Dinosaurs? Or "Missionary Lizards"?

Yesterday, coming out of Starbucks, I heard a woman turn to her friend and say, "Well, I don't believe in dinosaurs." This odd statement has been resounding in my head ever since, so I decided to google "belief in dinosaurs" today. I found it to be a much more controversial subject than I ever imagined. Apparently some people consider dinosaurs to be a "dinosaur myth" that is perpetuated by the "dinosaur industry." To quote my source here, Dinosaurs: Science or Science Fiction, "This article will discuss the possibility that there may have been an ongoing effort since the earliest dinosaur "discoveries" to plant, mix and match bones of various animals, such as crocodiles, alligators, iguanas, giraffes, elephants, cattle, kangaroos, ostriches, emus, dolphins, whales, rhinoceroses, etc. to construct and create a new man-made concept prehistoric animal called 'dinosaurs'." From what I gather from this site, the fact that paleontologists and scientists are the ones to generally find dinosaur bones should be taken as evidence that it's a hoax- because these are people with a vested interest in dinosaurs. Now there is a fine example of "evidence" that makes the opposite of sense. Paleontologists are the ones finding them, because they are the ones looking for them. Was it only manufacturers of plastic dinosaurs finding dinosaur "evidence" then I might get in this whole conspiracy theory bandwagon. But no- it's educated, interested individuals doing a job in a specific location using excavation tools and technology. So anyway, at the end of all this very logical information the website forwards a hypothesis on the motivation behind the elaborate dinosaur myth:

The pro-evolutionary bias is evident with this organization promoting dinosaur discoveries.

As mentioned earlier, motivations for the possible invention of the dinosaur include trying to prove evolution, trying to disprove or cast doubt on the Bible and the existence of God, trying to disprove the young-earth theory, and trying to disprove creationism. Of course, the devil's ultimate goal is to cast doubt on the deity of Jesus Christ and prevent people's eternal salvation.

The name of Devils Canyon Science and Learning Center may possibly provide good insight to the real source of the dinosaur concept.

Now I also found that there appears to be plenty of people that think dinosaurs existed, but not millions of years ago- instead, they existed at the same time as humans- Adam and Eve, specifically. For this concept, much pictorial evidence is offered.

Now, if you think I'm creating some elaborate disbelief hoax, you can read further in a book called The Great Dinosaur Mystery: Solved! which can help you to, "learn how to effectively use dinosaurs as “Missionary Lizards.”"
Anyway, if dinosaurs were some wild hoax, they would be a fucking awesome hoax, because how cool are dinosaurs?!

Romantic Acceptance

Picture from the New York Times.

Mentally handicapped individuals face a truly difficult barrier in effecting change regarding their status or circumstances: relatively few are capable of advocating for themselves, or understanding what changes
should be made and how to make them. This voicelessness has contributed to allowing mentally handicapped people to be treated despicably in the past, when they were packed into institutions, abused, and viewed as sub-human. Horrific stories abound from this treatment- for example at one typical school of the 1960s in Massachusetts, "Conditions... were appalling for those with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other true physical or mental conditions. Given little treatment or training, they were often straitjacketed or tied to chairs and left soaked in urine and feces."

Workers were not equipped to deal with their mentally handicapped clients, and a sad marriage of cruelty and power, rather than empathy and understanding, dictated the way in which these institutions were run. This same phenomenon was famously distilled in a simple classroom exercise of separating out the blue-eyed from the brown-eyed kids to demonstrate racial prejudice:

That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. “The browneyed people are the better people in this room,” Elliott began. “They are cleaner and they are smarter.”

She knew that the children weren’t going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. “Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical,” Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. The more melanin, the darker the person’s eyes—and the smarter the person. “Brown-eyed people have more of that chemical in their eyes, so brown-eyed people are better than those with blue eyes,” Elliott said. “Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. You give them something nice and they just wreck it.” She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students.

I think there are some similarities between this experiment and establishing an IQ cut off point and treating all the people below as completely inferior. It is dissimiliar, in that this classification is not arbitrary, but there is a likeness concerning the notions of power. Establishing this IQ point demarcates those below as those without power, just as the blueeyed children were, and just as the guards were in the Stanford Prison Experiment.

