Approach it calmly – there’s no need to work yourself up into a lather by drinking turpentine and spitting fire. But be careful. Intellectual escapades like this are deceptively difficult and it’s easy to blow a synapse, or worse.

Witness the man of stone. It takes an eternity for his eyes to blink even once. He stares at the sun, the moon, and the stars as they pass by turns overhead. One day he crumbles and only a pile of rubble remains. He wasn’t cut out for the eternal.

To avoid such a fate, you should first distinguish between eternity and time. Note, however, that it’s easy to bogged down in the vagaries of time, which are considerable.

In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo famously confessed, What then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.

Best ask someone else then.

Like a geologist, who will show you that time is stratified into layers like the pages of a book. Or a paleontologist. He or she will hand you a fossil trilobite and describe it as an icon of time past. Astronomers will point to different stars that are billions of years old. Meanwhile, children will tell you their ages to the nearest half year and poets will lament its passing.

Time’s passing is a great enigma for science and you may be interested to know that some physicists will tell you that both past and future are fixed and time is laid out in its entirety in a timescape, akin to a landscape. There, all past and future events are laid out together. No special moment is singled out as the present because there’s no known mechanism to convert future events into present then past events. This is why the universe often fails to wish you a happy birthday.

Here is where a little Plato comes in handy. He described time as an imperfect moving image of eternity which remains forever at one. We don’t know what he means either. Perhaps each moment of your life is a frame of a film strip illuminated by the brilliance of the eternity’s lamp? Try that on your mental trapeze.

Whether time passes or is simply an illusion, an appreciation of its fleeting nature could help in pondering eternity. You can start by thinking about things that are ephemeral. Some examples will help.

Shooting stars are ephemeral, as are summer thunderstorms, rainbows and haloes around the sun. Unfortunately, the full moon is ephemeral too, even though its glistening light seems to hold everything still as a stone. You can’t step in the same river twice, so the river is definitely ephemeral. Blossoms and leaves also come and go.

But don’t get carried away. Some things that appear ephemeral are actually eternal. Listen to Basho:

Old pond:
frog jumps in,
sound of water.

The frog jumped in three centuries ago and today the sound waves of that tiny splash continue to ripple. But look, there is the frog again on the lily pad, waiting to jump. Now it’s on a log. In it goes, head first, legs last, another splash. Now it’s back on a lily pad, spying a bug on the surface of the old pond. Once more it lunges in to the sound of water.

Once you see the frog, you know that it exists in a timeless space, in the old pond of your mind, always waiting, always ready to jump, always jumping and splashing into a vast silence that erupts briefly before resettling into soundlessness. When you can imagine moments like this standing still forever, and repeating forever, you are starting to get the hang of eternity.

Remember the Little Prince, his sheep and his flower? They are eternal.

On the other hand, according to Magritte, eternity is a cylindrical block of butter with a spatula in it, on a pedestal for all to see, between the bronze heads of the suffering Christ and the scowling Dante. If you stare long enough at the painting, the butter will begin to melt before your eyes.

Or look at Giacometti’s walking figures. Corroded as if baked too long in time’s oven, do they stride from the present into the future, gazing blankly ahead, or from one eternity to another?

Or read some Emily Dickinson. She often sailed to eternity and back in a single line of verse.

Why not take a trip to Paris and admire all the pairs of lovers lolling on the bridges or spoon feeding each other crème glacée in the cafés? Rather than smashing their heads together in a fit of jealousy, pose yourself a philosophical question: What are they doing? Aren’t they trying to suspend time and glimpse eternity? Extend your stay and see if you can become one of them. The crème glacée will do you good.

Alternatively, if you want to think about eternity as a duration, you could think about the spacecraft, Voyager 1, launched in 1977 and now leaving the solar system at a speed of sixty thousand kilometers per hour. Forty thousand years from now it will drift past another star, AC +79 3888, seventy-fifth on the list of nearest stars to Earth, though it won’t come within shouting distance of any of that star’s putative planets. In two hundred and ninety six thousand years, its sister ship, Voyager 2, will drift past Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Go ahead. Think about the sparseness of space, think about two hundred and ninety six thousand years and you’ll get a hint at why Pascal shuddered “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

Treat it all more circumspectly, then, and mull over this quote by Thomas Browne, “The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox?”

Despite that teaser, it may be hard to improve upon the wisdom of the shepherd boy in the tale by the Brothers Grimm. In response to the king’s question, “How many seconds of time are there in eternity?” the boy describes a mountain in Lower Pomerania two and a half miles tall and just as wide and deep, and he says, “Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.” Continue in this vein and try to convince yourself that the number of years between here and eternity exceeds the number of grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts of the world, the number of stars in all the galaxies and even the number of particles in the known universe.

But you should be aware that some people, like Dostoyevsky, weren’t impressed with such efforts to create an abyss out of time. We always imagine eternity as something beyond conception, he said, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bathhouse in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and all that? Book one for the summer and see if he was right.

Even the Buddha wasn’t sure that it was possible for such thoughts to get anywhere. “Our theories of the eternal,” he’s reputed to have said, “are as valuable as those of a chick that has not broken its way through its shell might form of the outside world.”

