“Hiccups, hernias and hemorrhoids are all caused by an imperfect transfer of anatomical technology from our fish ancestors.”–biology professor Marlene Zuk in The New York Times (1/20/09)

Don’t let’s go there. We all have our instinctual phobias and obsessions, a fear of sharp-beaked shadows, or a scarcely controllable urge to upgrade that in-home lap pool, again.

Maybe I should have paid more attention before clicking “accept,” but I can never remember whether to stream downloads sequentially or fluvially. No excuses, but I was a botany major. And anyway, anatomical transfer was not part of the core curriculum at my school. It was just assumed that you were comfortable with it, that members of a certain socioeconomic class could discern piscine from avian. What more can I say? I was a scholarship kid, and I winged it.

But hey, really, I have no regrets. I have progressed farther than my parents ever dreamed possible. Like my behaviorist says, individual evolution is not a mad dash to the finish line. It’s a process. You want to have the sense to make a lateral move, if you catch my drift.

Nobody’s happy with the status quo. We all want to become someone or something else. We are all struggling to leave the primordial ooze, but only some of us have the lungs for it–only some of us have the ambition to truly succeed, to shout out to the world, “I am part halibut and proud of it!”

I admit that I am still working on that. Problem is, after twenty-three hours at the office, going flat out the whole time, there’s only so much memory left in my limbic forebrain [hic]. It’s a strain; I won’t deny it. I start to doubt my ability to migrate anatomically. A self-defeating thought, I know, but just the type of self-defeating thought that can swell painfully, that can burn, and itch . . . and, well, you know what I mean.

We all have failings. The difference is that I’m trying not to bust a gut over it. The people who are already there will tell you it’s easy, but I know better: gene transfer and gene expression are two different things entirely. I mean, look at Dick Cheney. OK, yes, he does reveal a certain squat, predatory glee, but that is merely a superficial resemblance to an anglerfish, a trait that might inspire a playground nickname, but no more. What you see is what he’s got.

And then there are the overachievers, like my ex, Felicia. When we met, she was a nobody, hopelessly mono-specific. Now she tells everyone who’ll listen that there are only three degrees of separation between herself, personally, and a race of riverine dolphins–and a scant four to Michelle Obama.

Tell you the truth, I miss Felicia. We had this post-mammalian attraction going big-time. I mean, I really thought the relationship had legs. And then I come home one day totally parched and she says no, she’s moved on, she needs someone with vision, someone who can see eye to eye with her, another panopticon and not some binocular loser like me.

After the initial shock wore off (me, binocular?), I understood that her argument didn’t hold water. Felicia has this way of moving when she knows you’re watching, a slippery sort of grace I thought only I was susceptible to. But, as it turns out, others were watching just as closely, and one of them got a hook in her.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of belief. I believe I am becoming more adaptive every minute of every day. Sometime in the not too distant future, I will find true love, achieve neutral buoyancy, and sleep with my eyes open. Better that than to tell myself I’m destined to a life of synchronous diaphragmatic flutter and peritoneal rupture. Some beliefs are a prop, others a truss.

- Hand me the abortion elixir.

- But – but Master, it has yet to finish bubbling.

- What in the Darwin?! Here, hold another burning Bible below it. It usually
takes three or four.

- But why can’t we use these perfectly suitable adult stem cells? I have an
entire briefcase right here.

- Because if we cure these diseases, then we’ll be out of business for good!
That’s why!

- I’m so glad you have no common sense.

- Yes, I am extremely arrogant. I refuse to accept anything not in a textbook.

- Dolly Almighty, did you see this fax? It’s from Hollywood. A rush order for
three thousand more designer baby arms!

- Well, this is certainly the first time I’ve supported the right to bare arms!

- Oh, Master!

- Thanks for inviting me to this science sex party.

- You’re so funny. You are my sex slave that I cloned from stem cells.

- What?! That can’t be true.

- Look at your feet. You are still standing in the petri dish.

- I’m a – I’m a clone? How did you –

- I needed but a single human hair, just like in Superman IV. Movies are
completely accurate portrayals of modern science.

- Why would you do this to me?

- Because I am a scientist and it is my job to hurt people.

- This water from the Playboy Grotto – it isn’t getting me wet.

- That’s because I made you water-resistant, so you could never be baptized!
How’s that for intelligent design!

- You scientific bastard!

- We have a situation.

- What is it?

- Well, when we were growing the soulless babies for spare parts–

- Yes?

- …

- Out with it, damn it!

- Well, we found something – something science can’t explain.

- Destroy it. Destroy it, immediately.

- But Professor Luciferre –

- Immediately.

One of the most prominent environmental risk factors described for numerous diseases is chronic exposure to stressful situations. – “Chronic stress and individual vulnerability,” Schmidt MV, Sterlemann V, Müller MB, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, December 2008, 1148, 174-183.

Is it really true that autoimmune diseases become more active in response to stress? There are a handful of related but distinct faulty causal inferences about stress and illness in much of the literature on autoimmune disorders. From work on stressful life events and multiple sclerosis relapse (footnote 1), to reports of stress-related onset and exacerbations of Graves disease (footnote 2), negative weighting of major life events and lupus symptomatology (footnote 3), and psychological factors in sarcoidosis (footnote 4) , medical researchers conflate correlation with causation. The possible logical errors underlying this pervasive tendency are not mutually exclusive, and can be categorized as: (1) reverse causality, (2) factual and thus deterministic accounts of patient history, and (3) endogeneity bias.

