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Ignorance
is Strength Let's consider the sex hormone estradiol in light of a huge anti-science campaign under way in our country. Hormones such as estradiol bind to complementary receptors in our bodies like keys in locks. Those receptors then activate specific genes that accomplish major things like making two sexes look different or countering the effects of stress. Did an intelligent designer produce hormone systems? When some people contemplate exquisitely complex systems like hormones and receptors, they conclude that evolution could not have produced such linkages, roll their eyes upward to some intelligent designer who must have engineered them, and quit asking questions. On the other hand, did evolution produce hormone systems? When scientists like Joe Thornton at the UO contemplate complex systems, they roll up their sleeves. Joe has spent years observing hormones and receptors in living organisms. He has run experiments. He has published his observations, so other scientists can repeat the experiments to see if they get the same or contradictory results, or can add to what he has learned. Joe's questions never end. Through this social process called science, Joe, his students, and other scientists are piecing together the mechanisms by which hormones and receptors developed at least 600 million years ago through natural, random processes (e.g., duplicating genes or mutations) and then spread through natural selection. The organism in which a receptor developed passed those genes on to succeeding generations, including us. A court trial is going on in Pennsylvania this week about the origin of complex systems like hormones and receptors. On one level, the trial is about whether the Dover Area School District is violating separation of church and state by requiring school administrators to read an intelligent design versus evolution statement to ninth grade biology students. At another level, this trial is the tip of an iceberg. Fundamentalists are disparaging science because they fear it challenges God's authority. Their attacks on science in turn feed the political right's attacks on uncomfortable scientific findings that challenge their authority. Mandatiing the promotion of intelligent design against evolution has the effect of reducing all science, not just evolutionary science, to a story no more worthy of trust than any other story about the world. It pulls the ground out from under us, because then evidence from that ground (or 600 million-year old ocean organisms, or anything else in the observable world) is "just one theory." If scientific evidence is just one story among many, the stories coming from authoritative televangelists or war-waging presidents are often far easier to understand and more seductive than complicated, still-incomplete scientific evidence. The right-wing's attack on science is exemplified by President Bush's flippant rejection of the Environmental Protection Agency's report that much of global warming is caused by emissions from automobiles, power plants, and oil refineries. "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy," Bush told reporters. He didn't say he read "the report put out by scientists." He purposefully referred to scientists as "the bureaucracy."
This year the Bush administration changed National Forest planning regulations to lift restraints on logging, mining, livestock ranching, roads and off-road vehicles in our national forests. One of the changes eliminated the requirement that national forest decisions must be "consistent with" the best available science. The new regulations allow the Forest Service to merely "take into account" (and then presumably ignore) best available science when permitting activities that may harm native wildlife, plants, and ecosystems on the forest. The Forest Service says they removed the requirement that decisions be consistent with science because "formal science is just one source of information." One might guess about this administration's other sources of information. These are not isolated examples. Science and scientists are being cut back or eliminated from the Endangered Species Act, all federal public lands management, ocean planning, federal websites, commissions, research institutions, and budgets. Key government scientific reports are being altered by political appointees. Once uncomfortable or inconvenient evidence from the observable world is absent or swept away, other sources of information — for instance, fundamentalist religious leaders; powerful industries, or end-time presidents — will have freer reign. As the dictatorial government proclaimed in George Orwell's novel, 1984, "Ignorance is strength." That government had it right: Our ignorance is authoritarian leaders' strength. Mary O'Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
Delicious
Ironies Happy first birthday, Blackberrians! I hope you spend it banefully bashing Bush's bad behavior. However, as a former nattering nabob of negativism myself, let me propose to you that there is a tiny silver lining around Katrina's penumbra. Yeah, yeah, I know many of you cynics out there are pointing out the obvious: • We were no more ready for disaster after 9/11 than before. • You better not be black and poor in a flood plain. • You probably shouldn't appoint political cronies to FEMA: The Washington Post reported that "[f]ive of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters." The top three officials — Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler — "arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation." • You should've bought stock in Halliburton. More than $500 million a day is being spent already, much of it on Iraq-style no-bid contracts, since normal federal contracting rules were "largely suspended" in the days following Katrina's landfall. "This is very painful," says Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government spending watchdog group. "You are likely to see the equivalent of war profiteering — disaster profiteering." • Joe Allbaugh made it to Louisiana before most FEMA officials. By Aug. 31, Allbaugh (the manager of the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign and the Bush administration's first FEMA director) was on the ground "helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm." • It only took Bush 11 days after Katrina to dump the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay workers the prevailing wages in their communities. So contractors that come in can pay minimum wage. • Even President Bush's cultural conservative base was rewarded. FEMA designated Pat Robertson's group Operation Blessing "as the No. 2 charity for donations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina," despite the fact that the group "gave more than half of its yearly allocation of cash donations, $885,000, to the Christian Broadcasting Network," according to its most recent tax filings. Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? But I think that one lesson, which writers from Molly Ivins to Paul Krugman have pointed out, is the most important one: Americans are slowly becoming aware that there's a reason for "government," there is a reason for the "commons," and it took a crisis to make that fact apparent. Remember the Great Depression? Our nation healed through the formation of large government projects like the WPA and the CCC, through Social Security, and ultimately Medicare and Medicaid. Big government wasn't all that bad then. It only became bad as a target of political and financial benefit to the wealthy.