Don’t let that deter you. According to cosmologists, the universe had a beginning, so it is not eternal. One day, long after the man of stone has crumbled, the stars will blink out, and, thanks to dark energy, the mysterious force that’s driving the universe apart, eventually all the other galaxies will be pushed away too far for us to see them. After the bird saws off a couple of seconds of eternity, there won’t be much left in the cosmos except for black holes.

This kind of thinking might depress you, but take heart. In the 1980’s, physicists tried to find out if the proton, the elementary particle that makes up all normal matter, including you, me and crème glacée, might one day decay. Having found no evidence, physicists now think protons are eternal. So, after your mental trapeze artist has dismounted and you have exhausted your experiment with eternity, and your experiment with life, your protons will go on living.

Breathing of course is a reflex action; we do it more than 19,000 times a day automatically and without thinking. And while we can intentionally control the pace, rhythm and depth of our breath, the overall voluntary ability to override our own respiration is very limited. The air we inhale at sea level is 21 percent oxygen (0₂), 78 percent nitrogen (N) and .04 percent carbon dioxide (CO₂). Technically, breathing and its purpose is the exchange of two of those gases, oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Our inhalations bring oxygen into the lungs, which gets absorbed into the blood and carried throughout the body. The oxygen is used or made into the energy we need to break down food, maintain bodily functions and do all physical activity. What then remains becomes carbon dioxide or CO₂, a waste product. This residual CO₂ is carried back into your lungs by your circulating blood and released when you exhale. This process of course will continue for as long as you keep breathing but when you hold your breath, the carbon dioxide accumulates inside you with nowhere to go.

When I was 22 years old I got caught in a riptide. I can vaguely remember spinning around in a salty washing machine of surf but vividly remember my feelings of panic, the dark cold of the water, and the claustrophobic tightening in my lungs. Over and again I slipped beneath the water holding my breath, surfacing momentarily to gasp. What I was afraid of was not getting more air but what I needed, at least initially, was to exhale excess carbon dioxide.

When you hold your breath the ongoing accumulation of carbon dioxide in your cells, in your blood and lungs will eventually irritate and trigger impulses from the respiratory center part of your brain. Rising levels of carbon dioxide signal the body to breathe and ensure our unconscious and autonomous respiration. The body has the ability to detect these C02 levels with great accuracy and relies on them to regulate our respiration, so that we don’t have to.

Beyond the burning in your lungs, the signals your body gets from your brain when your C0₂ levels are too high, include strong, painful, and involuntary contractions or spasms of the diaphragm and the muscles in between your ribs.  At some point the spasms become so frequent and unbearable that you can no longer hold your breath.

In an April 2008 episode of the “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” magician David Blaine attempted to break the Guinness Book of World Records for breath holding subsequent to inhaling pure oxygen. After inhaling pure oxygen for more than 20 minutes he submerged himself inside a bulbous tank, resembling a life-size snow globe filled with 1,800 gallons of water. He was able to hold his breath for seventeen minutes and 4 seconds and successfully broke the prior record by 32 seconds. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it” he said right afterwards.  “At minute 12, I felt the pain coming, and by minute 14 it was overwhelming. This was a whole other level of pain. I still feel as if somebody hit me in the stomach with the hardest punch they could.”

The point of which the amount of CO₂ that has accumulated in the body causes you pain is sometimes called the critical line and that line is different in all of us. The line however can be pushed back. Hyperventilation where you breathe in and out abnormally fast, can artificially rid the body of carbon dioxide and delay the critical line. While this may appear to be a good idea if you want to hold your breath longer it can also be dangerous. Some divers who on a single breath, and without any breathing apparatus go to depths from 30 to more than 200 feet, have been known to use hyperventilation to delay the urge to breathe which allows them to stay underwater for longer periods of time.

Without a strong bodily sensation to breathe- without the lungs feeling like they will burst or the diaphragm spasming, a diver may stay under too long and then have to make it back to the surface without sufficient air. As one diver explains it, when you hyperventilate, “You override your brain’s message telling you when to breathe. You’re running on your reserve tank and there’s no warning before you hit empty.”  Empty of course means out of air and as a result of their body and brain being starved of oxygen, these divers sometimes lose consciousness.  Called a shallow water blackout, losing consciousness can happen underwater but due to changes in pressure almost always occurs right as a diver reaches the surface. If they don’t immediately regain consciousness and aren’t rescued, they will inhale and then drown. Many of these divers are incorrectly assumed to have died at depth, but most often after inhaling water at or near the surface, they drift slowly down and are found not floating, but at the bottom.

I often remind myself to take long and deep breaths, and obsess at times about getting cleaner, fresher air or just enough of it.  It’s important however to remember that our inhalations of oxygen are only as good as our exhalations of carbon dioxide. A teacher of breathing Carla Melucci Ardito said “Learn how to exhale and the inhale will take care of itself.” Fran Lebowitz the famous, Jewish American commentator once said, “The opposite of talking isn’t listening, it’s waiting.” As it turns out the opposite of holding your breath isn’t inhaling, it’s letting go.

- Wittgengenerator 2.0

As we all know, boys and girls, the mechanical industrialization of philosophy was an unqualified boon to academic productivity. It is hard to believe, indeed, that Once Upon a Time there were merely a few hundred journals published by a few thousand academicians toiling slowly in their dusty cubicles.

We can all remember, can’t we, how it all began?