First, it is well-established – if it ever needed positivist-style data compilation and analysis to be accepted as fact – that being sick is stressful (footnote 5). Getting a chronic illness diagnosed and treated takes time and money, and is not something most people would choose to have done for fun on the weekends – weekend after weekend, year after year. At the same time, it is also well-established that being stressed out can make you sick in the sense of making you more vulnerable to colds, flu, and running your car into the mailbox (footnote 6). Type A personalities are notoriously more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes (footnote 7). Clearly the causal arrow can flow both ways when it comes to stress and illness. This means that, while reverse causality may be a significant problem in the literature on stress and autoimmune diseases, the error is actually one of indeterminacy. We just don’t know which way the arrow flows in general for autoimmune disorders, or how much it flows each way, or which comes first – the freaked-out chicken, or its seriously scrambled egg.

An easier error to call out definitively is that of deterministic patient history bias. “Factual framings produce searches for deterministic ‘what made it happen’ accounts of the past, whereas counterfactual framings produce searches for antideterministic accounts that keep pushing back the last possible moment when something else could have happened” (footnote 8). People crave meaning – making meaning is fundamentally what human beings do, be it through art, science, law, religion, or cookies – and we especially crave stories that make everything make sense. As a result of this drive to tell a coherent life story, nobody tells his or her own patient history with counterfactuals. (Okay, nobody who hasn’t got a book deal.) When we are down, perhaps we are more likely to attribute our downness to previous bouts of downness, so that the trend is coherent and logical. Rather than allowing for random error – admitting that we exist by an accident of fate, a lucky roll of the universal dice – perhaps we weave meaning by telling stories in which one life tragedy (major stressors such as crime, divorce, or relocation) causes another (illness). This is the Grand Unifying Theory of Self. It’s simplistic and linear. It’s comforting and comprehensible in a way that random error spelling life or death – to most people – is not. Alternately, maybe doctors themselves have a tendency to project doomed, deterministic histories onto the patients with diagnoses that are particularly difficult to identify and treat – to wit, folks with relatively rare and apparently multi-system, chronic illnesses such as MS, lupus, Graves, sarcoidosis, and the rest of the autoimmune gang. Maybe doctors as well as patients can fall prey to the very human need to make sense of the senseless, to order random error, and ultimately to find someone to blame, just to feel better.

A more obvious error still in the “stress causes autoimmunity” spiel is endogeneity bias (footnote 9). Among people with a family history of autoimmune illnesses, as well as among females, ethnic minorities, and poor people, there is generally more autoimmune illness. There is also more stress in these subgroups, because caring for sick family members is a form of unpaid labor that no society known to man compensates for (footnote 10). It is also notoriously stressful to not have a penis, to not be white, and to not have oodles of cash. Lo and behold, healthy people tend to hit the jackpot and people who hit the jackpot tend to be healthy (and then, if covariance is a valid way of drawing causal inferences, they all go out and buy a penis). I guess the world is a meritocracy after all. Quick, somebody tell all the toddlers in sub-Saharan African dying of diarrheal disease.

In conclusion, it’s certainly true that particular aspects of certain autoimmune diseases are associated with mental health problems like anxiety and depression. Iron-deficiency anemia in lupus, poor sleep quality in Graves disease, and impaired breathing in sarcoidosis are only a few examples of this. But in these instances, poor mental health is a direct effect of poor physical health. Subsequent spiraling via feedback loops tells us nothing about the etiology of autoimmunity as a potentially life-threatening disease process. Rather, it distracts medical care practitioners and social support systems alike when it is misinterpreted to suggest that illness is a choice.

Further research might seek to answer the medical anthropological questions of how this victim-blaming set of logical errors has come to permeate the rheumatology literature. Is it a result of patients with autoimmune diseases narrating histories in which their previous tragedies and/or recent changes in mental state caused or correlated with their illness patterns – and well-meaning, empathetic doctors simply listening well and believing them (footnote 11)? Or are there more nefarious forces at work here – are doctors and medical researchers following the herd mentality, exhibiting societal biases against women (who are far more likely than men to suffer autoimmunity), against minorities (who are more likely than Caucasians to have most autoimmune problems (footnote 12)), and against poor people (who are more likely to suffer from chronic health problems in general (footnote 13))? One thing is for sure: When it comes to the supposed causal relationship between psychological state and autoimmune flares, the only solid proof is all in their heads.

Footnotes:

1. “The impact of stressful life events on risk of relapse in women with multiple sclerosis: a prospective study,” Mitsonis CI, Zervas IM, Mitropoulos PA, Dimopoulos NP, Soldatos CR, Potagas CM, and Sfegos CA, European Psychiatry, Oct. 2008, 23 (7) 497-504.

