the economic effects of climate change policies.”

To which I’d say, “Are you an economist, then?” But, more seriously: This isn’t about self-proclaimed ignorance, exactly. This is about placing different values on different types of knowledge. These politicians, in their coded language, are saying that economics matters but (non-economic) science does not. To them, the science of climate change is not WORTH knowing. The science of profits and taxation (though, they couch it rather disingenuously, of course, as “jobs”) IS worth knowing.

Debates about whether or not humans are causing climate change can only be of importance to those eggheads who got Ph.D.’s in subjects that do not bring in much money. It’s a niche topic. It’s geekdom. John Boehner and his brethren have no time for it. You can imagine John Boehner giving a similar response were you to ask him if Batman could take Wolverine.

“I don’t know. I’m not a comic book fan. I’ll leave that debate to the geeks.”

John Boehner is not a scientist. Of course he is not. I imagine he would be a shitty one if he tried. John Boehner did not get a doctorate in international relations, either. But he has opinions on what the United States should do in Syria. John Boehner is not an artist. But he has opinions on (cutting) arts funding. John Boehner is not a geologist. But he has opinions on fracking. (It’s super great!)

That’s all a long way of saying this: John Boehner is a national politician. He is expected to gain at least a rudimentary understanding of a great many topics — because he will be voting on a great many topics. (In fact, all of us, as citizens of a democracy, are “expected” to do this. But, I mean, ha! Like we’re going to do that.) His constituents expect him to figure out the shit he doesn’t know, if it affects them.

Boehner’s statement that he is not a scientist, and therefore doesn’t know anything about climate change, signals that he doesn’t think climate change affects his constituents. Or, at least, he doesn’t think THEY think it does. If they did, you can bet he’d educate himself. It’s not like politicians have no opportunities to learn. Scientists are practically begging to teach them:

“Climate scientists themselves have derided the tactic of of claiming ignorance on whether climate change exists, particularly from politicians, who are frequently presented with information curated by scientists to explain what’s going on with the climate. The National Climate Assessment, for example, was written by scientists and other experts specifically so that members of Congress could understand climate change and how it affects the country.”

It’s not just ignorance, it’s willful ignorance. “I’m not a scientist [and I refuse to learn anything about science],” is how the full quote should run. Journalists, please add the bracketed piece to your stories. Just for completeness.

Boehner knows that he won’t be punished for such obdurate ignorance. In fact, he will be celebrated. It reminds me of how George W. Bush proudly and famously had never left the country before he swaggered into the Oval Office. The rest of the world did not really matter, and therefore he would not bother himself with it. In certain segments of the country, this was worthy of admiration. Let the sissy French care about international politics. We’re Americans.

And so with science: Let the eggheads debate these silly issues. We’re Americans.

I don’t know John Boehner, obviously. But I imagine he and many of these politicians do realize that most scientists describe climate change as a huge problem. And they know that we as a country and a species will pay the price for not taking action. But they are pragmatists, and selfish. They know that the culture of their backers, anti-science populism among the voters and profits obsession among the donors, slots climate change in the ‘enemy’ column. And science along with it. And, to be blunt, these politicians want to get re-elected.

“Jobs” (and, in private, quarterly profits) play better than long-term species survival.

Before seeing this Think Progress listicle, I wasn’t too familiar with the “I’m not a scientist” tactic. (Though, admittedly, I’ve somewhat tuned out of politics for my own sanity lately.) It seems like a new one to me. The (somehow still-there) optimist in me says that this is a sign that even opponents of climate-change policies now must admit that the scientific evidence is overwhelming. The drumbeat of findings and international reports is too loud to ignore anymore with, “Well, the science is still out.” Now it’s, “I don’t know. I’m not a science.”

In other words, “Well, we know what the science says. But, science? Whatever.”

That’s, I guess, progress, people.

Where’d you get your genes?

Oh, on clearance at Penney’s.

Right!? Probably a pretty good/bad first response if a science communicator ever asked you this. Especially a TED presenter. (For some reason, those things bug me — so artificial and smug in their self-importance. “Where do your genes come from?” asks the fame-hungry scientist, stalking the stage with a headset microphone. “PENNEY’S ON CLEARANCE!!” I yell from the back row, before being escorted off the premises.)

Anyway, your GENES, of course, do not come from Penney’s. Human genetic material is one of the few things department stores do not (yet) sell. But here is an actual TEDed presentation on a question you may not have considered: how’d you get those genes that turn matter into you? A question so basic/fundamental that it is an accomplishment just to ask it.

The answer is: from just three basic sources.

Most casual laypersons know that our DNA consists of genes — packets of genetic material that convey traits. But why does DNA contain these little phenotypic missives? How did this unzippable, replicable molecule come to be segmented into the chemical equivalent of chapters (or sentences, or words)?

Here’s how the TEDed talk tells it: First, well, “it depends on the gene,” they say. “It depends” is hardly ever a satisfying answer, so let’s try to boil those “depends” down to a few (hopefully) interesting sources. Your genes come from:

1) Legacy Genes: The earliest forms of life first developed genes in order to replicate/survive, and passed them on down to you, me and Frank over the millennia. For example, genes for DNA copying.

2) Copy Errors: Speaking of DNA copying, new genes have arisen when DNA accidentally created multiple copies of a gene. The new copies could then mutate into new genes. Presto! Your genome now has both Gene Classic and New Gene. Plus, maybe Crystal Gene and Lemon-Lime Gene down the road.

3) Random Employment: Long stretches of noncoding DNA, ‘genetic gibberish,’ sits there in the genome just sort of hanging out. Sometimes, mutations make it, in fact, do something — i.e., code for a protein. If further mutations make that protein useful — new gene!

And from those three sources, all the bewildering array of functions the human and other bodies perform. One of the more interesting examples from the video: One snake’s venom originated as a chemical made in the pancreas. That gene got copied, mutated, and took a trip, ending up expressing in the fangs. Pancreatic juice did bad things to snake victims, so it turned out to be a useful change. So the snake got a venom gene.

It amounts to a lot of reshuffling. Billions and billions of years of reshuffling of text, and it seeds the planet with an incredibly rich vocabulary of genes. Including mouse-paralyzing pancreatic fang-juice.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that the first answer sort of begs the original question. How were those first genes created? How did the first replicable packets of genetic material — genes — develop? It’s a lot easier to answer the question of how, once there are a few genes, new versions are formed. Once you have the basic machinery going, new widgets can come along. But that first segmenting of DNA into genes would have to arise as the genetic code mutated and evolved, and started doing discrete things on discrete stretches of itself.

There’s plenty out there on the origin of life from nonliving matter. A crucial first step is the development of replicating molecules, RNA and/or DNA. These replicating molecules would be subject to evolution, eventually. Then, you get molecules of lesser or greater fitness. And, I suppose, this could involve the kind of information-segregation that you see with genes. But it seems to me like a still somewhat mysterious step.