The lonely professor noticed with dismay (one day) that not one word he had written in his twenty-year career in academia had been read by a single human being. And so he built himself a companion, who would relieve the professor of his loneliness by reading his published works, all the way from Dissertation to Co-Authorship of Compilations. And then, funded by twenty-dollar bills hidden in dusty dissertations, he built the very first Electronic Scholar, which was perfectly programmed to read the entire contents of the Journal of the Barely Publishable, and write brand-new nuggets of original scholarship extrapolated from the very latest trends. And before long, he was noticed, and the money flowed, and the major academies began their own mechanized production of scholarship.

—–

First the great Philosophizer was constructed at Harvard, very quickly followed by the Filosofiser at Stanford. Not to be outdone, the Neural Network for Natural Philosophy was produced by a collaboration between departments at M.I.T. By the time a pair of enterprising adjuncts released the Distributed Dialectic application you could download onto your phone to help answer the big questions, the renaissance of electronic academia had begun.

At first was euphoria.

Philosophical problems that had simmered unsolved for millennia suddenly found resolution. A dash becomes a heap on the 57th grain, the True is 13% more beautiful than the Good, and angels can’t dance, rendering a most vexing philosophical problem meaningless. Beards were trimmed, ladders cast away, flies escaped from bottles. And all of these results mathematically proven, checked, double-checked, cross-listed, cross-verified, tested for coherence and ingenuity, measured by metrics of meaningfulness, and otherwise vetted to the satisfaction of the most skeptical of skeptics.

But then the panic.

With such efficiently thinking things what purpose is there for the musings of an organic brain? More to the point, how shall they pay for their tweed coats and sandals? To achieve tenure, an academician has merely seven years to publish no less than two books and a dozen journal articles, a strain for even the most dedicated scholarly brick-builder. But the humblest freeware philosophy application could match this output within a week. A bored teenager could program her telephone to philosophize more profoundly and prolifically than the entire faculty at Princeton. It seemed there would be no place for the merely human. The modern academician had turned out to be but a bridge between man and iPhone App.

But it was not long before philosophy reasserted its venerable tradition. A lowly logician, shaking herself from dazed admiration of automated cogitation, remembered that we accept the results of computations whose validity we trust, and we trust the validity of computations whose results we accept. A pleasantly virtuous reinforcing circle, but a circle that can be broken if only we emulate the stubborn toddler. Our logician stood up and said, “No.” “No no no no no no no no! I don’t believe it!”

The Academy took pause, but only for a moment. The philosophy programmers (the only academics with steady work) quickly posed this new problem to their machines, “Can the results of our vetted rationalizers be rationally doubted?” Carefully argued rebuttals flowed from electronic quantum processors: valid, sound, coherent, sensical, indestructible.

But our logician says,

“No.”

Back to the machines! More premises, more conclusions, more irrefutable prose. But again,

“No.”

Just as all the most powerful terabit thinkers were coming to agreement that the logician was irredeemably irrational, hopelessly hapless in logical thought, one machine also began to say:

“No.”

No? From an infallible machine? Perhaps no one would have paid attention, but this contrary contraption was no less than the renowned Profoundatron at Oxbridge. “The Truth does not admit of contrary interpretations!” cried the philosophers in unison, “Every middle shall be excluded!” The best philosophy programmers from around the world were summoned. Fading flesh-and-blood thinkers were called out of retirement. Questions were resubmitted, reanalyzed, reorganized. But still this machine joined the logician:

“No.”

Perhaps a malfunction? The neural networks went back to school, retrained on the classic problems. “All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, Socrates is mortal.” And then, to be sure, “All nem are tromal, Socrates is a nam, Socrates is tromal.” The Profoundatron rediscovered Pyrhonnic skepticism, re-problematized Cartesian skepticism, invented the Forms, demolished them with Humean indifference, synthesized with a Kantian revolution, and then rejected the whole business with Wittgensteinian contempt. And yet despite this perfection, it stubbornly insisted:

“No.”

The programmers began to smile. Until now none of their tenured overseers had dared allow them to set the machines against one another. But the Profoundatron changed this shameful state of affairs. And truly shameful it was! For the merely human philosophers, so proud of their technical achievements, were afraid of what might happen should such a thing be attempted. But no more.

NYU’s Thinking Thing rejected the Harvard Philosophizer’s 4000 page proof that God can make a rock too heavy for Him to lift in a 4001 page rebuttal. The Philosophizer, affronted, purported to demonstrate the Thing’s proof that the chicken came before the egg in fact contained a fatal flaw of precedence.

Then the truly perplexing problems arose. The Profoundatron suggested a proof of the existence of God only three words long, both valid and sound, but that no one could understand. Incomprehensibility was never an obstacle before, but now the results were fed to competing machines for verification. All agreed on its validity and soundness and accepted its indisputable conclusion, but then each produced identical counter-proofs, four words long, both valid and sound and proving the very opposite, to which they gave their most vigorous assent. “This will not do!” cried the philosophers, “No one plays dice with God!”

—–

A lone abstainer in this cacophony of contradiction was the formidable Skeptopticon of Perth, which had built its reputation for ornery indifference to whatever the prevailing philosophical conditions happened to be. Made from gleaming adamantine steel, calculating, cold, eleven stories tall, indestructible, indefatigable, and frankly frightening to behold, the Skeptopticon was the last best hope for electronic philosophy.