2. “Psychosomatic concept of hyperthyroidism – Graves type – behavioral and biochemical characteristics,” Draganiæ-Gajiæ S, Leciæ-Tosevski D, Svrakiæ D, Paunovic VR, Cvejiæ V, and Cloninger R, Med Pregl., Jul-Aug 2008, 61 (7-8) 383-388; “Age and stress as determinants of the severity of hyperthyroidism caused by Graves’ disease in newly diagnosed patients,” Vos X, Smit N, Endert E, Brosschot J, Tijssen J, Wiersinga W, European Journal of Endocrinology, Oct. 30, 2008 (Epub ahead of print, accessed via PubMed); “A patient with stress-related onset and exacerbations of Graves disease,” Vita R, Lapa D, Vita G, Trimarchi F, Benvenga S, Nat. Clin. Pract. Endocrinol. Metab., Jan. 2009, 5 (1) 55-61.

3. “The role of stress in functional disability among women with systemic lupus erythematosus: a prospective study,” Da Costa D, Dobkin PL, Pinard L, Fortin PR, Danoff DS, Esdaile JM, and Clarke AE, Arthritis Care & Research, June 2001 12 (2) 112-119; “Stress, depression, and anxiety predict average symptom severity and daily symptom fluctuation in systemic lupus erythematosus,” Adams Jr. SG, Dammers PM, Saia TL, Brantley PJ, and Gaydos GR, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, July 2005, 17 (5) 459-477.

4. “Psychological factors in sarcoidosis: the relationship between life stress and pulmonary function,” Klonoff EA, Leinhenz ME, Sarcoidosis, September 1993, 10 (2) 118-124.

5. See, for, example: “Psychological Effects of Chronic Disease,” C Eiser, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Dec. 2006, 31 (1) 85-98; and “Toward a general model of health-related quality of life,” Romney DM and Evans DR, Quality of Life Research, December 2004, 5 (2) 235-241. To be fair, the second article “suggests that, although a medical model of HRQOL [health-related quality of life] may be more important when it comes to alleviating illness, a psychosocial model of HRQOL may be more important when it comes to maintaining health and preventing illness.”

6. By which I mean in no way to suggest that there is anything wrong with people who run into the mailbox, honey.

7. As genetics hurtles forward, however, even this au courant theory – commonly accepted as fact – may soon be disproven by the advancement of alternate explanations. For example, the recently discovered MYBPC3 variant is said to cause latent or active heart disease in tens of millions of Indians. If Indians are also disproportionately represented in human capital-intensive fields that require so-called Type A characteristics (like intelligence and organizational skills), then already the Type A story of heart disease has been thrown into question.

8. “Counterfactual Thought Experiments,” Tetlock PE and Parker G, in Unmaking the West: “What-if?” Scenarios that Rewrite World History, Tetlock PE, Lebow RN, and Parker G, Ed., citing Philip E. Tetlock and Richard Ned Lebow, “Poking Counterfactual Holes in Covering Laws: Cognitive Styles and Historical Reasoning,” American Political Science Review 95 (2001): 829-43.

9. Endogeneity bias is a logical flaw that pops up in a lot of social scientific and scientific research when the thing being studied has multiple characteristics of interest. For example, if you wanted to know whether gun ownership increased individual citizens’ chances of being murdered, and you studied victims of domestic violence who bought a gun because their partners had threatened to kill them, your research would suffer from a serious endogeneity bias. Your research subjects would be more likely to be murdered by their partners or former partners who had already threatened to do so, and so you wouldn’t be able to tell how their gun ownership affected their likelihood of getting killed as compared to the general population’s murder risk. In my current context of interest, endogeneity bias is at work when people who are already likelier to be operating under stressful conditions – say, African-American women caring for disabled family members while struggling to gain equal pay – are also found to be more likely to develop lupus than WASPy types whose healthy families have worked for the firm of Fancy, Schmancy & Hung for decades. Stress and lupus correlate in certain subgroups, and they may well covary; but those facts establish no causal relationship between the two variables.

10. And by man, I mean one ignorant American writer. If you are a country, and you will pay me to stay home researching my friends’ and family’s illnesses, call me.

11. I’m playing devil’s advocate here. For a few readers, I played it too well – I am emphatically not saying that sick people tend to blame their life histories for their illnesses. Personally, I think it’s obvious that medical researchers who engage in the blame-the-victim error of suggesting that maladaptive psychology causes autoimmunity are defending themselves from their own subconscious guilt at being healthy when others, by the luck of the draw, are not. Them’s sore winners.

12. But oh, what a tangled web we weave! Non-whites have higher rates of autoimmune diseases like lupus, but being racially discriminated against is in turn associated with having health problems. “It’s enough to make you sick: the impact of racism on the health of Aboriginal Australians,” Larson A, Gillies M, Howard PJ, Coffin J, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, August 2007, 31(4):322-9.

13. Poverty also correlates with increased exposures to environmental contaminants, decreased access to clean water and to safe and nutritious food, less preventive medical care, and other phenomena that translate into chronic disease. Since women and non-whites are also disproportionately likely to experience poverty, covariance is a problem six ways from Sunday.

(From Terry talks, November 22, 2008)

All lives, no matter where they are lived, have equal value. Yet access to life-saving drugs is most often limited to those who can pay for them. Also, treatments for many tropical diseases are either unavailable or are increasingly ineffective, with toxic side effects to boot. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (ubc-uaem.org) is a student organization dedicated to fixing this broken system.

We work by changing how universities set their technology licensing priorities and their research agendas. At UBC, we’ve persuaded administration to publicly adopt a set of Global Access Principles (www.uilo.ubc.ca/global.asp) that are a first-in-Canada, courageous start to making medicines available to everyone regardless of their income. But we can do more. With the help of UBC students, we want to reach every faculty member whose research can benefit the world’s poor. We want to expand UAEM to all major research universities in Canada. We must also ensure that UBC stays true to its commitments.