So, as we watch Bush's botched response, and Halliburton's sleazy opportunism, think back to why you Blackberrians formed a year ago. Think about the Bushes, and the Sizemores, and their anti-government rants. Any jackass can kick down a barn; it takes a carpenter to build one. Blackberrians understood that when they formed to support good government. At its most basic, good government means adequate public services, whether it's public education, human services, public health, mental health, senior services, disability services, public roads, or, in this case, emergency management. So thank you, Blackberrians, for forming to protect the "commons." Keep an eye on the bad guys, but never forget it's the good guys like you who keep them from getting away with murder. Literally. Non illigitimati carborundum! The Cottage Grove Blackberry Pie Society is "dedicated to promoting good politics and great people in east Lane County, and having fun while doing it." The BPS celebrates its first birthday this month. Former state Sen. Tony Corcoran was instrumental in the creation of the first recipes and currently serves as chief taster. Contact blackberrypie@gmail.com or drop by the BPS office Mondays from 4 to 5:30 pm at the Cottage Grove Hotel.
World's
Greatest? Eugene is now officially "The World's Greatest City for the Arts and Outdoors." On Sept. 12, at the request of several arts and outdoors resident supporters, the Eugene City Council unanimously adopted as official motto of our city the slogan initially proposed a year ago by Robb Hankins, Eugene's cultural services director. Hankins, who starts this October on a new job in Ohio, arrived in Eugene in December 2003. As he set about to assess the city's strengths, he quickly singled out two of its prominent assets: an extraordinary artistic activity and beautiful outdoors. It was his stroke of genius to pair them to provide Eugene with a defining identity. Because it is simply true that Eugene stands out for its vitality in the performance and visual arts, and because it is indeed blessed with a lovely environment allowing for many varied outdoor activities, Hankins' campaign for Eugene to both view and represent itself as "the world's greatest city for the arts and outdoors" has resonated with many people. Communities, like people, sometimes require external affirmation to become aware and to come to believe in their own intrinsic value. So it was perhaps best that Hankins, holding such a validating mirror for us to view ourselves in, formulated his slogan in grandiose terms to jolt the city officials into better recognizing Eugene's combination of strengths. Yet once our collective awareness has been achieved, this superlative formulation may work against us. It may make us sound a little … well … unsophisticated. Because, whether accurate or not, the slogan sounds like an overstatement, those who do not know Eugene may well snort in derision or think it a joke, especially when it is misquoted as "greatest city of the arts and outdoors," as opposed to "for." We all have seen such self-aggrandizing ads on road sides, proclaiming that theirs is the greatest attraction in the world and we know exactly what to expect. Something mediocre or rather schlocky; these over-the-top superlatives suggest there is little behind the boast. So let us mature in our estimation of ourselves and grow in our self-confidence. We are truly a great city for the arts and the outdoors. When we feel strong enough about our identity and worth, we can leave the rest of the world out of it and call ourselves, firmly and simply: "Eugene, City for the Arts and Outdoors." Because we are. And we may feel great pride and pleasure in this. We are lucky indeed, and should continue to work hard to make our community ever more a city for the arts and outdoors. Sylvie Pedersen is a Eugene free-lance arts writer.
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