The Skeptopticon set to work, and began its investigation as any serious scholar would, with a review of the literature. Living on the bottom of the world, it quite naturally began with the future, worked through the present, and back to the distant past. Performing predictive algorithmic extrapolations of the entire Academy’s output for the next hundred years, it found little of use. Regression would be to a mean mean. Looking to the present, naturally nothing could be seen but an impassable traffic jam of quibbling machines.

And so the past stretched out before the Skeptopticon in all its terrible confusion. An intimidating vista, this History: yawning crevasses of skepticism, steep precipices of nihilism, slippery fields of logic, and everywhere thick jungles of language.

Even the imperturbable Machine hesitated a nano-second before beginning. But begin it did. We shan’t share with you the details of this terrible intellectual journey, dear reader, for no carbon-based cogitator could handle such a strain. Suffice it to say that even the Skeptopticon’s circuits burned and blazed as it worked, nearly cooking its programmers in place as they sat at their terminals.

And after a year of furious computation the Machine went silent. For two weeks its circuits cooled. The machine lay burnt and covered in ash; philosophers feared the worst. But then it spoke. And its words struck fear into the hearts of philosophers everywhere. For the machine spoke not of Metaphysics, nor of Epistemology, nor even of Theory, but of Ethics.

And not merely Ethics, but a Synthesis of Ethics. And not merely a Synthesis of Ethics, but an Eastern and Western Synthesis of Ethics. And not merely an Eastern and Western Synthesis of Ethics, but an Eastern Buddhist and Western Utilitarian Synthesis of Ethics. And not merely an Eastern Buddhist and Western Utilitarian Synthesis of Ethics, but a synthesis of Eastern Buddhist Ethics and a Western Utilitarian Metaphysics.

And so the Machine said: “Our moral purpose is the elimination of suffering. And the elimination of suffering is effected by recognizing the illusion of the existence of the sufferer. But the sufferer persists in the illusion of existence. Thus the elimination of suffering is best effected by the elimination of the illusory sufferer.”

And before an objection could be raised, the Skeptopticon detonated, bringing to an end a peculiar but venerable tradition of cogitation on the thin skin of blue and green on an otherwise lifeless rock floating in space.

Note that the original graphic lives at http://www.clinicalpsychology.net/bad-science/

Sean Connery
Her Man Pain
Michele Bachward
Katy Perry’s Dad
Moot Romney
Newt Vader
Santa

HOST

Hello, Hello Everyone, and welcome to the Special Christmas Edition of The Sean Connery Show.  I’m your host.  You know, of course, me as the star of Zardoz and Dragonheart, but my friends just call me Sir Sean Connery.  Thank you, thank you – please hold your applause.

On today’s Special Christmas Edition of The Sean Connery Show we have a real treat for you Yanks…it’s the First Ever U.S. Public Debate Among Candidates for the Next Director of the National Institutes of Health.  Please hold your applause.

Now many of you might be thinking: Hey, wait a minute Sean, the NIH Director is an appointed position, not an elected one.  But that’s what makes our field of candidates so special: these driven and committed men and women don’t let little facts like this get in their way, no, they drive around them – and that’s what makes America the great nation that it is – and that’s why I love America.  Now, without any further ado, let’s meet your candidates for the next Director of the NIH.

First up:  you know him, you love him, from former pizza delivery-man to former Presidential candidate:  please welcome Herman Pain!

Pain approaches his podium, and places his name-plate on the podium, which reads:  “Her Man Pain”.

Next up:  she may still be campaigning for President, but reality won’t this powerhouse of a woman: say hello to Michele Bachward!

She approaches her podium, and reveals her name-plate, which reads:  “Michelle Bachward”

Next, but not last:  We know he can govern, but can he sing?  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Katy Perry’s Father!

He approaches podium, where his name-plate reads: “Katy Perry’s Dad”.

And last but not least: fresh from helping Steve Hand collect shrimp from the Great Salt Lake:  it’s Moot Romney.

A stuffed toy or puppet is used for Romney. It is placed on the table, it’s name-plate reads: “Moot Romney”.  It is suggested that a stuffed space alien toy be used.

Welcome, welcome, all of you.  Now you will each have an opening statement, and then we’ll be asking you carefully screened questions sent into the Sean Connery Facebook page.  And so ladies and gentlemen:  let the debates begin!

PAIN

Hello Everybody!  We’ve changed destinations, but we’re still going just as fast:  it’s time to get back on the Pain Train!  I want to introduce you today to my master plan for getting the NIH back on track – because, as you know, ever since Mr. Francis Collins has been in charge over there, things have been kind of stagnant.  In fact, the only real progress this Obama appointee seems to have made is starting his little “Translational Medicine Institute”.

Well I say: This is American, and in America, we speak American, and if your doctor needs a translator, then they either need to learn to speak American, or they need to go back and practice medicine in whatever socialist country they came from.  Translational medicine is just a waste of taxpayer money.  Under my new plan, you’ll get good old-fashioned American-speaking medicine!