I’ll talk about strategies for getting this done, give insights into the drug development process and the bizarre world of intellectual property (fun stuff!) and highlight the contributions UAEM has made at UBC – encapsulated by the story of a new drug developed right here – oral Amphotericin B. This drug will treat the disfiguring and lethal disease leishmaniasis that affects tens of millions of people around the globe, and is free of the toxic side effects of previous formulations of the drug. Oral Amp B will be developed and made available at cost to people in low and middle income countries. UBC students will see how a great idea (universities changing access to drugs through licensing agreements) combined with dedicated student activism creates real change in the world.

And lo, it came to be that God was sitting around in his Lazy-God recliner one quiet millennium, and He sayeth unto His Godlike self: “God is bored and needs some entertainment.” And lo, God created the Earth and all it’s inhabitants without getting up from the Lazy-God chair, even whence God needed the occasional short beer break while working, still He did not leave His chair, but simply reached into His Almighty Demi-God Fridge which He always keepeth beside the Lazy-God chair.

Late in the week, as one Godlike afternoon twinkled into evening, God looketh down upon His new entertainment system called Earth and He smiled at the little animals and plants that He created. He giggled at their natural tendency toward intra- and inter-species violence, and He snickered with slight embarrassment at their obsessive mating rituals. After a few more Godweiser’s from the Demi-Fridge, God decided to make a man. Much later, God realized that He should have done this before His eighth beer of the evening.

And lo, God created mankind, and womankind, and He did smile upon them and snicker in slight embarrassment at their obsessive mating rituals. Soon, in God-time that is, God realized that this mankind He had created was getting quite good at thinking on its own, and was getting rather uppity and rude with God. This mankind seemed to enjoy flaunting God’s arbitrary rules, and so God, in His infinite kindness tried all kinds of subtle punitive measures: like banishing the first man-family into the desert, or drowning everyone on Earth except for one man-family. After such measures did not stem the tide of mankind’s uppity-ness, God decided that He would use His infinite powers to hide Himself from man’s view.

And so God created the shroud of evolution. Yes, God, who valued truth and the love of mankind above all else, created an elaborate lie in order distance Himself from His most clever creations. Much later, God realized, He probably should have created a therapist and some anti-anxiety drugs for Himself.

And lo, God, who had created all the world in only six days, had created mankind on the fifth or sixth day (He could never remember which, because eight beers is a lot, even for God). After this great achievement God decided to devise elaborate falsehoods to hide His accomplishments. He made man think the Earth was over 4 billion years old, instead of several thousand years old. He made man think that life had started with the smallest of organisms, and that through an elaborate system of controlled reproductive errors and adaptive selection of beneficial mistakes that man eventually “evolved” from these simplest organisms. He hid fake fossils in the ground, and tinkered with genomes, and designed elaborate taxonomic relationships among the existing organisms such that mankind would take years and years to elucidate all His lies. He bought a small desk at the God-ware store and put it next to His Lazy-God chair, spending night after God-night sweating over the elaborate lies upon lies that He needed to create to keep mankind fooled. As man became more sophisticated and invented tools and high cost scientific apparatus, so God needed to become more sophisticated in His lies. Soon, God was spending the bulk of His time on His elaborate fabrications, and ignoring His own real first interests: truth and love.

Some men and women really made God’s head hurt. These humans, who called themselves scientists, made God’s life a living Hell. Here He was, a supreme being of love and truth, who commanded all mankind to seek perfection in love and truth, and He had to stay up late almost every bloody night of the week, and most weekends, fabricating increasingly elaborate lies to keep these so-called scientists thinking that He did not exist and that the Earth and all its living beings came about via a slow, semi-random process they called “evolution”. These two conflicting ideologies, love and truth versus elaborately constructed falsehoods, swirled around in God’s giant brain causing Him much guilt and consternation, not to mention loss of sleep. And then one day the matter and anti-matter of God’s brain simply collided, and God’s head exploded.

The matter and anti-matter of God’s exploding head shot outward at terrific speeds on that fateful day, fourteen billion years ago, and in a matter of mere moments created billions of galaxies each filled with billions upon billions of stars. Remnants of this big bang are visible today with the telescopes and other scientific tools the current inhabitants of Earth have designed. About ten billion years after this big bang, some of the exploded contents of God’s head cooled enough to form planets, such as the one we call “Earth”. Life evolved on Earth, and likely has evolved on other planets, because God simply cannot be still, even in exploded form.

Some of the bits of God’s exploded head contained memory-bytes of the dilemma that caused God’s head to explode in the first place, and these memory-bytes sometimes haunt the subconscious of the most highly intellectually evolved Earth organisms, such as dolphins and even humans. These thought-dreams of God’s memory both confuse and comfort the beings that are sensitive to them. And so it came to be that God was everywhere, in every atom, in every subatomic particle, exploded across the Universe in a gigantic irrepressible splatter of life, and love, and truth, and even and always: conflict.

(Originally published January 19th, 2006)

Q: What is the principle evidence for Creationism?
A: The Holy Bible, of course. After all, is it likely that the author of the Universe would be mistaken about its age?