As changes in the way mentally handicapped people are treated shows, their abilities lie on a spectrum and not solely on the other side of an IQ boundary (or precipice, as it was once considered). This type of more inclusive thinking has quickly and radically changed the perspective on mentally handicapped people, and the circumstances provided for them to live their lives. Now developmentally disabled people are provided with assistance in order to live with as much independence as possible, often earning money, making their own choices, indulging in their own interests and hobbies, and attending social events with their friends. Group home residents have individualized action plans specifically designed to foster their independence and socialization, curtailed to their personality, abilities, and interests. Disability rights activists worked hard to get society to this point, and as an article printed in the Times today shows, they are now working on taking it to another step.

This article, Learning to Savor a Full Life, Love Life Included, concerns allowing mentally handicapped individuals to pursue physical romantic relationships. Educating mentally handicapped people about romantic partners, allowing them to exercise their right to have a partner, and valuing their ability to form romantic attachment, takes their rights to a logical yet impressive level of acceptance.

A generation ago, young adults like Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo were generally confined to institutions, with no expectation of a normal life. All that changed in 1975, when a court order closed the notorious Willowbrook State School on Staten Island and moved its residents, and others like them across the country, into community settings to live as fully as their limitations allowed.

That could include attending neighborhood schools and holding salaried jobs. Now many men and women in their 20's and 30's, encouraged from childhood to be independent, expect the same when it comes to expressing their romantic and sexual needs.

...Far safer, Dr. Levy said, is allowing such needs to be met in the group home, after a consent evaluation by a psychologist. That evaluation tests knowledge of birth control and disease prevention, the need to limit sexual activity to private locations, the difference between legal and illegal sexual acts and how to avoid exploitive situations.

Oh the places you'll go

The map above is from a website called World66 that lets you check off countries you've visited and then it makes a pretty map and tells you what percentage you've been to. Pretty cool. The website in general takes the whole readers-edit-it-wikipedia-idea to the travel guide genre.

Happy Easter Aftermath

Eggs in Three Baskets

Holidays like Easter leave someone without a religion a little at a loss. It still matters, it is still an exceptional day, but it's difficult to say how much or why. Like most holidays, it usually boils down to a seasonally expected combination of food dishes and family gathering. With Easter, I think of lots of chocolate, something good baked by my mom, and some limp ham, rolls, and mashed potatoes we used to eat at my Granny's place. Which was then followed by lots of chocolate: Irish tradition dictated more desserts than people at the table. The excitement of these desserts, and the loveliness of a basket of goodies, consistently overwhelmed my curiousity of the particularities of a day devoted to celebrating a large bunny with a preference for pastel eggs. To be honest, I still don't get the logic, and I am still more interested in whatever my mom baked.

Then in college I got the chance to celebrate Passover with friends. Celebrating Passover is a wonderful experience, I think in general, but also from the perspective of an atheist. Passover has a script! Unlike Easter, which surely takes some understanding derived from countless Sundays spent in pews, Passover has a great narrative, tells you what to say and when and explains each part. It even tells you when to drink, and tells you to drink often enough, that you end up drunk by the end. With that drunkenness also comes a strange satisfaction that I don't experience with Christian holidays; a feeling of having fully completed a celebration; of having reached a destination, with fellow revelers, to the end of the story.

Attempting both celebrations whenever possible may seem like enough for one atheist, until I stumbled upon a third way to honor the season today. Apparently, Norwegians celebrate Easter by gorging themselves on... crime stories. According to this article:

Sales of crime books jump around 500 percent in the week leading up to Easter, estimates bookshop chain Tanum, while television and radio programmers schedule back-to-back thrillers over the Easter break, which in Norway lasts 5-1/2 days.

...Nobody knows when the Norwegian tradition of crime telling at Easter began, but their warrior ancestors -- the Vikings -- were renowned for raiding trips to the British Isles.

On their return the Vikings would settle down with flasks of mead, an alcoholic drink made from honey, and recount tales of murder and pillage to their women and children.

So, admittedly, this is a bit creepy. But still a celebration I can easily participate in- so excuse me while I go get a crime novel, some chocolate, some matzah, and some cheap red wine- it's holiday time.