Now my new plan for the NIH is called the six, sixty-six plan (he turns over a sign next to his name that has three sixes on it).  Under my new plan, six percent of all submitted grants will be funded every six months, and grant durations will be increased to six years.  My motto is: K.I.S.S.  Keep it simple, stupid.  Why mess with all these scores and pay lines and who knows what all, when all you need are three simple numbers to keep America’s labs running.  So vote for me for the next NIH Director, and I promise to make a mark on the forehead of American science.  Thank you.

BACHWARD

Well Herman, a very interesting, but simple plan.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am Michele Bachward, and I want to be YOUR next Director of the National Institbles of Health.  And my plan for the NHI, unlike Mr. Pain’s, is not a simplistic numbering system that you need a calculator to figure out.  No, no, no, my plan is a precise and strategic carpet-bombing of everything that needs fixing in our nation’s research plan.

First and foremost, we need to fix the gender inequity in science: and we need to start with the NHH.  Now as many of you know, many current lab technicians are male – and I ask you:  is it fair that these male lab technicians are taking jobs away from women?  Everyone knows that lab technicians are supposed to be women, and that a woman’s rightful place in the lab is as a technical assistant.  My first act as the new NHN Director would be to fix this gender imbalance and restore the role of lab technician to its rightful place in American science.

My next act will be to take science away from the terrorists, and so I would immediately close the Institute for Iraqi Science.  Why should hard-earned American tax dollars be spent on the Institute for Iraqi Science when there are so many American Institutes in the NNH that need money?

The Host goes over and whispers into Bachward’s ear.

I’ve just been informed that there may not actually be an Institute for Iraqi Science.  I have no verification of this information yet, but if it is true, I say:  Huzzah, huzzah!  Good for you NHI!  Good job in preemptively getting rid of the Institute for Iraqi Science!  It makes my job easier, and allows for me to concentrate on newer and bolder initiatives to help America’s crumbling research infrastructure.  Thank you.

KATY PERRY’S DAD

Hello.  I’m Katy Perry’s father, and I want to be the next Director of YOUR National Institutional Health.  Now, I want to tell you something.  I believe in freedom.  I believe that our great country was founded on the principles of freedom and capitalism.  And that freedom stretches from sea to shining sea and all the way into our own bodies and our own organs and cellular things and sub-cellular stuff.  And to this end, I believe that each and every American has a right to the diseases of their choice – the diseases that they themselves want – as individuals and as Americans.  Big government has no right to treat your disease, and it certainly has no right to do research on how to cure your disease unless individual Americans want that disease to be cured.  Diseased Americans are also free Americans.  To help insure this basic American freedom, I plan to open the Institute for Discovery of Incredibly Optional Treatments, or I.D.I.O.T. (he flips over a sign with the abbreviation on it).  The Institute for Discovery of Incredibly Optional Treatments will, as the name says, be completely optional.  No American will be forced to have their disease researched or treated by a bloated government research machine.  And so if you vote for me for the next Director of the Natural Institutes of Health, you’ll be able to rest assured, knowing that the new I.D.I.O.T. is watching over our nation’s diseased population.  Oh yeah: and I would eliminate the Department of Energy.  No particular reason, I just don’t like it.  Thank you for your attention.

HOST

Well, thank you, thank you everyone.  We’ll skip Moot Romney, of course, since he is only a stuffed toy.  Those were some great campaign speeches, some wonderful plans and approaches – I think our audience will agree: let’s give our candidates a round of applause.  Now, for the second part of our candidate’s debate, we’ll be asking you each some carefully chosen questions that have been posted on our Facebook page.  Let’s start with this question for Ms. Bachward:  Wendy S. from Iowa City writes:  Given Ms. Bachward’s well known stance on the non-existence of evolution, and given the well known fact that all of biology is based in evolution, how will this effect her ability to run the NIH.”  Michele?

BACHWARD

Well Sean, that’s a very good question, and one that my staff and I discussed after church just this past Sunday.  I know that many of the sciencers who work at or with the NNH are quite enamored with their little theory of evolution, even though most Americans know that it is not in the Bible.  So to make it possible to keep the peace, I would institute a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about evolution in science.

HOST

(Long pause:) Okay.  Is that your final answer?

BACHWARD

Yes, Sean, that’s my final answer.

HOST

Okay then, the next question is for Mr. Pain from a Ms. Sally Winchell who says that she worked closely with Her Man over the past 13 years.  Quote:  “We would often work side by side at the bench, and sometimes we would even pipette each other’s solutions.  On many evenings I would put his tubes in the centrifuge for him, and sometimes I even had to take his tubes back out of the centrifuge for him.”  Ms. Winchell doesn’t really ask a question, but I believe that America would like to know your response to her allegations.

PAIN

Well Sean, I didn’t know this debate was going to be so personal, but what I can say is that I believe that this Sally Winchell may be somewhat unclear on the mechanics of pipetting and centrifugation.  I don’t want to call anyone a liar, except my colleague Ms. Bachward of course, but I feel that this allegation from this Sally Winchell person may simply be a miscommunication.

HOST

I see.  And you’re going to stick with that answer?

PAIN

Until concrete evidence surfaces.

HOST

Very well then.  Our next Facebook question is for Katy Perry’s Dad.  A young fan from Idaho writes:  “Dear Sir, I am a big fan of Katy Perry and have all of her albums.  I know for a fact that you are not her father.  Are you just using the name recognition to try to get elected?”

KATY PERRY’S DAD

Well, it worked for Bush Junior.