Q: But isn’t the Bible religion and not science?
A: Truth is truth. It’s a poor sort of science that ignores truth.

Q: But isn’t there a lot of evidence for evolution?
A: Not really, most of it is from university professors writing papers for each other. If they didn’t write papers they wouldn’t have jobs.

Q: How big was Noah’s ark?
A: Big enough.

Q: But what about radioactive dating?
A: Hey, everybody knows that stuff is bad for you. Stick with good Christian girls.

Q: What about the fossil evidence?
A: The real fossils are university professors writing papers for each other.

Q: Is there any other evidence for creationism besides the Bible?
A: Yes.

Q: Can you give us some?
A: Yes.

Q: Could you give us a specific example?
A: Yes.

Q: What would be a specific example of evidence for Creationism?
A: I’ve already answered that question.

Q: What about the Antarctic ice core data?
A: Now I put it to you. Coop up a bunch of men in a Quonset hut in the worst weather in the world, with nothing to do but gather data and drink, and what do you expect?

Q: Did the dinosaurs coexist with man?
A: Look, the liberals were preaching coexistence with the Communists, and you saw what happened to them.

Q: Should Creationism be taught along with Evolution in the schools?
A: Creationism should be taught instead of Evolution in the schools.

Q: Doesn’t the Geologic Column prove that the Earth is very old?
A: The geologic column proves that some things are on top of other things and some things are underneath other things. But we already knew that, didn’t we.

Q: Hasn’t evolution been demonstrated in the Laboratory?
A: Students are demonstrating everywhere these days. To their shame, many professors are demonstrating also.

Q: Aren’t Hawiian wallabies an example of Evolution in action?
A: No.

Q: Why not?
A: Because they aren’t.

Q: What is a kind?
A: A kind is cards of the same rank. Thus 4 aces and a king are four of a kind, but four spades and a heart are not.

Q: Doesn’t genetic variation indicate that life has been going on a long time?
A: Let’s be up front about this. That’s deviation, not variation, and yes, there is a lot of deviancy out there. That just shows that there has been a lot of Sin since the garden of Eden.

Q: What about Neanderthal Man?
A: Hey, you take one of those geezers and put him in tweeds and give him a pipe and he could be a professor anywhere.

Q: Some scientists state that the earth’s continents are drifting around on top of a molten interior which has shaped life as we see it now. Are they right?
A: As you well know the Bible says that beneath the surface of the earth is Hell where there is eternal fires and brimstone. If the continents appear to be moving around that is Satan’s doing.

Q: Why do almost all of the scientists believe in Evolution?
A: The real scientists don’t. As for the rest of them, that’s a very good question, isn’t it?

Q: Are you talking about a Satanic conspiracy?
A: Did I say anything about a conspiracy? You might want to think about the shape the world is in since the Evolutionists and the Liberal Humanists captured academia and how Evolution is hand in hand with Godless Communism and crime in the streets but I certainly wouldn’t want to say anything about a Satanic conspiracy. I just want you to think about it with an open mind.

(Originally published August 8th, 2005)

Samson shivered in the early morning chill, jingling the chain joining his collar and leash. The sun was a big orange food bowl hanging low on the horizon, bathing the neighborhood in its warm glow. Most of the residents were still in bed at this hour, but a few dotted the sidewalks with their best friends in tow. Samson led his best friend a few blocks to the park. It was the first Sunday of the month, which meant Pug Day. Many breeds of dogs came to the park, but the overwhelming majority today would be Pugs, the flat, wrinkled-face Mopshond breed to which Samson belonged. Samson sniffed familiar scents in the air, pine, Kentucky bluegrass, poop, and Starbucks. He also sensed something else.

Instead of a few Pugs running around in circles, all kinds of dogs were sitting at the far end of the park looking up at a poster tacked to the big oak tree.

“What’s going on?” Samson asked an Australian Sheep Dog named Caruthers.

“Sammy haven’t you heard,” Caruthers replied, “Dogwin’s completed his treatise. It was published this morning in the Canine Times.” Caruthers cocked his head to one side.

Dogwin lived in London but his reputation traveled the world. He was an accomplished researcher. He could sit for hours observing small animals without chasing them. Among other things, it was Dogwin who convinced the canine world that they were descended from wolves. Now, after years of research, the revered Beagle had published his theory on the descent of dog, the mechanism governing the evolution of Canis familiaris.

“A detailed elaboration of Natural Selection no doubt,” Samson said.

Dogma held that mutations caused variation among the population. Those dogs with variation best fitting the environment would survive in greater numbers to procreate and pass on their genetic material. It was widely expected that Dogwin’s treatise would provide the scientific underpinnings for Natural Selection, explaining the specifics of how it worked.

“No, that’s the thing,” Caruthers was panting now, “Dogwin has completely split with dogma. He says dogs didn’t evolve by Natural Selection at all.”

“What then, dog?” Samson asked wide-eyed.

“He says we were designed, Sammy. A process called Artificial Selection.”

“Artificial? That’s preposterous. Who was it supposedly designed us?” Samson growled.

Caruthers looked up at Sammy’s best friend. “Him.”

“Master Johnson?” Sammy snorted.

“Not Johnson. Mankind. The whole bipedal bunch of them.”

“It’s a sacrilege, I say. Ain’t no barking about Intelligent Design going to shake my faith in Natural Selection.”