Elevator Mindset

I pushed my way into a packed elevator following lunch today. The fellow anonymous businesspeople and I all scrambled to push our specific floor buttons and step into an egalitarian personal space arrangement. The machine rose and conveyed us silently upwards. Everyone was demure and mindful of moving out of the way appropriately for those disembarking.
When it was my turn, as I crossed the threshold, I opened my mouth to yell: "SEE YA!!!! WOULDN'T WANT TO BE YA!!!!!!!" But instead I smiled and told the receptionist it was nice outside as the doors clicked shut behind me.

The Bidding has Opened

Sharyn is in this playwrighting group called Youngblood that came up with the wacky but brilliant idea to allow people to bid on the opportunity to get their life turned into a play. Click on ebay link below to bid for YOUR 15 minutes (plus) of fame (as promised by Andy Warhol):


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6620300570

From the New York Times
On Your Life Story Onstage

All those people who have always thought their lives more scintillating than that of the average Joe or Jane can now bid on the chance to have it recreated onstage. A collective of emerging playwrights known as Youngblood and working under the aegis of the Ensemble Studio Theater will happily do the writing. Starting today, bidding begins on eBay for "True Life Story of [Your Name Here]," a play yet to be written. The winning bidder will meet with a Youngblood team, have their story adapted to the stage and be exposed in front of audiences at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as part of the $ellout Festival, beginning June 2. This will not be a play about a procrastinator, though: the auction ends in 10 days.
STEVEN McELROY

Madlibs- The State of the Union is dim!

Jen unknowingly contributes:

STATE OF THE UNION

KARYN:
Furry evening, distinguished baby mamas, ripe senators, members of the Supreme pimp (aka steve), my fellow muffins. I am cantankerous to announce that the state of our union is hot!

JEN:

Burnt evening, distinguished leaves, crisp senators, members of the Supreme banana, my fellow chairs. I am light to announce that the state of our union is bright!

STEPH:

Gloomy evening, distinguished peanut butter sandwiches, colorful senators, members of the Supreme sailboat, my fellow monkeys. I am sparkly to announce that the state of our union is red!

JULIE:

Sanguine evening, distinguished snots, oversized senators, members of the Supreme astronaut, my fellow crocodiles. I am hairy to announce that the state of our union is dim!

AMANDA:

(So) scandalous evening, distinguished balloons, red senators, members of the Supreme pocket, my fellow zebras. I am soft to announce that the state of our union is noble!

How to Criticize Advice

Today I stumbled upon Wiki how to lists- a rapidly growing database of how to advice. Some are interesting (How to Buy Your Own Private Island- cue Adam clicking so fast he almost sprains his wrist), some odd ones (How to Make a Rice Sock) and many geared toward teens. Regarding those, I think that it's amazing how many times people will give the advice to just "be yourself." For example, Step 1 of "How to Be the Type of Nerd That Girls Love" is to be yourself. It is Step 7 in how to be Miss Popular.

I hate to say it, but to "be yourself" is not necessarily good advice. The truth is, some people should probably not be themselves. Some people are assholes and would be better off as someone else entirely. Other people
are quite nice and should mostly be themselves, but to mask a couple traits, should master some features of someone else. There, that's my advice.

Now, to help Amanda out, here are some tips from Wiki ehow on How to Get Gothic in 1 Month:

1. Get a journal.
2. You don't immediately have to start wearing black. Nor does it have
to be all black, or at all times. Dark purple, blue or grey are
acceptable alternatives to plain black.
7. Read Robert Browning, Lord Byron, and other Romantic poets.
Dostoevsky will also aid in establishing a suitable life outlook.
9. Being Goth isn't about being cool, it's about being one with yourself
and LOOKING cool.
10. Dye your hair black. Or purple, or red, or blue. If you're a little
worried about the parents, just put in streaks.
12. Listen to your personal music device [ipod/walkman etc.] with the
volume up all the way.
16. Get a pet and be oddly attached to it. eg a mouse or rat that you
take everywhere. Other suitable animals are black or grey cats, frogs
and bats if you get one. Madagascar hissing cockroaches are great too;
be sure to show your little buddy to teachers. Dogs are seldom Goth,
although greyhounds have some potential, being so skinny and all.

Orchids!

Pictures taken by Ali, Bird and I at the New York Botanical Gardens Orchid Show- incredible!