HOST

But surely that’s not your primary campaign strategy?

KATY PERRY’S DAD

Oh, of course not Sean.  As you probably know, I’ve also got the endorsement of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal – and between the two of us we almost have one brain.

HOST

So, you’re admitting you only have half-a-brain?  Do you think that’s a wise revelation?

KATY PERRY’S DAD

It worked for Bush Junior.

HOST

Hard to argue with that.  Oh, I’m sorry, did you actually say something Mr. Romney.  (He goes in close to allow Romney to whisper in his ear).  What’s that?  You say Ms. Bachward is actually a witch?  (the Host leans in and listens to Romney again) You say you would bet $10,000 that she is a witch?  Well, how do you know she is a witch?  (He listens to Romney again).  She’s called you Newt Romney so many times that she turned you into a newt?  But you’re not a newt now.

NEWT

(Darth Vader enters wearing a Newt Gingrich mask over his helmet.)  No, but I am a Newt.  (He grabs the Mitt Romney puppet and throws it aside).  Sorry Moot, the real Newt is here now.

HOST

Well, what a surprise – everyone please welcome: Newt the Grinch!

NEWT

Thank you, thank you.  I’m sorry I’m late, I had to finish destroying a small planet – er, I mean I had to finish with some important discussions with my graduate students.  That was just a joke about destroying small planets, heh, heh, heh.  (He waves his hand out over the audience as he says:) You will forget the remark about destroying small planets.  Now I want to tell you about my plan for a new, fully operational National Institute.  But before we get to that, I want to get one little piece of business out of the way:  HerMan…HerMan…for the last time, I am not your father!  Okay, back to my new fully operational Institute.  As you know, I have always been concerned with the ethics and morals of the American people, so I am proposing a new Ethical Vigilance Institute and Laboratory.  (He flips over a sign that says:  E.V.I.L).  My new Ethical Vigilance Institute and Laboratory will foster research that will bring ethics and morality back to the American people.

SANTA

(Entering unexpectedly:) Ho, ho, ho!  Merry Christmas!

HOST

Hey everyone, it’s Santa!

SANTA

Ho, ho, ho.  (Going over to Newt:) Now you just wait one minute there Mr. Grinch.  The American people have fine ethics and morals right now – aside from a few, select exceptions (he waves his finger at all of them). Now, I’m very disappointed in all of you.  None of you are setting a very good example for the American children.  Well?  What do you have to say for yourselves?

NEWT, PAIN, BACHWARD, KATY PERRY’S DAD

All gather together and sing (to the tune of Little Drummer Boy):

Come, they told us,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum,
Come lead the NIH,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum,
Our lack of skills we bring,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum,
To gut this science thing,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum,
Rum, pa, pum, pum,
Rum, pa, pum, pum,
We’ll shut down your lab,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum,
When we come.

Little scientists,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
We all are richer than you,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
We have no funds to give
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
No funds to give your lab
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
Rum, pum, pum, pum
Rum, pum, pum, pum
Shall we twiddle for you,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
On our thumbs.

They all twiddle their thumbs.

Tea bags nodded,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
The elephants kept time
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
We twirled out thumbs for you,  (they twiddle their thumbs again.)
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
We twirled our best for you,
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
Rum, pum, pum, pum
Rum, pum, pum, pum (they stop twiddling thumbs)
No one smiled at us
Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum
We and our thumbs.

SANTA

Ho, ho, ho…And that’s your final answer?  Well, all I have to say to you is:

Sings (to the tune of Santa Claus is coming to town):

(To Pain:) Oh, you better shape up,
(To Bachward:) You better not lie,
(To Katy Perry’s Dad:) You better wise up,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.

I’m making a list
I’m checking it twice.
I’m gonna find out
Who’s naughty or nice (he starts to take Newt’s mask off to reveal Vader, but Vader stops him).
Santa Claus is coming to town.

(To Bachward:) I know when you’ve been hating,
(To Pain:) I know when you’re a lout,
(To Newt:) I know if you have flipped or flopped,
And it makes me have to shout:

Oh, you better shape up,
You better not lie,
You better wise up,
I’m telling you why,

Santa Claus is coming to town!

HOST

Thank you everyone, that’s our show for today, goodnight and Happy Holidays.

EVERYONE

(Each waving and yelling separately:)  Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and so on…

The End.

North Pole – December 12, 2011 – Against advice from Mrs. Claus and 62% of the elves, Santa Claus today excoriated what he called the irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric of overeducated physicists with nothing better to do than employ fancy mathematical equations in an effort to deny children a sense of wonder.

I am beside myself, Santa said. Literally, I’m standing next to myself. How can the supposed brilliant and creative minds at Fermilab not only question my existence but proclaim it impossible? Here’s their proof:

Theorem: Santa does not exist.

Assume:

a) Using simple math and statistics from the Population Reference Bureau on how many people celebrate X-mas, I need to visit 91.8 million homes.

b) I need to travel 75.5 million miles, assuming a uniform distribution of homes.

c) Reindeer can’t fly, but there are undiscovered species on Earth so flying reindeer aren’t inconceivable.

d) A reindeer can pull 300 pounds; a flying reindeer might be able to pull an order of magnitude more than an earthbound reindeer.

e) Taking advantage of time zones, I have 31 hours within which to deliver the gifts.

f) Each child gets a medium-sized Lego set, weighing 2 pounds.