“But Sammy, Dogwin’s got the evidence,” Caruthers said. “Not only that, he says the designers are decidedly unintelligent.” Sammy bared his teeth and flattened his ears against his head.

“See for yourself,” Caruthers said

Sammy bolted from Master Johnson who had struck up a conversation with the best friend of a cute toy poodle bitch who lived nearby. Sammy sniffed her and made a mental note to hump her when he got back. He pushed his way through the scrum of dogs and read the poster.

“Do you honestly believe the Canis familiaris breeds here today survived because they were the fittest?” Dogwin asked. Sammy shook his head vigorously in the affirmative. “Hardly,” the old Beagle continued. “We wouldn’t last a month on the outside.” Sammy lifted his leg and peed on the oak tree, partly in defiance and partly because he really had to go.

After Sammy finished Dogwin went on: “Sheep dogs would be unemployed on the outside. German Shorthair Pointers would starve to death in that silly stance of theirs without their gun-toting best friends by their sides.” Sammy had to admit that something was awry in the Natural Selection process for some breeds. But he wasn’t a Pointer. Unfortunately, Dogwin was also famous for his thoroughness.

“And the Pug,” the Beagle said. “The royal best friends in China bred them to be companions they could pamper and spoil, a genetic expectation the Pug retains to this day.” Sammy reluctantly agreed with this latter part. “But owing to its short snout and lack of skeletal brow it easily puntures its eyeballs. It has breathing problems, eating problems, and overheating problems. It’s prone to skin infections. It can’t swim or go out in the cold.” Sammy’s eyes hurt; he was sweating, and he felt short of breath. “It loves to eat and hates to exercise. In short,” Dogwin concluded, “the Pug can’t survive long outside its best friend’s lap.”

The blinders fell from Sammy’s bulging eyes like so many contact lenses and he saw the raw, terrible truth. He pushed his way out of the scrum of freakish creations and rushed to Master Johnson’s lap. As the unintelligent designer rubbed his fat tummy, Samson settled serenely into his new existential disgust. The ridiculously coiffed Poodle bitch barked in his direction but Sammy turned away. He didn’t feel much like humping.

(Originally published December 11th, 2006)

Charlie wears broken glasses held together with tape and toothpicks. He is unemployed and occupies a one-bedroom apartment in Westchester, California, a half-mile northeast of LAX. Charlie eats in his car. His 1991 Nissan Stanza is a mausoleum of fast food, Frito Lay and Little Debbie wrappers. When Charlie was in the sixth grade, some of his classmates took to calling him “blubber butt.” Although the nickname didn’t stick, he has not quite gotten over it.

Limulus is a distant relative of the sea spider and one of the oldest creatures in the ocean. These spiders were among the first creatures to move from surf to sand, where they adapted and flourished. Before birds took to the air and mammals roamed the earth, there was Limulus. The dinosaurs came and went, and Limulus remained, the last of its kind, its way of life unchanged. It is estimated Limulus has not altered its appearance in 200 million years.

Charlie is grossly overweight. He loves canned nacho cheese slathered over tortilla chips. He can eat peanuts and pistachios by the pound. Drive Thru signs appear before him like blazing neon visitations from heaven. Sometimes he shows concern for his appearance, but most of the time he does not. Every so often he will discover he can no longer fit into a favorite pair of pants, and he will become agitated. Charlie has tried dieting, but he is easily discouraged. He is not weak, but his weaknesses are profound. After a night of spicy food, Charlie dreams he is a platform diver, his body fit and firm, his skin the color of a copper penny.

Limulus is a descendent of the Eurypterida, an order of sea scorpions that thrived in freshwater swamps and estuaries 400 million years ago. Some of these sea scorpions were over six feet long. Today, the Eurypterida are extinct.

Charlie’s parents, Martin and Miriam Kronk, were high school sweethearts in Cold Hamper, Wisconsin, and were married after they graduated from Hiawatha High in 1956. When Charlie was born he weighed nine pounds, seven ounces. He went to the University of Michigan where he studied engineering. The aerospace boom brought him to California. He had plans to interview with Boeing and TRW, but Raytheon hired him after his first interview. He was assigned to the laser-guided weapons systems division, where he remained for over twenty years. Fifty-five days ago, he was laid off. They gave him a cardboard box and sixty minutes to clear out. A senior project manager took his key on the elevator ride down to the parking structure, and then waited for him outside the gate to collect his access card. Charlie has not talked to either one of his parents—now divorced—in two years, ten months and eight days. He cannot say why this is so.

The shell has three parts: shield, abdomen, tail. At the end of the tail is a rather nasty-looking triangular telson with serrated edges. It is said if a beachgoer steps on this appendage, he will be poisoned and die. This, of course, is complete rubbish. Despite his monstrous appearance, Limulus is quite harmless.

Charlie has sported a crew cut for the better part of thirty years. He gets his hair cut every other Wednesday by a barber named Stan at a place called The Mane Attraction. He chose, and continues to choose, Wednesdays for this appointment because there are very few barbershop-closing-worthy holidays that fall on a Wednesday. When Stan’s mother died, the shop was closed for three weeks straight, and Charlie became so upset he went home and gouged deep grooves in his kitchen table with a steak knife. Charlie broke down and went to another barber, a Pakistani fellow who covered Charlie with scented powder and offered to give him a shoulder massage. Charlie declined, because he hates Arabs. He calls them camel jockeys, towel heads, goat ropers. He has always used these words, and no one at Raytheon ever complained until the new project manager, Ahmed Farquar, started sending e-mails to Corporate.