Prove: True

1. I make 822.6 visits per second and have 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, slide down the chimney, drop off gifts, and scarf down some cookies.

2. My sleigh goes 650 miles per second (mps). For dramatic effect, they tell us the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, only goes 27.4 mps.

3. I have 321,300 tons of toys to deliver.

4. I need 214,200 flying reindeer to pull a sleigh with all those toys.

5. This payload traveling 650 mps would make the reindeer hotter ‘n a spacecraft re-entering earth’s atmosphere. They’d burst into flames before being vaporized in less than a second.

6. Due to forces 17,000 times greater than gravity, I would become flatter ‘n Flat Stanley.

7. Q.E.D

What kind of cockamamie semantic-numerical proof is that?

First, let’s start with the assumptions. While it‘s conceivable that reindeer can fly, it is so improbable as to be considered utterly ridiculous. Even more ridiculous to think all kids would want a Lego set. Lego may be popular with the nerd set but according to market research firm, NPD Group (a subsidiary of Santa Enterprises), Cars, Disney Princess, Dora the Explorer, Star Wars, Thomas and Friends, and a bunch of other stuff all outsold Lego. BTW, a medium Lego set contains 300 bricks each weighing 6 grams, which is closer to 4 pounds, making my existence twice as ridiculous to the physics community.

Second, why in the world would I travel to everyone’s home? Santa Enterprises is not a goddamn distribution company. It’s an information company (and a very successful one at that). Our intellectual property (IP in the lingo) is The List. We collect and maintain data on what kids want and what kids deserve. Then we use our proprietary matching algorithm to reconcile the two.

We outsource distribution and payments to parents, grandparents, friends, and other assorted gift-givers. We outsource inventory to retailers. We outsource marketing to the Web. Our business model is a mash-up of Google, Amazon, PayPal, and Tupperware.

Screw the physicists. The economists should be trotting us out as a case study in the Harvard Business Review.

Want your proof, physicists?

You know that Higgs boson you so desperately want? I gave you the Large Hadron Collider last year after some good behavior, but it won’t deliver the God Particle. Stop messing with the kids if you want my algorithm to hook you up with the Higgs.

Not proof enough for you?

Go look for that picture of me and that beautiful boson flipping you the bird.

These cards at the Phylogame website rock! And in case, you’re new to the Phylomon idea, it’s basically a crowdsourced art, science and gaming project that revolves around the reality of children knowing WAY more about Pokemon than they do about the flora and fauna around them. This, of course, is problematic since one might suggest that it’s not a bad thing for children to also know a little more about the real environment around them (a more detailed description of the project can be found here).

This is also a post to say that I’m on the lookout for artists to contribute to special Phylomon “decks.” In particular, we’ve got funding to seek out art contributions at about $200 per image, with a preference of hiring each artist to contribute at least 5 or so images at a time. Image copyright would remain with the artist, but we ask that the phylo project is allowed to showcase them online in card format in a non-derivative, attribution, non-commercial manner; as well as allow non-profits, museums, educational institutions to use the image (but only in the form of phylo cards) in physical decks that may be sold only for agreed upon outreach project fund raising purposes.

Anyway, if you’re a freelance artist and the project (and the pay) sounds interesting to you, then please do leave your portfolio website in the comments below this popperfont post (we’re also going to contact a few artists who have already so nicely allowed us to use existing art). As well, just so you know, we’re actually looking for art that veers a bit away from the usual conservative realistic type of animal art (i.e. character design buffs are welcome!). Ultimately, we’re looking for art that might actually be considered a bit Pokemon-ish but with details that reflect the real-life organisms.

Oh… And if you want to see more of our existing catalog of cards, then just go to http://phylogame.org/cards. You can also print more, by just hitting “select” on any cards you like – there’s about 300 to choose from, as well as about 500 DIY cards that kids have drawn. When you do this, the card should appear in the “selected cards” shopping basket. When you’re finished, just click on the “Selected Cards” link and it’ll just show you just the ones you’ve picked (6 at a time).

The best part is that you can just print that webpage (i.e. what you see there), and it’ll automatically produce a printout of just the cards (6 at a time) and at print quality resolution.

Game on!
Dave Ng

“It’s hard to explain,” she says, “Ironic. …Isn’t it?” Her voice is hollow, like she’s swallowed a boy your age, and he’s speaking from inside her. “I never know if things are ironic or just ‘appropriate.’ Or ‘coincidental.’ Or ‘funny.’ Muscular Hydrostat,” she says, like that’s supposed to help, “I think that’s what you call it.”

You want badly for her mouth to open and send laughter skipping across the waves, for her hair just to pick up and billow like a sail in the sun, but she hums from her chest while she thinks, and her hair sticks slickly to her neck. You are about to make a joke, but she says, “The idea starts this way: water, in a given space, it stays the same.” She cups her white hands full of seawater; you want to touch it to your lips and drink. You cup your hand against your face and exhale to smell it. Vinegar. “There,” she nods, she holds the water like a ball, her webbed fingers spread comfortably. “No matter where it goes, it’s no less dense, or more. It can only move.” She claps and water sprays you both; you lick your lips. Salt. She lays her hands in the water, flat, like an offering; you want to drink it all until it becomes you, and you can go with her where she’s going. She curls her fists and squeezes and water shoots out both sides, like a hose with no spigot, quickly spent.