Limulus often falls while trying to climb over and onto things he has no business scaling. His poor balance is compensated by the telson, which is how he flips himself over when he finds himself on his back, so to speak, spidery legs wriggling wildly in the current. He simply plunges the spike into the sand and rights himself, like Bela Lugosi rising from a coffin.

Charlie has not had a sex partner in five years, four months and counting. His last girlfriend was a chubby Hawaiian woman named Melanie who cooked enormous meals for him. She prepared steaming bowls of saimin with chicken, green onions, fried wontons. He loved the slow-cooked pork she seasoned with butterfish and served in sour-smelling taro leaves. On Sundays she cooked all day long. The fridge was always stocked with leftover rice, macaroni salad, fried Spam, Jell-O. She was homesick all the time and eventually went back to the islands. He told her he’d tried to wrangle a transfer, but this was a lie. He did no such thing.

What does Limulus look like under all that armor? It’s not pretty. At the head are two small appendages he uses for grasping. Next are four pairs of clawed legs. These legs are spiny and are located near his mouth. The legs propel him forward but they also act as jaws. Limulus rousts food out of the sand, secures the morsel with its graspers, and grinds it up into bite-sized pieces that he sucks up into his orifice like a vacuum cleaner. His diet consists of mollusks and worms. He is very fond of the bristle worm, a creature that uses its pronged, venom-filled proboscis to paralyze its prey. Limulus circumvents the bristle worm’s defenses by dropping on it like a dome over a serving platter, and ripping it to pieces with his toothy legs.

Charlie scours the personal ads looking for lusty ladies he will never have the courage to call. The letters “SAF” torment him. After an hour of this, he is back in his sputtering Stanza, headed for Secret Garden Video. Japanese schoolgirls, Thai nurses, Korean B&D. This is what he needs. He races home, his spoils in a blood-red plastic bag on the passenger seat. He lights up the living room with the dull glare of poorly lit pornography from the other side of the ocean. After he has pleasured himself, he rummages through his kitchen cabinets, looking for something to eat.

Limulus does not venture out during the day. He buries himself in the sand and rests. Sometimes he rustles about for tasty-looking bivalves. When night falls on his undersea burrow, Limulus emerges from his lair. Rearing himself up on his spike, he bursts upward into the water, paddles furiously, and plummets to the bottom once more. In this manner, Limulus proceeds in leapfrog fashion. Swim. Sink. Swim. Sink. Ad infinitum.

This is how Charlie was fired: after the weekly status meeting in the Nike conference room, his supervisor, Chuck, told him to “hang on a minute,” and asked the last man out to shut the door behind him. Chuck wore cologne. His fingernails were impossibly clean. “We’re eliminating your position.” Chuck waited for Charlie to say something. Charlie waited for Chuck to continue. Chuck launched into a prepared speech. Charlie could scarcely hear what Chuck was saying. His paycheck was already on the table. The air conditioner roared like a DC-10 in terminal distress.

The female lays her eggs in early summer. As she swims toward the beach, a male grasps her tail, yet another suitor seizes the male’s tail, and so on, forming a chain of horseshoe crabs hitching a ride to shore.

Charlie blames Ahmed for his dismissal. He was the one who got all the credit for the asymptotic arrays Charlie had worked on all summer. He was the one who landed Charlie in sensitivity training after complaining about his “unprofessional language.” He was the one stinking up the lunchroom with that rancid donkey meat he ate.

She digs a pit in the sand near the high water mark and lays her eggs. The eggs are tiny, no bigger than a grain of sand. Limulus does not possess a copulatory organ; he must climb atop the female and release his payload into the sandy pit of eggs. When the female finishes, she moves on, and her males follow.

In the middle of April, Charlie goes to Rite Aid and buys cards for Mother’s Day, both his parents’ birthdays (May 12 and June 2) and Father’s Day. He sits in his Stanza and signs the cards while wolfing down a bacon double cheeseburger with mayonnaise and jalapenos. He does not compose a message. He drives to the 24-hour post office by the airport and sends the cards on their way.

Abandoned by their parents, the little eggs are devoured by minnows and gobbled up by sea birds. Breezes blow the eggs about the beach. Within a few days, the hard outer shells burst open, revealing a clear shell through which the creature can be seen. In a matter of weeks, the crabs hatch and catch a ride out to sea on the tides where they are preyed upon by clamworms and calico crabs. Those who instinctively burrow into the sandy bottoms survive.

The summer of Charlie’s thirteenth birthday, he joined the swim team at the local recreation center. His excessive girth made him buoyant, but not fast. The warm-up laps exhausted him, and by the middle of practice he would cheat by touching the bottom with his feet. There was a three-hour gap between the end of practice and the completion of his mother’s shift at the local library. It was during one of these lazy summer afternoons that Charlie asked Stephanie, a Samoan girl, if she would like to “go see a movie sometime.” Stephanie was the biggest girl on the swim team, but she was not as big as Charlie, and she declined his invitation. Humiliated, Charlie went to the boy’s locker room and trashed the place. A few days later, Charlie was kicked off the squad. He told his parents he’d quit. They didn’t push him for an explanation.