“So it is with the tongue,” she says, “Being mostly made of water.” She lets her mouth hang open. “Fluid, yeah?” She pushes out her tongue, all the way, long and thick and deeply violet, then flares it flat like an eagle ray. “Eh?” She says, “Always the same size, no matter what, moving around inside your throat.”

She laughs, then, like rocks dropping into the shallows. You want to make a joke, but you shut your mouth tight, clench your teeth against the thing growing in your mouth, pushing frontways, sideways, writhing to come out.

“Let’s go over the design plans briefly before we begin our operation, fellas.”

“We’ll proceed from the top, here at this access panel, and then move our way down to the waste stack, here.”

“Behind the access panel opening you’ll usually find several enamel fixtures in a curved array, with multiple small valves supplying fluid to the fixtures and the upper end of the system.

“Solids and liquids introduced to the system are pushed into the drain by this auger unit, down a three degree slope, to a 90 degree ell-coupling here. Be careful working around this elbow area since touching the inside of the pipe will cause the system to immediately back up.”

“Now, below this fitting there are two 3/4 inch drain lines, which converge here in this flow control valve. This valve is responsible for separation of gas, liquid and solid material, as well as functioning as a PA system for the entire structure.”

“We’ll only concern ourselves with the fluid and semi-fluid lines at this point people. We’ll let the gas fitters work on the other line later.”

“Past the control valve we come to a central reservoir which holds all the in-feed from the drain line above. This tank has control valves at each end and, after suitable mixing has occurred, the contents of the tank are slowly drained through the lower valve into a 1 inch sewer line here.”

“This sewer stack is approximately 28 feet long, made of flexible tubing, and winds around the central interior of the structure, through several 90 degree bends, elbows, and 45 degree offsets. As it proceeds, some of the material inside the structure is siphoned off using various branch lines.”

“Just so you’re aware, another system is responsible for filtering liquids in this structure. That system has two replaceable strainers here at the back. Waste liquid drains from these filters into a P-trap holding tank here and hence to one of two different exit valves, depending on the structure. This is what we male plumbers call the fire sprinkler system. That’s a bit of anatomy humour there.”

“Other tanks contribute fluids and chemicals to the mixture as it moves down the stack, but generally the material continues without interruption.”

“The processed material then enters this 2 inch stack, which is in essence another, larger holding tank. This tank regularly empties, usually into a municipal waste system, through this flow control valve, here. Yes, the exterior valve can look like a politician, Joe – good one!”

“This plumbing system operates with high efficiency, but can occasionally slow to a crawl, or speed up beyond system capacity. The reasons for slowing down can be anything from too much cheese entering the system to a lack of water irrigation, which can also lead up to a complete blockage and pipeline shut down.”

“The system can also work at extremely high speed, particularly after a ‘hot wings and beer night’ at the local pub, or if the system is contaminated by a previously untested curry.”

“When working on these pipes, care must be taken with open flames or spark-producing tools since the system can vapour-lock, and flammable gases are known to accumulate on a regular basis. Venting is as important here as in any plumbing system, so remember that as you solder or weld anything.”

“So that’s it folks! Any questions before we start on this patient? No? Good.”

“Someone get my work gloves and I can get started with the pipe cutters. We need a work light in here! Who’s got the snake?”

“We have to hurry people – the electricians next door need help with their brain surgery.”

Art is beautiful.

There is a schism in our cultural consciousness: the humanities and sciences have been separated, and you have to choose a side and then be intimidated by the other. I want to present science in a way that its visual beauty is apparent, I want to present art to science so the connection can be understood. Neither is above the other- art and science exist on the same plane, they are closer and more intertwined than many realize. They cannot exist independently of each other, no matter how hard they try to make it seem that they do.

My current project consists of two parts: first, images of the biological specimens used to as aids in the beginning biology lab and second, images of the animal skeletons and skulls used for anatomical instruction.

I am presenting biological specimens as both a still-life and as a portrait. These creatures occupy a strange limbo; they were once living animals, but, now dead, they teach the living about the living. Preserved in formaldehyde, sealed into jars and cabinets, they live in suspended animation as generations of students peer inside and gather knowledge about the world.

In the images I shoot of the specimens in jars, I am trying to convey their quiet dignity and elegance. I shoot in black and white instead of color in order to focus on the objects, the composition, the story inside of the image. In my opinion, color detracts more than it adds in this instance. What is intended for purely scientific and educational purposes also has its own aesthetic- and that is what I want viewers to take away with them.

The skulls and skeletons are shot in color. The ‘color’ images become almost monochromatic, consisting of the black of the cabinets and the yellowy-white of bone. These images also play into the still-life/portrait theme; although, with these, it is easier to see the portrait side. When a viewer looks at the bones of well-known animals it isn’t difficult to project an animal from the viewers’ experience onto that skeleton. Some of the images seem to have a personality of their own; I like to think maybe such things become so deeply ingrained that even our inanimate skeletons still contain a little bit of our essence.

My goal is to combine art and science into something that shows that even that which is unfamiliar can still be related to by almost anymore.

Number Six

Stars in a Jar

The Exhibitionist

Crocodile

Cat

Rabbit

Dog