When Limulus grows too big for his shell, the shield splits open and he escapes through the fissure. He hides in the sand until a new shell hardens. The horseshoe crabs one encounters on the beaches are not dead crabs, but discarded shells. Filled with seawater and sand, they acquire a corpselike appearance.

Charlie sits in a diner, looking for a mate. He composes a personal ad that reads “Mature SWM grasshopper seeks SAF sensei for companionship and marriage. Enjoys walks on the beach and a nice bottle of wine. Age not important.” Charlie reads the ad over and over again. He is pleased with his effort. He puts the ad in an envelope with his check and mails it. Who is he kidding? He doesn’t know the first thing about wine, and he hasn’t been to the beach since the layoff and he wandered down to Dockweiler Beach in El Segundo and freaked out in the surf. He gets in his car and drives to the beach. It is a beautiful day and he is truly fat. There is no other way to put it. He feels like a cancer, a blubber butt. It is a long walk to the water, but he makes it. The waves rise up to greet him. The collapsing crescendos fall apart with formulaic precision. He imagines the slope of the beach, the height and velocity of the waves. The smallish swells crash, burble, and hiss. He marvels at the way the sunlight makes the crests of the waves transparent for a split second before they disintegrate. In spite of his sandy socks and soggy shoes, the rash that is beginning to rise, he is glad to be here. He thinks of his personal ad as a message in a bottle, and he a castaway. Hope in a bottle. There’s poetry in that. He finds a horseshoe crab on the beach and kicks it over. A dozen flies rise into the air as one, and remind Charlie that he is hungry, famished even.

Limulus is content, his complacency is eternal. He feels no urges, no compulsions. He is not driven by desire. All he wants is a soft patch of sand and a bristle worm or two. Alone, he patrols the seafloor, a stubborn refugee gliding along the gloomy bottoms, safe and sound in his suit of armor, too timid to take chances on new ways of living in the world.

(Originally published January 20th, 2006)

I am writing you with much concern after I read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design to be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming to long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

P.S. I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget. Remember, we are all His creatures.

(Originally published June 20th, 2005)

A retelling of Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District,with apologies to Ernest L. Thayer

The outlook wasn’t brilliant ‘neath that Pennsylvania sky:
The courts stood N to zip before the new case here to try.
Creationism in the schools had died a legal death,
And now as Rothschild rose, Gishville IDers held their breath.

The Pandas text was soon invoked in early draft. The I-
D faithful clung to dogma calling evolution lie.
They thought, “If only Behe could shore up this house of sand –
We’d get it in the classroom yet, with Behe on the stand.”

But Gillen followed Rothschild; dated arguments began
As he flogged old scarlet herrings, even citing Piltdown Man.
All denial of religious motivation by the board
Rang hollow, clearly false, and one clear plaintiff’s point was scored.

And Dembski, worthy Dembski, so long slated to appear
Sent regrets, apologies, and just a subtle hint of fear.
So upon Intelligent Design, grim melancholy sat;
For there seemed but little chance of Behe getting to the bat.

The process followed process, and the plaintiffs volleyed first.
So much evidence producing, that it seemed the court might burst.
And when the dust had lifted, from the science firm and fit,
there was little doubt that Dover’s board had really stepped in it.

Then from a couple throats or so there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through Seattle, damning Darwin straight to Hell;
It burned through all its funding and still more it did demand,
For Behe, Michael Behe, was advancing to the stand.

There was ease in Behe’s manner stepping into Behe’s place;
there was pride in Behe’s beatific smile on Behe’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly stroked his beard,
no Creationist alive could doubt ’twas Behe science feared.

Two dozen eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with glee.
One dozen tongues applauded as he stood for proud ID.
While plaintiff’s writhing lawyers nearly fainted lest they slip,
defiance flashed in Behe’s eye, a sneer curled Behe’s lip.

And now the diabolic question hurtled through the air,
And Behe stood to face it, armed with haughty tone and stare.
Close by the sturdy Judge a major point unheeded sped –
“What data, where?” said Behe. “Strike one!” observers said.

From IDers, watching closely, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the bombing of a clinic or a pornographic store.
“Kill him! Kill the lawyer!” sputtered someone red and blue,
And it’s likely they’d have burned him back in fourteen-eighty-two.

With a smile of Christian certainty, great Behe held his spot.
“The immune system did not evolve; did not, did not, did not!”
He signaled to the lawyer, and once more the question flew,
But Behe still ignored it, and reporters wrote, “Strike two!”

“God!” cried the ID zealots, and an echo answered “God!”
With such confidence in Behe that they rallied to applaud.
But they saw his face grow deathly pale, his bold ideas strain,
And they knew that Behe couldn’t sidestep this one yet again.

The sneer has fled from Behe’s lip, the teeth are clenched in spite.
He claims, with desperation, that his claims are clear and right.
But there the evidence is stacked, in research piled high,
And thus the spell is broken — had it all escaped his eye?

Oh, the court’s opinion’s filed in legal writing clear and straight.
And humanity rejoices in a truth inviolate.
Sound science is upheld, and some believers start to doubt,
And there is no joy in Gishville — mighty ID has struck out.

(Originally published October 6th, 2006)